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Rebecca Lemon. Treason by Words: Literature, Law, and Rebellion in Shakespeare's England. Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006. Pp. ix + 234. $39.95.
Treason by Words by Rebecca Lemon combines a broad definition of treason with close textual readings. Lemon argues that John Hayward's The First Part of the Life of Henry IV, Shakespeare's Richard II and Macbeth, Donne's PseudoMartyr, and Ben Jonson's Cataline opposed, with moderation, the monarchical use of treason laws to assert sovereign power. She chose to work with these texts because they "resonate," she argues, with various responses (pamphlets, for example) to two attempts by the crown to regulate words: Elizabeth's inquiries into writings associated with Essex's rebellion in 1601, and the promulgation by King James of an oath of allegiance following the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. The larger claim of this book is that these debates produced a textual community whose defining characteristic is the rational struggle to interpret, through debate about government, often irrational activities such as treason. All this occurred "precisely at the time when the state expanded its treason laws to include words as well as acts" (20).
Lemon is particularly deft at identifying and exploiting paradoxical behavior. The chapter on Hayward takes its cue from Bacon's comment to the Queen-rather oddly delayed in the text-that John Hayward was innocent of seditious intent when he wrote about the deposition of Richard II: his only crime was stealing passages from Tacitus when, like a civil lawyer, he presented the case against the king. By accusing Hayward, the crown turned his readers into rebels, particularly Essex, the unsuspecting dedicatee of the book, who-Lemon argues (following Wallace MacCaffrey)-was driven mad and into his...