Introduction
Perpetuum mobile: Shakespeare's perpetual Renaissance
The ghost of history: Hamlet's politics of paternity
Lethe's wharf: wild justice, the purgatorial supplement
Richard II, Bracton, and the end of political theology
The death of a shifter: Jupiterian history in Julius Caesar
The future of violence: Macbeth and Machiavelli
The whispering of nothing: The winter's tale
But mercy is above: Shylock's pun of a pound
Habeas corpus: the law's desire to have the body.