The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Law and Literature. Candace Barrington and Sebastian Sobecki, eds. Cambridge Companions to Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. xiv + 220 pp. $24.99

Most of the relevant issues are covered here: royal authority versus the common law, the transition from law French to English, the legacy of the Magna Carta, marriage contracts, the canon and civil law courts, the inheritance from Rome, and the law of treason. According to Neil Cartlidge, writing on treason, The Song of Lewes shows that the king's liberty derives paradoxically from him being bound by the law. In this respect, Emma Lipton, showing how marriage contracts and the legal context of witnessing relate to the N-Town plays and to Margery Kempe, provides important medieval background and context for relevant issues at work within early modern drama.