Eternal Bonds, True Contracts: Law and Nature in Shakespeare's Problem Plays (review)

The relation between law and comedy is an old one. The law can be comic because it is an ass, but it is also a part of the structure of New Comedy, whose legacy has been so enduring since Plautus, Terence, and others first made plots in which the younger generation expressed a spirit of love that had to circumvent the law of the older generation often embodied in the senex, or old man. Law in a general sense was a means of social control for one generation over the next as well as being the way by which the ruling class exercised power over their subordinates. The parental block is often a trial for the lovers. The challenge to the old order leads to chaos and the establishment of a new order. And the older generation, especially in Shakespeare's romantic comedy, becomes educated into this new order by the very children they sought to teach and control. The spirit of youth schools the law of the elders. Comedy becomes, then, a means to teach the limits of that law.

What makes A. G. Harmon's study particularly interesting is that it combines an examination of law and nature with that of the problem play, that is, one involving a social study and the other a formal problematic. Harmon's argument, or at the very least his title, depends on what plays are considered under this category. The usual triad is Troilus and Cressida, All's Well That Ends Well,and Measure for Measure, although some critics consider Hamlet, Anthony and Cleopatra, and Timon of Athens to be problem plays. There are other plays that critics have thus classified (I once argued for Henry V). Harmon includes Merchant of Venice, which stretches the genre and the time period to about five years earlier than the usual first play of this "genre," so that he should probably elaborate a justification for this inclusion. Whatever one thinks about this addition, it allows for a discussion of trials and justice that it would not otherwise permit. As in any scholarship in Shakespeare, the ground is well-tilled, and this creates quite a challenge for any scholar. In addition, whether one considers Merchant a problem play, discussions of law in it are important (see, for instance, Margaret Scott, Peter Alscher, Clara Mucci).

Harmon works in the area of law and literature. He admirably brings to bear his legal training and legal history — as well as the philosophical underpinnings in Aquinas amid the dangers of change both in the ecclesiastical and secular laws. Moreover, Harmon discusses contracts in Measure, and sees in it evidence of what is a proper marriage contract in Shakespeare. Harmon points to Isabella's distinction between crimes attempted and fulfilled. What probably confuses this issue is the nature of theology (Christ's words about lust and intentions), politics (who has the power and authority?), and drama (what involves the redemption of this "comedy"?). The notion of the mock contract in Troilus that Harmon offers is suggestive. He argues that in this play, which he views as parodic, there is a perversion of nature through the connection between sex and war. The disruption of order is something the satire in the play represents. Different orientations to nature, according to Harmon, connect the plays under study. For instance, in Measure, the agents of nature restore order by correcting those who cheat nature, whereas in Troilus this does not occur. In Merchant friendship and commer-cial bonds are part of these doubling orientations to nature. In this connection Harmon reminds us of the importance of Aristotle, as elaborated by Aquinas then Richard Hooker, and brings in material, efficient, formal, and final causes as a gloss on the commercial enterprise and contract. How effective the law is in this play depends on the quality of mercy, that is the...