Abstract

Chapter 3 offers some theoretical foundations for a Shakespearean approach to crime and justice: crime as drama and justice as theatre. First, Shakespeare’s drama opens up to us a criminology that takes seriously the notion of “the scene of the crime”—with its authors, actors, audiences, genres, conventions, characters, plots, costumes, props, settings, scripts, and speeches—a dramaturgy discussed in a reading of the deliberately Shakespearean structure and tenor of the most famous crime in U.S. history, John Wilkes Booth’s assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Second, scenes such as Shylock’s hearing in The Merchant of Venice and Angelo’s trial in Measure for Measure stage – literally stage – the deep theatricality of the justice system; just consider the theatrical architecture of the courthouse or the police press conference, with their front- and back-stages, their scripted speeches and improvisations, and us in the audience looking on.

Bibliography

Bernthal, C. A. (1992). Staging justice: James I and the trial scenes of Measure for Measure. Studies in English Literature, 32, 247-69.

Drakakis, J. (1991). ‘Fashion it thus’: Julius Caesar and the politics of theatrical representation. Shakespeare Survey, 44,65-73.

Griffin, T., & Miller, M. (2008). Child abduction, AMBER alert, and crime control theater. Criminal Justice Review, 33(2), 159-76.

Halio, J. (1993). Portia: Shakespeare’s Matlock? Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature, 5(1), 57-64.

Kauffman, M. (2004). ‘There is going to be some splendid acting tonight.’ In American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln conspiracies (pp. 194-225). New York: Random House.

Lucking, D. (2010). Brutus’s reasons: Julius Caesar and the mystery of motive. English Studies, 92(2), 119-32.

Portillo S., Rudes D., Viglione J., Nelson M., & Taxman F. (2013). Front-stage stars and backstage producers: The role of judges in problem-solving courts. Victims & Offenders, 8(1), 1-22.

Spielmann, G. (2011). Judicial spectacle events as reality and as fiction. Law and Humanities 5(1), 259-70.

Starling, R. (2005). ‘Scenes from the life of one who is suited for nothing’: Shakespeare and the question of mimesis. In Jonathan Holmes and Adrian Streete (Eds.), Re-figuring Mimesis: Representation in Early Modern Literature (pp. 15-36). Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press.