Not only are women the predominant victims of arraignment in the Shakespeare, but adultery and jealousy hover persistently around this word, which occurs in Hamlet, Othello, Measure for Measure, King Lear, and The Winter's Tale. The last play provides the most typical usage as Leontes proclaims:
Prepare you, lords,
202 Summon a session, that we may arraign
203 Our most disloyal lady; for as she hath
204 Been publicly accus'd, so shall she have
205 A just and open trial. (Win.2.3.201-205
The word is repeated in the formal indictment (Win.3.2.14).
Albany accuses Goneril with much better cause, but she brushes off the charge:
Alb.
155 Shut your mouth, dame,
156 Or with this paper shall I [stopple] it. Hold, sir. --
157 Thou worse than any name, read thine own evil.
158 No tearing, lady, I perceive you know it.
Gon.
159 Say if I do, the laws are mine, not thine;
160 Who can arraign me for't? (KiL5.3.155-160)
'Arraign' occurs twice in Lear's mad trial of his daughters (KiL 3.6.20, KiL 3.6.46), and in the second occurrence Goneril is singled out.
A peculiar reversal of arraignment by the jealous male occurs in Othello when Desdemona in a characteristic move blames herself rather than her husband:
Beshrew me much, Emilia,
151 I was (unhandsome warrior as I am)
152 Arraigning his unkindness with my soul;
153 But now I find I had suborn'd the witness,
154 And he's indicted falsely. (Oth.3.4.150-154)
In Measure for Measure, the Duke disguised as a friar, teaches the penitent Julia to "arraign [her] conscience" for her sexual transgressions (MeM 2.3.21).
At first sight, the use of 'arraign' in Hamlet does not appear to fit this pattern. Claudius talks to Gertrude about sorrows coming "not single spies / But in battalions" and expresses is fear that "buzzers" will "infect" Laertes' ear, a process that "will nothing stick our person to arraign" (Ham.4.5.78-93). On the other hand, Claudius is so powerfully associated with adultery in the imagination of the play and its protagonist that this passage too supports the restriction of 'arraign' to contexts of quite specific sexual offences.
18 September 1999