Law as performance : theatricality, spectatorship, and the making of law in ancient, medieval, and early modern Europe

Cover
Law as Performance: Theatricality, Spectatorship, and the Making of Law in Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern Europe
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Contents
List of Illustrations
Note on Citations, Texts, and Translations
Introduction
	Tothill Fields (1571): Law versus Theatre in “the Last Trial by Battel”
	Law as Performance: Legal Theatricality and Antitheatricality as Idea and Practice
	Law as Spectatorship: Public Trials, Open Courts, and the “Audience”
	Performance, Theatricality, Gender, Law, and the Question of Anachronism
	Representations of Legal Performance versus Legal Performance as Representation
	Chapter Summaries
1: Theatre, Theatrocracy, and the Politics of Pathos in the Athenian Lawcourt
	Introduction: Aeschines vs. Demosthenes
	Theatricality and Antitheatricality in the Athenian Lawcourt
		Trial as Theatre
		Against Histrionics
	Plato’s Theatrocracies
		Theatrocracy and Theatrical Sophism versus the Laws
		The Law and Its Double: Rival Actors and the Laws as Noble Tragedy
	Aristotle on Hypokrisis and Pathos
		The Vulgar Crowd and the Power of Hypokrisis
		The Poetics of Hypokrisis and Pathos
		Catharsis as Judgment and the Mobilizing of Emotion
	Against Alcibiades: Theatrical Tears versus RighteousOutrage in the Legal Theatrocracy
	Conclusion
2: The Roman Advocate as Actor: Actio, Pronuntiatio, Prosopopoeia, and Persuasive Empathy in Cicero and Quintilian
	Introduction: Posing Fonteius
	The Roman Legal Theatre
		Courtroom as Theatre
		The Art of Actio and Pronuntiatio
		The Actor’s Apprentice: Be Theatrical . . . But Not Too Theatrical
	Staging Emotion
		Universal Languages: Emotion, Gesture, Voice
		Speaking Scenes: Caesar’s Robe, the Blood-Bespattered Plaintiff, the Litigant’s Face
		Prosopopoeia as Impersonation and Ventriloquism: Weeping for Milo in Cicero’s Pro Milone
	Emotion as Practice
		Masks and Faces: Personae and the Ethics of Decorum
		Training Empathy
		The Art of the Real
	Conclusion
3: Courtroom Oratory, Forensic Delivery, and the Wayward Body in Medieval Rhetorical Theory
	Introduction: Alain de Lille’s Rhetorica (c.1182–84) in the Courtroom, or How to Win a Lawsuit in the Middle Ages
	Medieval Courtroom Actors
		The Lawyer: Robed Vulture with Venal Tongue or Priest of the Laws?
		Forensic Oratory in Medieval Theory and Practice
		On Forensic Delivery
	Four Rhetorical Theorists on Courtroom Delivery
		Alcuin of York (c.735–804): Allegorical Insignia, Eschatological Space, and Bodily Decorum in the Carolingian Court
		Boncompagno da Signa (c.1165–1240): The Leaky Body as “Organic Instrument” and Courtroom Trickster
		Guilhem Molinier (fl. 1330–50): Delivery According to the Laws of Love
		Jean de Jandun (c.1285–1328): Signifying the Passions, Warping the Judge, Entertaining the Crowd
	Conclusion
4: Irreverent Performances, Heterodox Subjects, and the Unscripted Crowd from the Medieval Courtroom to the Stocks and Scaffold
	Introduction: Mooning the Law with Calefurnia and Catharina Arndes
	Ideals of Order, Scripted Trials, and the Disorderly Crowd
		The Doge, the Judge, and the Sword: Allegorizing Justice as Terror and Pleasure in Venetian Civic Spectacle (c.1311)
		Rex as Lex before the Throng in Jean Fouquet’s “Lit de Justice de Vendôme” (1458)
		Noisy Crowds, Lawyers’ Harangues, and Scripted Trials: Thomas Basin’s Proposal (1455)
		Open Courtrooms, Festive “Law-Days,” and the German Rechtstag as Mock Trial
	Heretics and Witches: Staging Heterodoxy in the Fifteenth-Century Courtroom
		Performing Radical Theology as Legal Counter-Narrative: The Trial and Defrocking of Jan Hus (1415)
		Spitting at the Inquisitor: Helena Scheuberin, Heinrich Institoris, and the Innsbruck Witch Trial (1485)
	The Spectacle of Punishment Beyond the Script
		Execution as “Sacred Event” and “Theater of Devotion”?
		Deterrent Terror, Crowd Vengeance, and Going Off-Script
		Politics and the Heterogeneous Crowd
		Jeering “Like the Jews [Against] Jesus”
		Penal Pleasures
	Conclusion
5: Performing Law in the Age of Theatre (c.1500–1650)
	Introduction: The Priest’s Bastard and the Prince’s Grace: Entertaining the Polish Ambassadors in the “Greatest Theatre Ever” (1573)
	The Rhetorical Tradition and the Figure of Theatre
		Delivery Handbooks for Lawyers and the Study of “Mute Eloquence”
		Learning from Roscius
	Theatre and Lawyers in the Anti-Rhetorical Tradition
		Humanist Legal Antitheatricality
		The Forum, the Stage, and the Sewer
	The Modern Courtroom as “Theatre”
		The Politics of a Trope
		The Courtroom as Encyclopedic Anatomy Theatre: Dissecting the Legal Body
		Pasquier’s Hands
	The Legal Entertainment Industry
		Learning from Marino’s Evil Cousin
		Critical Court-Watchers and the Feverish Crowd
		Pasquier Defends “the Slaughterer”: The Trial of Jean d’Arconville (1571)
6: Legal Performance Education in Early Modern England
	Introduction: Rehearsing the Revels in St. Dunstan’s Tavern (1628–29)
	Directions for the Study of Law: Learning to Act Like a Lawyer
		Rhetorical Education as (Legal) Performance Training
		Manuals for the English Law Student
		The Noble Arts and Courtroom Carriage
	Practicing Performance: Moots and Disputations
		Rehearsal and Mimesis
		Public Spectacle, Battle, Theatre, Farce
		Impersonation, Make-Believe, and the Mise-en-Abîme
	Theatre in the Temple of Law: What the Revels Taught
		Defending Academic Theatre: Impersonation and Dissimulation for Lawyers
		The Trial of the Sorcerer in Gray’s Inn (1594): The Lawyer as Lord of Misrule
	Conclusion
Epilogue
Works Cited
	Primary Sources
	Secondary Sources
Index