Solon and Thespis

Law and Theater in the English Renaissance

Dennis Kezar

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English

University of Notre Dame Press
15 January 2007

Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800; Literary studies: plays & playwrights; Laws of Specific jurisdictions

In the archetypal confrontation between the Athenian lawmaker Solon and the Greek poet Thespis, Solon confronts Thespis after seeing him act in a tragedy. He asks Thespis if he is not ashamed to tell so many lies before so many people. In response to Thespis's reply—that it was no harm to say or do so in a play—Solon vehemently blames Thespis for a professional deceit that threatens to pervade society.

Solon's criticism of Thespis points to a fundamental motivation for Solon and Thespis: an exploration of the long-standing antagonism between law and theater, between drama's inconsequential fiction and the real world's socially consequential fact, at a crucial moment—the sixteenth century—in England's cultural and legal formation.

The literary critics and historians in this volume examine that antagonism and find it revelatory of English Renaissance law and Renaissance theater's institutional connections and interdependences at a time when both were emerging as powerful forces in English society. Renaissance legal processes were subject to dramatic and public representation, appropriation, and evaluation. Renaissance commercial theater, often populated by law students and practitioners, was both subject to the law and subversive of it. The contributors demonstrate that theater and law were not simply relevant to each other in the early modern period; they explore the physical spaces in which early modern law and drama were performed, the social and imaginative practices that energized such spaces, and the rhetorical patterns that make the two institutions far less discrete and far more collaborative than has previously been recognized.

Edited by: Dennis Kezar
Imprint: University of Notre Dame Press
Country of Publication: United States
Edition: Annotated edition
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 16mm
Weight: 413g
ISBN: 9780268033132
ISBN 10: 0268033137
Pages: 302
Publication Date: 15 January 2007
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Professional & Vocational , A / AS level , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Dennis Kezar is associate professor of English at Vanderbilt University.

Reviews for Solon and Thespis: Law and Theater in the English Renaissance

The diversity of topics explored in this excellent collection makes it a valuable addition to the burgeoning field of early modern law, theater, and literature studies. The essays included here touch on a wide range of material - from Dekker to Shakespeare to Chapman and Bacon; and in doing so, they explore the tensions between Solon and Thespis in such a way as to make the work of analyzing the relationship between literature and the law seem not only fruitful, but in fact essential to a deeper understanding of both. - Jeremy Lopez, University of Toronto