Shakespeare, the land law, and the individual: Their emergence in Elizabethan England

Through the prisms of William Shakespeare's life and work and Elizabethan land law, this thesis not only (a) suggests that the sixteenth century witnessed the simultaneous rise of the individual and the creation of the English state, but also (b) identifies the chance confluence of several forces that led to personal freedom on the one hand and a national unification on the other. Shakespeare benefited personally from the individuation and the nation-building and wrote professionally about them.;In the fourteenth century, the Black Death decimated the English population. The shortage of agricultural labor gave serfs bargaining power and ultimately freedom. The social change flattened the historically hierarchical society whose foundation was no longer a lineage society but rather a civil society. The fundamental economic consequence was the conversion of land from a measure of prestige to a commodity whose value lay in its productivity. All these matters were exacerbated by the enclosures which led to further social dislocation and monetization of land. The process of individuation was abetted by the diminished role of the church in the religious lives of its adherents and the displacement of the earth from the center of the universe.;Shakespeare's professional life and business dealings were facilitated by these changes in Elizabethan life. He enjoyed an unprecedented freedom of association in his acting companies and opportunities to acquire land. In these arenas, the land law played an important role. Shakespeare made frequent references to that law and the lawyers who practiced it.;In fact, Shakespeare's family was embroiled in litigation that epitomized an aspect of individuation: the ability of one court to overrule the decision of another based on conscience or differing ideas of right and wrong.;Although national unity and individuation seem contradictory, they are reconciled by Adam Smith's notion of the "invisible hand" by which individual pursuit of self-interest yield unintended benefit to the national economy.