Law, Literature, and Doctor Faustus

Shaina Kovalsky has published "Legally Speaking: State as Community in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus." Here is the abstract.

Marlowe's Doctor Faustus appears to have largely neglected by scholars in law and literature, despite its seeming promise in that arena. The paper first reads the play through the lens of a debate between Robin West and Richard Posner about autonomy and consent in Kafka, dredging up the bits and pieces of law and literature-type scholarship along the way. The paper then argues that it is important to remember that, at the time of the play's publication, there were actual laws outlawing pacts with the devil, and so Faustus can be read both as a metaphor and as the product of actual contemporary fears.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Legal Times notes that this year's Shakespeare Theatre Company's mock trial presented the spectacle of Theodore Olsen, former solicitor general of the United States, and now with the firm of Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher, defending President Edward Plantagenet, Jr. against impeachment charges brought by the House of Representatives. Acting as counsel for the House was Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben. Among the judges for the trial was Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Here's more about the trial from the company's website. The trial was based on Christopher Marlowe's Edward II.

In past years the STC has put on mock trials involving Hamlet.