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Seeks an explanation for Hamlet's "tardiness" in killing Claudius. Looks to the contradictory necessities of answering murder with murder and purging "the infected state of Denmark" through an evil act as reasons for Hamlet's hesitancy.

In analyzing Shakespeare's use of legal matter in Sonnets, discusses how "the speaker acknowledges himself as the victim of a crime committed by the young man, but pledges to testify against himself on the young man's behalf," arguing that "this strange justice . . . belongs to the philosophical tradition of hospitality," and that this connection "equips us with a set of concepts ideally suited to making sense of the way Shakespeare uses law to reflect upon the nature of selfhood." English summary, 295.

In finding proof of early modern censorship in Sir Thomas More, considers Shakespeare's ability to avoid censorship in his depiction of Jack Cade's rebellion in 2 Henry VI, which manages to portray the rebel as a hero through tension between "what the script of the play says and what the performance of the dialogue in the scene does on stage." English and French summaries.

Argues that Nathaniel Richards makes allusions to Richard II in his play The Tragedy of Messalina which "highligh[t] the moral corruption of both rulers and remin[d] [Richards's] audience that 'divine justice' will be done." Notes that both plays contain the phrase "glistring Phaeton" and that The Tragedy of Messalina strongly resembles Richard II in the lines "Downe, downe we come/Like glistering Phoebus mounted in his Car."

Discusses the significance of the performance of Tempest at the Palatine Wedding celebrations in 1631, showing how it "owes much to the festival culture of the Medici courts in late Renaissance Florence" and demonstrates "the ways in which The Tempest itself offers a fascinating intersection between stagecraft and statecraft at the Stuart court."

"Rejects the model of reading women against men and patriarchal power and explores instead the diverse political potential of motherhood in three different senses, . . . read[ing] Volumnia, Tamora, and Elizabeth I together as related by distinct modes of martial motherhood that constitute a revealing trajectory of intertextuality in the rhetoric they employ." Argues that in Coriolanus Volumnia exhibits martial maternity through viewing her womb "as the site of warrior-production"; that Tamora in Titus Andronicus does so by using her sons as means to political power; and that Elizabeth fashions herself as an "abstracted (i.e., childless) model of martial maternity in the political arena."

Draws widely on Shakespeare to discuss the early modern understanding of excessive sadness as a potentially dangerous medical condition.

"Attempts to give a reading of a play by Elaine Feinstein and the Women's Theatre Group, Lear's Daughters [,] through/with Stanley Cavell's essay 'The avoidance of love.'" Discusses how avoidance and causality transform King Lear in Lear's Daughters. Revision of "The 'Unfinished Business': The Avoidance of King Lear by the Prequel Lear's Daughters," TRANS: Revue de littérature générale et comparée 10 (2010): http://trans.revues.org/399.

Discusses how King John "focuses on a counsellor [Falconbridge] . . . whose devotion to king and country is England's only open for redemption from civil conflict and royal incompetence." Argues that the Bastard "transitions from personal service to bureaucratic servant leadership during the course of the play," a development which evokes the culture of service characteristic of the Elizabethan period.

Argues that "during the course of Measure for Measure the audience comes to understand that Duke Vincentio has successfully undergone [the process of self-examination and personal transformation], and thereby moves from being one who merely possesses authority to one who demonstrates true leadership." Explores how problems of authority in the play parallel challenges faced by James I in the beginning of his reign.