Communal Justice in Shakespeare’s England: Drama, Law, and Emotion

"For readers and scholars generally, and for those of us who have written about law and literature or about figures such as Shakespeare and Edward Coke, Geng’s book makes a distinctive, lively, and considered contribution to scholarship."

Jonathan Locke Hart, Shandong University, Renaissance and Reformation

"In this historically thorough and highly entertaining work, the author draws a line between professional and non-professional aspects of the law, which sheds a new light on the plays she discusses."

Franziska Quabeck, Shakespeare Jahrbuch

“Penelope Geng’s Communal Justice in Shakespeare’s England is an inspiring addition to the field of law and literature. At the same time, the monograph’s clear storytelling makes Geng’s narrative accessible and useful for scholars outside of the fields of law and literature or early modern studies.” Jessica Apolloni, Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England

"Communal Justice in Shakespeare’s England is a deeply researched and entirely new account of the connections among law, literature, and early modern drama. Penelope Geng seamlessly weaves together a broader history of legal change with studies of individual plays, including King Lear and Macbeth. She convincingly demonstrates that the early modern playhouse was an affective space where people came together to celebrate communal, neighbourly, and local legal customs and practices over and against the developing systems of legal professionals. This rich and rewarding book is an important milestone in studies of early modern law and literature."

Jessica Winston, Professor and Chair of English and Philosophy, Idaho State University

"In Communal Justice in Shakespeare’s England, Penelope Geng offers a masterclass in the historicized analysis of theatrical representations of popular legalism. Teasing out the complex and ambiguous relationship between the obligation to obey legal authority on the one hand and the duty to participate in legal process on the other, Geng shows that communal justice became a prominent theme in dramatic writing at precisely the same time as legal expertise was being monopolized by a professional cadre of lawyers. This wonderful book both reconstructs the discourses through which early modern English men and women claimed legal authority and political agency for themselves, and explains how and why participatory justice and shared legal responsibility have been such enduring values in Anglo-American culture."

Steve Hindle, W.M. Keck Foundation Director of Research, The Huntington Library