Women Waging Law in Elizabethan England [Paperback]

An examination of different aspects of women's activities in litigation in sixteenth-century England.This book examines gender relations in Shakespeare's England by looking at women's involvement in lawsuits in the largest courts in the land. It describes women's rights in theory and in practice, considers depictions of women in court scenes in plays, and analyses the language and tactics women and their lawyers employed in pleadings.This book examines gender relations in Shakespeare's England by looking at women's involvement in lawsuits in the largest courts in the land. It describes women's rights in theory and in practice, considers depictions of women in court scenes in plays, and analyses the language and tactics women and their lawyers employed in pleadings.This book examines gender relations in Shakespeare's England by looking at women's involvement in lawsuits in the largest courts in the land. It describes women's rights in theory and in practice, considers depictions of women in court scenes in plays, and analyzes the language and tactics women and their lawyers employed in pleadings. The book also reveals how many women went to law, how active they were, the discrimination they suffered, and the importance of the life cycle of marriage in determining their legal fortunes.1. Introduction; 2. Women, legal rights and law courts; 3. Female litigants and the culture of litigation; 4. The court of requests; 5. Unmarried women and widows; 6. Married women; 7. Freebench, custom and equity; 8. Pleading strategies in requests; 9. Women waging law. Stretton's work on women's litigation in the Court of Requests is a useful contribution to the current investigation of women as agents of legal action, rather than simply as objects of legal limitations. Stretton admirably highlights the gaps between theory and practice in both the law and gender relations, and the variability in the 16th-century legal system... Choice ...a quick and accessible read for policymakerlC´