Page 79 [79]
OCR
RHETORICAL AND POETICAL CONVENTIONS Secondly, the Quarto version of this passage has also been studied in order to illustrate “Shakespeare’s familiarity with criminal procedure” and his “use of technical legal phraseology.””** Such claims are based on one particular line uttered by Lear: “thou robbed man of Iustice take thy place, & thou his yokefellow of equity, bench by his side, you are ot’h commission, sit you too.”?*” According to Mary Sokol, this sentence is a direct reference to the equity jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery, the institution the decisions of which were not based on common law and precedents but on natural justice, allowing for a fair judgment in a situation which was not covered by the existing law. For comparison, the state trial of Mary, Queen of Scots, James I’s mother, also took place at the Court of Chancery.*” Since the title page of the 1608 Quarto version clearly states that this text was based on a court performance at Whitehall in December 1606 in James I’s presence, many topical allusions to contemporaneous trials have been traced in interpretations of this scene. To begin with, Leah Marcus draws attention to the fact that, at the time of the play’s performance at Whitehall, the Parliament was debating the details of the Union of the Kingdom and the naturalization of the Scots.’ Moreover, in 1608, when the Quarto was printed, the case of the Post Nati, the children born after the Union, was tried at the Court of Chancery, which decided in favor of their right to citizenship on the basis of civil law and equity. It was this court that King James, like Lear, used to work his will with the help of the judges who were under his influence. On the other hand, William Gulstad argues that “the details of the mock trial re-enforce its connection to witchcraft in general” and particularly to Reginald Scot’s work, The Discoverie of Witchcraft," a sixteenth-century narrative account of witch trials. To single out one of his examples, the line in which the Fool says to the imaginary Gonorill, “Cry you mercy I tooke you for a ioyne stoole” can be read not only as a seventeenth-century colloquial expression used to apologize for overlooking a person, but also as an allusion to witchcraft, since, according to traditional folklore, “it was believed that for purposes of obscuring their movements witches left behind them, among other things, joint-stools, enchanted in such a way as to assume their likenesses.”#°? 2°5 John Lord Campbell: King Lear, in John Lord Campbell: Shakespeare's Legal Acquirements, New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1859, 102. 26 Tbid., 100. 297 Shak-speare: His True Chronicle, sig. G4r. 298 B. J. Sokol—Mary Sokol: Introduction, in B. J. Sokol—Mary Sokol: Shakespeare, Law, and Marriage, Cambridge—New York, Cambridge University Press, 2003, 6-7. 299 Marcus: Retrospective, 150. 300 Tbid., 151. 301 William Gulstad: Mock-trial or witch-trial in King Lear?, Notes and Queries 41:4 (1994), 495. 302 Tbid., 497. «77 «
