SOURCE: Quinn, John R. “Corpus Juris Tertium: Redemptive Jurisprudence in Angels in America.” Theatre Journal 48, no. 1 (March 1996): 79-90.

In the following essay, Quinn argues that the concept of law is central to both the national and spiritual themes running through Angels in America. Quinn asserts that, in Kushner's play, the law emerges as a kind of secular religion.

“In the beginning was the Word; … [then] The Word became flesh.”

—John 1:1,14

Law, at least the contemporary American concept of it, is a nerve running through nearly every organ and extremity of the body of Tony Kushner's Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. The abundance of Angels passages that address or refer to the law demonstrates the subject's ubiquity in the plays. Among other things, two of the plays' central characters, Roy Cohn and Joe Pitt, are not only closeted homosexuals but also attorneys (Cohn is a...