LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Interdependence of Law and Literature
in Shakespeare's and Charles Dickens's Writings -
A Reflection

K. S. Lakshmi Rao, M.A., M.L. (Research), Ph.D. Candidate

Abstract

As several legal scholars have observed, law is a profession of words. It is also a discipline or practice, like religion, in which stories play a critical role.

Shakespeare's controversial tale of Jewish money lender, The Merchant of Venice, examines themes of justice, the bias of legal systems, and legalese. Charles Dickens gives a vivid portrayal of the endless machinations, lethal manoeuvrings, and strangling bureaucracy of the legal system of mid-19th-century.

Britain did much to enlighten the general public, and was a vehicle for dissemination of Dickens's own views regarding, particularly, the injustice of chronic exploitation of the poor forced by circumstances to "go to Law". Bleak House elaborated expansive critiques of the Victorian institutional apparatus; the interminable law suits of the court of Chancery that destroyed people's lives in Bleak House. The legal system is described like the plague, as pervasive like the fog that opens the narrative which smothers everyone. It could be seen in the very opening of Bleak House, while using a highly metaphorical, almost apocalyptic language, in describing the then Chancery and foggy streets of London.

In this paper the reflections are confined only to William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and Charles Dickens' The Bleak House.

Key Words

Court of Chancery, bureaucracy, lethal, anti-Semitism.

Introduction

As the author of Law and Literature: A Misunderstood Relationship, Richard Posner is highly critical of the law and literature he writes so.

Although the writers we value have often put law into their writings, it does not follow that those writings are about law in any interesting way that a lawyer might be able to elucidate.

He further writes,

Law is subject matter rather than technique, and that legal method is the method of choice in legal realms, not a literary one. Combining literature's ability to provide unique insight into the human condition through text with the legal frame work that regulates those human experiences in reality gives a democratic judiciary new and dynamic approach to reaching the aims of providing a just and moral society ...

Discussion

A noted barrister and Member of Parliament, Greenwood claimed that Shakespeare's plays and poems "supply ample evidence that their author ... had a very extensive and accurate knowledge of law."

In contrast to his denoted tragedies and histories, what Shakespeare has labelled as comedy obliges us to take the dramatist at his word, and to do so in the usage of his time. It is observed that there is a rising tide on the subjects of anti-Semitism, due process, perversion of the law, even homophobia, as integral aspects of The Merchant of Venice, accompanied by a galaxy of contemporary legal, social and political concerns. He would hardly be the first artist to alter his views, develop his craft, and change with the times. Of the greatest of literary geniuses, we should expect no less.

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