Shakespeare Legally Speaking

Drawing upon his five decades of experience in the legal profession and an abiding love of Shakespeare, United States District Judge Thomas W. Thrash has written this lively and informative book about the law in Shakespeare’s plays.

Shakespeare was not a lawyer, but, as Shakespeare: Legally Speaking demonstrates, he knew much about the law, and this is evidenced in his plays. Although justly praised for the universality of his work, Shakespeare was grounded in the particular English legal system of the late Tudor and early Stuart period. Judge Thrash’s commentaries upon the law of that time will help any Shakespeare reader or theatergoer have a better understanding of the peculiarities and odd practices of the day.

The subject matter of the book is broader than the law that is taught in law schools and practiced in courts-it encompasses law in the broader sense of how we order and govern our society. Thus, Shakespeare: Legally Speaking addresses larger issues, such as political legitimacy under the law, as they are dramatized in the plays.

Author Biography

Thomas W. Thrash is a federal trial judge in Atlanta, Georgia. He was born in 1951 in Birmingham, Alabama. As an adolescent and teenager in the Birmingham public schools, he lived through the turmoil that the resistance to equal rights for Blacks brought to the city. His freshman class at Woodlawn High School marked the first year of integration in the school system. After graduating first in his high school class, Judge Thrash went on to attend the University of Virginia on a DuPont Scholarship. He was President of the Virginia Debaters, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in American Government with High Distinction. He received his Juris Doctor Cum Laude from Harvard Law School in 1976. After law school, he made his home in Atlanta, Georgia. He was a Fulton County Assistant District Attorney for three years, and was then in private practice as a civil and criminal trial attorney for seventeen years. He was an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgia State University College of Law for nine years. In 1997, President Clinton appointed him as United States District Judge for the Northern District of Georgia. As a federal trial judge he has handled many high profile civil and criminal cases, including more than a dozen cases referred to him by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation. He served as Chief Judge of the Northern District of Georgia from 2014 to 2021. Judge Thrash is a former Trustee of the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia, and a former Director of the Atlanta Shakespeare Company. He is married to Margaret Lines Thrash, and has two adult children.