Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Richard III and the Ostracized Heritage of Theatre 1.1 Anne and the Supplement of the Eucharist 1.2 Margaret and the Excommunication of the Old Liturgy 1.3 Edward IV, the Oath and the Performance of the Social Contract 1.4 Hastings and the Fateful Prophecy 1.5 Henry VI and the Standing Army of the Dead 1.6 Clarence and the Diabolical Allegory 1.7 Buckingham and the Grounds of Theater 2. King John and the Ordeal of the Bastard Commodity 3. King Lear and the Naturalized State of Exception 3.1 Cordelia and the Problem of Equity 3.2 Goneril and Regan within the Liberties of Nature 3.3 Kent in Internal Banishment 3.4 Edgar and the benedictio vacui 3.5 The Fool and the Bonds of Fate 3.6 Storm still and the Perpetual Downfall of the Last Judgment
Biography
Bjoern Quiring (Author)
"The book should be read by those with interests beyond the three plays it explicitly engages, offering conceptually ambitious reflections on law, history, and early modern theater. A good book, it provokes responses." - Christopher Pye, Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 68, No. 1 (Spring 2015)
"Quiring’s argument is immediate and exacting, with genuine stakes rendered in dynamic and clear prose. The book does much to satisfy its interdisciplinary objectives, offering a persuasive history of the secularization of legal thinking. Although the highly selective treatment of Shakespeare’s corpus raises questions about claims to a clearly chronological narrative of escalating deconstruction, the book’s painstakingly close readings of Richard III and King Lear are themselves quite convincing, providing much fodder for scholars of those individual plays."- Matthew Vadnais , Theatre Journal, Volume 67, Number 1, March 2015, pp. 148-149
