ABSTRACT

In order to understand the main form of the law designed to prevent a practice of which Shakespeare and the characters in The Merry Wives of Windsor seem so cognizant, we need to assess the circumstances in which Parliament crafted it. Literature tends to exploit the ethical problems and cultural impact of the law, not the minutiae of statutes and case law. Nonetheless, as every jurist knows, laws are the result of history as much as logic. Whose interests was Parliament protecting in 1571 when it proposed a law protecting “creditors and others” against fraudulent conveyancing? Those of the government? Of sharp operators like Giles Allen? Or normal creditors who might have been ruined by the unethical behavior of Shakespeare’s partners, the Burbages? It might be argued that Falstaff, that inimitable repository of every vice, incorporates also the unfair power of the court to control the lives of ordinary citizens. But power and corruption were not found only at the tables of the great – the usual argument of New Historicists. Fraudulent conveyancing laws came in several forms and served more than one audience. If The Merry Wives of Windsor reveals a society ready to defraud creditors and others, contemporaneous thinkers also faced the problem of how to craft a law able to accommodate competing interests.