Rethinking the 'Spectacle of the Scaffold' : Juridical Epistemologies and English Revenge Tragedy

Abstract

Michel Foucault's analysis of penal torture as part of a regime of truth production continues to be routinely applied to the interpretation of English Renaissance drama. This paper argues that such an application misleadingly overlooks the lay participation that was characteristic of English criminal justice. It goes on to explore the implications of the epistemological differences between continental inquisitorial models of trial and the jury trial as it developed in sixteenth-century England, arguing that rhetorical and political differences between these two models are dramatized in the unfolding action of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus.