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'King Lear, Twitter, and The Da Vinci Code'

John Curtis, MA Barrister (The Shakespeare Institute)

On 27 July 2012, in his judgment following ‘The Twitter Joke Trial’, the Lord Chief Justice of England & Wales quoted from King Lear (Folio). The trial was the first time a British Court had considered the use of Twitter in the context of a bomb hoax. The judgment was hailed as ‘a victory for common sense’, reversing decisions of two lower courts. It now provides authority against similar prosecutions. This paper argues that the use of a four-hundred-year-old Shakespearean text in negotiating modern legal principles is of considerable cultural significance–both through using the familiar to respond to the new – and by invoking Shakespeare’s voice within the powerful social mechanism of the law courts. The reception of this published decision stands in marked contrast to judicial criticism of Mr Justice Peter Smith for incorporating ideas from Dan Brown’s bestseller The Da Vinci Code into a judgmentregarding a multi-million pound copyright suit. This paper considers the advantages and disadvantages of literary allusions within legal proceedings, contrasting these two widely reported judgments. It considers the fall out, highlighting Shakespeare’s acceptability and apparent utility in legal discourse.

Coffee and tea reception to follow.