Renaissance Actors and Lawyers: Instability of Texts and of Social Trafficking: The Comedy of Errors
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Carla Dente
Carla Dente is Full Professor of English Literature and of English Theatre Studies at Pisa University. She has published extensively on theatre studies, mainly Renaissance and Contemporary, along the lines of textual analysis and the investigation of specific theatre and cultural phenomena. Among her most recent publications:Proteus. The Languages of Metamorphosis (2005),Dibattito sul teatro. Voci opinioni interpretazioni (2006)Crossing Time and Space. Shakespeare translations in Present-day Europe (2008).Translation Practices. Through language to Culture (2009), a monographical issue of TEXTUS (2009) on “Marginal Textualities,” andShakespeare and Conflict (2013). She is member of the Executive board of ISA – International Shakespeare Association, co-founder and President of IASEMS – Italian Association of Shakespearean and Early Modern Studies, and member of ESRA, AIDEL, IAUPE.
Abstract
The essay examines some forms of the actual interaction between the different social actions of the law and the theatre in early modern England. Both the theatrical and the legal practice were divided between the comparative ‘freedom’ of oral performance and the equally comparative stability of written texts. Actors' and lawyers' training made use of written texts and performance styles which show clear resemblance in form and in (collaborative) method. The legal exercises were a mandatory part of the law students' training and were perhaps meant to be used as library material in each of the Inns. The Comedy of Errors, by Shakespeare, first performed at Gray's Inn, inscribed within this synergic and collaborative practice, focuses on the problematic issue of oral promises and written contracts in the rising merchant economy of early modern England.
About the author
Carla Dente is Full Professor of English Literature and of English Theatre Studies at Pisa University. She has published extensively on theatre studies, mainly Renaissance and Contemporary, along the lines of textual analysis and the investigation of specific theatre and cultural phenomena. Among her most recent publications: Proteus. The Languages of Metamorphosis (2005), Dibattito sul teatro. Voci opinioni interpretazioni (2006) Crossing Time and Space. Shakespeare translations in Present-day Europe (2008). Translation Practices. Through language to Culture (2009), a monographical issue of TEXTUS (2009) on “Marginal Textualities,” and Shakespeare and Conflict (2013). She is member of the Executive board of ISA – International Shakespeare Association, co-founder and President of IASEMS – Italian Association of Shakespearean and Early Modern Studies, and member of ESRA, AIDEL, IAUPE.
©2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Focus
- Focus: Gardens of Justice
- Voltaire's Garden
- A Bundle of Sticks in My Garden
- The Right to Free Movement as Temporal Deterritorialization in the Landscaped Garden
- The Other Otherwise: Law, Historical Trauma and the Severed Gardens of Justice
- “He Does Not Love Me, Nor I He!” The Critic's Love is of Critique, not of Law
- Research
- Renaissance Actors and Lawyers: Instability of Texts and of Social Trafficking: The Comedy of Errors
- Where Laws do Reach: Public Opinion, the Theatres, and the 1737 Licensing Act
- “The law is a wise serpent”: Subtextual Subversion in The Revenger's Tragedy
- The Voice of Martha Ray
- Western and Post-Western Mythologies of Law
- Book Reviews
- Book Review
- Book Review
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Focus
- Focus: Gardens of Justice
- Voltaire's Garden
- A Bundle of Sticks in My Garden
- The Right to Free Movement as Temporal Deterritorialization in the Landscaped Garden
- The Other Otherwise: Law, Historical Trauma and the Severed Gardens of Justice
- “He Does Not Love Me, Nor I He!” The Critic's Love is of Critique, not of Law
- Research
- Renaissance Actors and Lawyers: Instability of Texts and of Social Trafficking: The Comedy of Errors
- Where Laws do Reach: Public Opinion, the Theatres, and the 1737 Licensing Act
- “The law is a wise serpent”: Subtextual Subversion in The Revenger's Tragedy
- The Voice of Martha Ray
- Western and Post-Western Mythologies of Law
- Book Reviews
- Book Review
- Book Review
