Petty Treason

George Washington University

The Subordinate('s) Plot: Petty Treason and the Forms of Domestic Rebellion Author(s): Frances E. Dolan Source: Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Autumn, 1992), pp. 317-340 Published by: Folger Shakespeare Library in association with George Washington University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2870531 . Accessed: 02/04/2013 06:16
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The Subordinate('s) Plot: PettyTreason and the Forms of Domestic Rebellion
FRANCES E. DOLAN
N EARLY
MODERN ENGLAND THE COMMONPLACE ANALOGY

household and the commonwealth,and the fluid boundaries between domesticand politicallifethatthisanalogyrevealed, found theirmostvivid in of manifestation the legal definition pettytreason.Statutesof the realm, in 1352 with25 Edward III and continuingthroughthe followbeginning ing centuriesuntil this statutewas repealed in 1858, constructeda wife's murder of her husband or a servant'smurder of his master as a kind of treason,and thus as analogous to any threatto or assault on the sovereign While a man who killedhis wifeor servantwas and his or her government. accused of murder, "if any servant kill his Master, any woman kill her husband, or any...