ABSTRACT
For legal-historically inclined Shakespeare scholars the year 2000 invited retrospect into a century of great achievement. In the early part of the twentieth century Maitland and those who followed made momentous headway in the study of medieval English law. Since the early 1970s, when John Baker described Shakespeare’s age as the ‘dark age of English legal history’ (Baker, 1986), a great deal has been achieved (much by Baker himself) to illuminate that darkness. But while celebrating this, it is salutary to note legal-historical mysteries that remain.
