Shakespeare's Criminals: Criminology, Fiction, and Drama (Contributions in Criminology and Penology)

By exploring Shakespeare's use of law and justice themes in the context of historical and contemporary criminological thinking, this book challenges criminologists to expand their spheres of inquiry to avenues that have yet to be explored or integrated into the discipline. Crime writers, including William Shakespeare, were some of the earliest investigators of the criminal mind. However, since the formalization of criminology as a discipline, citations from literary works have often been omitted, despite their interdisciplinary nature. Taking various Shakespearean plays and characters as case studies, this book opens novel theoretical avenues for conceptualizing crime and justice issues. What types of crimes did Shakespeare's characters commit? What were the motivations put forth for these crimes? What type of social control did Shakespeare advocate? By utilizing a content analysis procedure, the author confirms that many of the crimes that plague society today were also prevalent in Shakespeare's time. She gleans twelve criminological theories as motivations for character deviance. Character analysis also provides valuable insight into Shakespeare's notions of formal and informal social control. Shakespeare—Criminology Contents 7 Preface 9 Acknowledgments 11 1 A Case for the Use of Literary Works in Criminology 15 2 The Historical Setting: Shakespeare's England 23 3 Violence against the Person 41 4 Property Crimes 59 5 Noncriminal Deviance andNonviolent Sexual Deviance 63 6 Classicalism: Rational Choice: Macbeth 75 7 Lombrosianism, Theories of Heredity, and Psychopathy andthe Antisocial Personality 79 8 Ecological Theory: Pompey, Froth 87 9 Social Learning Theories: Othello, Richard III 91 10 Social Control andBondTheories: Lady Macbeth, Othello, Richard III 97 11 Normalcy of Crime andStrain/Anomie Theories 103 12 Social Reaction/ Labeling Theory: Shylock 109 13 Conflict Theory: Shylock 115 14 Integrated Theories 119 15 The Etiology of Punishment 129 16 The Duke's Judgment 147 17 Conclusion and Recommendation 157 Appendix: Who Was William Shakespeare? 161 Bibliography 171 Index 181 ISBN,0-313-30870-5 Challenges criminologists to expand their spheres of inquiry through Shakespeare's use of law and justice themes.