“I'd make thee eat the mischief thou hast vented”: Discourse of Law in Ben Jonson's Catiline His Conspiracy

This essay explores the discourse of law that constitutes the controversial apprehensionof Cicero's issuing of the ultimate decreeof the Senate (senatus consultum ultimum) in Catiline. The play juxtaposes the struggle of Cicero, whose moral characterand legitimacyare at stake in regards to the extra-legal uses of espionage, with the supposedly mischievous Catilinarians who appear to observe legal procedures more carefully throughout their plot. To mitigate this ambivalence, the play defends Cicero's actions by depicting the way in which Ciceroestablishes the rhetoric of public counsel to convince the citizens of his legitimacyin his unprecedented dealing with Catiline. To understand the contemporaneousness of Catiline, I will explore the way the play integrates the early modern discourses of counsel and the legal maximof ‘better to suffer an inconvenience than mischief,’ suggesting Jonson's subtle sensibility towards King James's legal reformation which aimed to establish and deploy monarchical aut...