By: Yasmin Zainulbhai
A comment Sam Waterston made during his conversation with Professor Rosenbaum before Thanksgiving has particularly stuck with me. In discussing his performance as Polonius in Hamlet this summer, Mr. Waterston noted that performing in a Shakespearean play is not necessarily so different from performing in the television show “Law and Order.” He explained that a near universal theme of all of literature is the search for truth, and that this search is evident in narratives as varied as those of a Manhattan DA on television and Polonius in a Shakespearean play.
One of our goals in Professor Rosenbaum’s Law and Literature class is to explore the popular culture’s fascination with the law. Mr. Waterston’s suggestion is that the subject of both legal and non-legal dramas is the search for truth, and that the presence of the law only creates a difference in form. I found this suggestion particularly compelling, as it portrays the law as only one possible vehicle for the search for truth.
