Debora Shuger. Political Theologies in Shakespeare's England: the Sacred and the State in Measure for Measure.

New York: Palgrave/St. Martin's Press, 2001. ix + 194 pp. index. bibl. $59.95 (cl), $21.95 (pbk). ISBN: 0-333-96500-0 (cl), 0-333-96501-9 (pbk).

Students of Renaissance culture have for some time been persuaded that the literary fictions of the period--epic, prose narrative, and drama--need to be considered in light of contemporary religious and theological texts and discourse. This is much less a case of looking for influence than it is of seeking common ground by recognizing similitude, analogy, and relation. Shuger's new book on "political theology" is a perfect example of the scholarly and interpretive benefits of such a comprehensive approach. It asks that we consider Tudor/Stuart political thought and its basis in ideas of justice as predicated on the need to save souls rather than to punish wrongdoers.

Shuger argues from sixteenth--and early-seventeenth-century treatises on the monarchy that represent the monarch's justice as penitential, not penal, a justice that institutes itself as an ideal beside two other systems, the first constitutional, the second puritanical. The constitutional model of justice, in which the common law functions independently of theological concerns, attempts merely to guarantee social stability. The punitive and purgative model, favored by the "Protestant Left" (Anglicans who favor a low church style) and the Puritans, strives to create a society of the "godly" by using the common law to excise wrongdoers from its midst. By contrast, a penitential justice aims at reforming the guilty and making them once again part of the whole body politic. Here the principal agent of reform is the king who, because his juridical role is to save souls in this life, is imbued with a certain sacred nature.

The strength of Shuger's analysis becomes evident when she looks at Measure for Measure's duke, an example of a "sacred monarch" whose type is illustrated in such texts as Desiderius Erasmus' Education of a Christian Prince, Martin Bucer's De regno Christi, and James I's Basilicon Doron. His role is to guarantee attention to the "sacral loci" within the state and its provisions for order, that is, those sources from which "the moral and spiritual substance of Christianity enters the political field and transforms it, lighting up the circumambient darkness like Portia's good deed in a naughty world" (45). The critical effect of these sources on the administration of justice proceeds from the jurisdictions of equity, in which the strict letter of the law, having been assessed as either too general or too inflexible to apply to a particular case, is interpreted so that a finer and more supple justice is done. Shuger cites several sixteenth-century representations of equity to illustrate how the duke's actions and decisions correspond, at least in their most conspicuous features, to the requirements of equity. His purpose resembles that celebrated in treatises on the "sacred monarch": the institution of a justice that neither rests with the preservation of an earthly and time-bound order, nor insists on the purgation of that order for the sake of an eternal one, but is rather directed to the salvation of souls within time through solidifying acts of forgiveness and reconciliation. Shuger's reading is persuasive owing to its generous consideration of evidence from contemporary texts, many of them identifiable as high Anglican, in which the legitimacy of the monarch is guaranteed by his goodness. On these accounts a bad monarch is not a monarch at all but rather a tyrant.

The provisions of this penitential system of justice do not, of course, set any conditions for its success as conducive to social reform, and here perhaps is the problem it poses if it is regarded as other than idealizing, as less prescriptive than hortatory. The ameliorative actions actually open to the English monarch in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries derived from her (or his) ancient connection to the King's Bench, a common law court, and particularly to Star Chamber and Chancery, both courts of equity. Upon a plea from the Crown and the perception of a mistake in judgment, the King's Bench could issue a writ (e.g., of certiorari, Trespass, Error, etc.) directing a case to it from a lower common law court (such as the Court of Common Pleas). Similarly, the Chancellor, the principal adviser to the Crown, could issue an injunction ordering that a proceeding in a common law court cease because the plaintiff to it had exhibited bad faith. The case could then be heard in Chancery. Challenged by Sir Edward Coke in the Earl of Oxford case, Chancellor Ellesmere defended his practice, asserting that he could issue an injunction "'not for any error or defect in judgment but for the hard conscience of the party.'" James I approved, stating that the Chancellor "'shall not hereafter desist to give unto our subjects ... such relief in equity (not withstanding any proceedings at the common law against them) as shall stand with the merit and justice of their cause and with the former ancient and continued practice and presidency of our Chancery'" (quoted in W. H. Holdsworth, A History of English Law, 1 [1922]).

Tough and specific terms governed relations between the common law and equity courts, and it's hard to imagine how the softer provisions governing the justice delivered by a "sacred monarch" whose legitimacy was referred to his goodness or badness would have worked in practice. As historians have pointed out, an English monarch was permitted something like legislation (by proclamation) and something like taxation (by control of exports and imports) by virtue of the rather fluid provisions of the prerogative. But she or he was not permitted, however good, to be sovereign outside her or his place in Parliament, given that the English monarchy remained (in Sir John Fortescue's terms) politicum et regale.

It's against these terms that the picture of a "sacred monarch" bumps up most uncomfortably. We should not deny its hugely rhetorical power. The effectual character and legal dimension of the English monarchy generally evolved in and through conflicts predicated on constitutionalist terms and provisions. But, as Shuger demonstrates, this monarchy was also shaped in a moral sense by ideals derived from Christian theology and expressed in literature, including narrative and dramatic fiction and lyric poetry. What such a construction might have meant to the political subject is very much worth considering.

CONSTANCE JORDAN

Claremont Graduate University