The sixteenth century was a turning point for both law and drama. Relentless professionalization of the common law set off a cascade of lawyerly self-fashioning – resulting in blunt attacks on lay judgment. English playwrights, including Shakespeare, resisted the forces of legal professionalization by casting legal expertise as a detriment to moral feeling. They celebrated the ability of individuals, guided by conscience and working alongside members of their community, to restore justice. Playwrights used the participatory nature of drama to deepen public understanding of and respect for communal justice. In plays such as King Lear and Macbeth, lay people accomplish the work of magistracy: conscience structures legal judgment, neighbourly care shapes the coroner’s inquest, and communal emotions give meaning to confession and repentance.

An original and deeply sourced study of early modern literature and law, Communal Justice in Shakespeare’s England contributes to a growing body of scholarship devoted to the study of how drama creates and sustains community. Penelope Geng brings together a wealth of imaginative and documentary archives – including plays, sermons, conscience literature, Protestant hagiographies, legal manuals, and medieval and early modern chronicles – proving that literature never simply reacts to legal events but always actively invents legal questions, establishes legal expectations, and shapes legal norms.

Penelope Geng is an assistant professor in the Department of English at Macalester College.

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"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."

<em>Shakespeare Jahrbuch</em>

“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.”

<em>Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England</em>

"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."

<em>Renaissance and Reformation</em>