The Cauldron

Last Tuesday was the first 2008 Joseph C. Hostetler-Baker & Hostetler Visiting Scholar Lecture at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. The featured speaker was Kenji Yoshino, Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law, who delivered a captivating speech on "The Return of Shakespeare's Reviled Tragedy: Titus Andronicus and the Rule of Law."

Yoshino specializes in three areas: Constitutional Law, Discrimination Law, and Law & Literature. His articles on stigmatized identities, such as sexual orientation and ethnic heritage, self-described as attempts to "stimulate national conversation . . . away from doctrine and towards a fully fledged notion of justice," have appeared in such publications as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The Boston Globe.

His fascination with literature's correlation to the law stems from a desire to find a source of secular moral instruction as an alternative to the judicial system's frequent reference to religious texts.

A work in progress, his book Shakespeare and the Law is tentatively scheduled for 2010 release by Echo Press. In it, he will analyze ten plays as examples of law. He dissects plays such as Merchant of Venice, Henry the 5th, King Lear, Hamlet, and Antony & Cleopatra, identifying concepts of merit, nobility, and rationality. He then compares these principles to present events.

Current criticism of Sarah Palin's balancing act between her political and home lives creates parallels to Cleopatra and Antony's decision between love and office. Likewise, the "succession" in office by family members of the Adams, Roosevelt, Clinton, or Bush administrations exemplifies a Shakespearianconcept of dynasty, which Yoshino attributes to either familiarity or possible religious undertones.

He addressed his theory that when it is perceived that the rule of law is weak, revenge tragedies become prominent, as seen with the releases of The Dark Knight, Sin City, or The Sopranos. When, in contrast, it is perceived to be too strong, the literary genre of the novel emerges. He commented that it seems we have both views in this era; citizens are concerned about the strength, or lack thereof, of the United States against terrorist attacks, and the absence of a powerful international tribunal. Yet they also are concerned that personal freedoms have been infringed upon with the governmental control of wiretapping, and measures that came with the Patriot Act.

After a brief summary of the intentions of his book, he went into the real meat of the lecture: Titus Andronicus. This greatly detested play of Shakespeare's, ironically also the one that made his a household name, is frequently thought to be too gory to hold a high place in the canon.

In it are stomach-turning scenes of human sacrifice, rape, mutilation, cannibalism, and decapitation. Sections of the play have been translated into popular culture; South Park's most popular episode to date incorporated events in the text, as is the same in Sweeney Todd. Heavily criticized by such literary giants as T.S. Eliot, you may wonder why Yoshino chose this to be the topic on which he spoke.

The play itself is a story of how personal revenge spins out of control without a standing police force and judicial system to intervene. Whereas in a personal feud, it is the offender against the victim and his/her family, law redirects this so that it is the offender against the state, interrupting the cycle of revenge.

Yoshino says, that the phrase " 'an eye for an eye' is both permissive and restrictive," and allows the score only to be evened, not exceeded. For instance, criticisms made of Guantanamo Bay: the Tipton Three, military tribunals, and arguments of the definition of torture, all represent, in Yoshino's opinion, our deference to the judicial system.

As in the Elizabethan era, sects of our society turn to what Sir Francis Bacon called "wild justice," in which we feel it right to administer retribution when we feel the law fails to sufficiently rectify our grievances.

Delivered in an academic yet accessible vernacular, Yoshino captured the audience with his innovative perspectives and contemporary references. It is Yoshino's desire to resurrect the play because, "the return of revenge tragedies in our time reflects the fact that, along some crucial dimensions, our times are more like the Elizabethan era than any intervening one."

"For this reason, we distance ourselves from Shakespeare's first tragedy at our risk. Titus is not immature. It is inaugural. It depicts the threat of endless private vengeance that calls the law into being. Without understanding that threat, we cannot understand the origins of law - in Shakespeare's world or our own."

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