Vinculum Fidei: The Tempest and the Law of Allegiance is a new article by
Elliott Visconsi, Yale Department of English & Yale Law School. It appeared in
Law and Literature, Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 1-20, March 2008. Here's the abstract:
In English constitutional law, Calvin's Case (1608) laid down a new, deeply affective basis of individual allegiance; the bond between sovereign and subject was now to be understood in personal, embodied terms as a tie of obligation and love between natural men. This essay argues that Shakespeare's The Tempest is a work of hypothetical constitutional commentary designed to illustrate the fragility and awkwardness of the new norm at home and abroad; the play moreover rebukes the theoretical ambitions of James I. The late Shakespeare, in this account, is not a political quietist but a skeptical constitutional theorist offering a monitory vision of the affective costs of the new model of allegiance and obligation.
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