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Shakespeare's Acts of Will: Law, Testament and Properties of Performance

By (author) Professor Gary Watt

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normal price: R 2 091.95

Price: R 1 882.95

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| book description |

Shakespeare was born into a new age of will, in which individual intent had the potential to overcome dynastic expectation. The 1540 Statute of Wills had liberated testamentary disposition of land and thus marked a turning point from hierarchical feudal tradition to horizontal free trade. Focusing on Shakespeareâ€™s late Elizabethan plays, Gary Watt demonstrates Shakespeareâ€™s appreciation of testamentary tensions and his ability to exploit the inherent drama of performing will. Drawing on years of experience delivering rhetoric workshops for the Royal Shakespeare Company and as a prize-winning teacher of law, Gary Watt shows that Shakespeare is playful with legal technicality rather than obedient to it. The author demonstrates how Shakespeare transformed lawyersâ€™ manual book rhetoric into powerful drama through a stirring combination of word, metre, movement and physical stage material, producing a mode of performance that was truly testamentary in its power to engage the witnessing public. Published on the 400th anniversary of Shakespeareâ€™s last will and testament, this is a major contribution to the growing interdisciplinary field of law and humanities.