SOURCE: "Ricardian Law Reports and Richard II," in Shakespeare Studies: An Annual Gathering of Research, Criticism, and Reviews, Vol. XX, 1988, pp. 53-65.

In the following essay, Bolton considers the place of property law in Richard IL

The events in Richard II took place in 1398 and 1399. Just about two centuries later, Shakespeare wrote his play. Two hundred years after that, Shakespeare's editor Edmund Malone surmised that Shakespeare had undergone legal training, for even Malone—a practicing lawyer—needed to "brush up his black-letter law," as he put it, to understand some of Shakespeare's allusions.¹ Now, another two centuries along, we too can best understand some of the allusions in Richard II if we look at the old law books. They enable us to place the trial by combat in its correct context, to grasp some other legalisms scattered in the play, and to trace a central legal motif of...