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SMKEST'EA'KS
LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS.
BY LORD CAMPBELL.
J
SHAKESPEARE'S
LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS CONSIDEEED.
SHAKESPEARE'S
LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS
CONSIDERED.
BY JOHN LORD CAMPBELL, LL.D., F.R.S.E.
A LETTER TO J. PAYNE COLLIER, ESQ., F.S.A.
Thou art clerkly, thou art clerkly!"
Merry Wives of Windsor.
LONDON:
JOHN MUKKAY, ALBEMAKLE STREET.
1859.
SoSLS
LONDON : PRINTED BY \T. CLOWES AND SONS. STAMFOHD STREET,
AND CHARING CROSS.
PREFACE.
WHEN my old and valued friend, Mr. Payne Collier,
received the following Letter, which I wrote with a
view to assist him in his Shakespearian lucubrations, he
forthwith, in terms which I should like to copy if they
were not so complimentary, strongly recommended me
to print and publish it in my own name, intimating
that I might thus have " the glory of placing a stone on
the lofty CAIRN of our immortal bard." If he had said a
"pebble" the word would have been more appropriate.
But the hope of making any addition, even if infinitesi-
mally small, to this great national monument, is enough
to induce me to follow my friend's advice, although I am
aware that by the attempt I shall be exposed to some
peril. In pointing out Shakespeare's frequent use of
law-phrases, and the strict propriety with which he
always applies them, the CHIEF JUSTICE may be likened
to the COBBLER, who, when shown the masterpiece of a
great painter, representing the Pope surrounded by an
interesting historical group, could not be prevailed upon
PREFACE.
to notice any beauty in the painting, except the skilful
structure of a slipper worn by his Holiness.
Nevertheless I may meet with kinder critics, and some
may think it right to countenance any effort to bring
about a "fusion of Law and Literature," which, like
" Law and Equity," have too long been kept apart in
England.
Stratheden House, Jan. 1, 1859.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 9
THE MEKBY WIVES OF WINDSOR 34
MEASURE FOR MEASURE 36
THE COMEDY OF ERRORS 38
As You LIKE IT 40
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING 45
LOVE'S LABOUR 's LOST 47
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 48
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 49
THE TAMING OF THE SHREW 53
ALL ' s WELL THAT ENDS WELL .. 56
THE WINTER'S TALE 59
KING JOHN 61
KING HENRY THE FOURTH, PART 1 64
KING HENRY THE FOURTH, PART II 67
KING HENRY THE SIXTH, PART II 74
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA 77
KING LEAR 79
HAMLET 83
MACBETH 89
OTHELLO 90
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA 94
CORIOLANUS 96
ROMEO AND JULIET 97
POEMS 99
SHAKESPEARE'S WILL 103
RETROSPECT .. . 107
SHAKESPEARE'S
LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS CONSIDERED.
To J. Payne Collier, Esq.,
Riverside, Maidenhead* Berks.
HABTRIGGE, JEDBURGH, N. B.,
September I5th, 1858.
MY DEAR MB. PAYNE COLLIER,
Knowing that I take great delight in Shake
speare's plays, and that I have paid some attention to
the common law of this realm, and recollecting that
both in my * Lives of the Chancellors,' and in my ' Lives
of the Chief Justices,' I have glanced at the subject of
Shakespeare's legal acquirements, you demand rather
peremptorily my opinion upon the question keenly
agitated of late years, whether Shakespeare was a clerk
in an attorney's office at Stratford before he joined the
players in London ?
From your indefatigable researches and your critical
acumen, which have thrown so much new light upon
the career of our unrivalled dramatist, I say, with entire
B
10 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS.
sincerity, that there is no one so well qualified as your
self to speak authoritatively in this controversy, and I
observe that in both the editions of your ' Life of Shake
speare' you are strongly inclined to the belief that the
author of ' Hamlet' was employed some years in engross
ing deeds, serving writs, and making out bills of costs.
However, as you seem to consider it still an open
question, and as I have a little leisure during this long
vacation, I cannot refuse to communicate to you my
sentiments upon the subject, and I shall be happy if,
from my professional knowledge and experience, I can
afford you any information or throw out any hints which
may be useful to you hereafter. I myself, at any rate,
must derive some benefit from the task, as it will for
a while drive from my mind the recollection of the
wranglings of Westminster Hall. In literary pursuits
should I have wished ever to be engaged,
" Me si fata meis paterentur ducere vitam
Auspiciis, et sponte mea componere cnras."
Having read nearly all that has been written on
Shakespeare's ante-Londinensian life, and carefully ex
amined his writings with a view to obtain internal
evidence as to his education and breeding, I am obliged
to say that to the question you propound no positive
answer can very safely be given.
ISTROD.] A CASE FOR A JURY. 11
Were an issue tried before me as Chief Justice at the
Warwick assizes, " whether William Shakespeare, late of
Stratford-upon-Avon, gentleman, ever was clerk in an
attorney's office in Stratford-upon-Avon aforesaid," I
should hold that there is evidence to go to the jury
in support of the affirmative, but I should add that the
evidence is very far from being conclusive, and I should
tell the twelve gentlemen in the box that it is a case
entirely for their decision, without venturing even to
hint to them, for their guidance, any opinion of my own.
Should they unanimously agree in a verdict either in the
affirmative or negative, I do not think that the court,
sitting in banco, could properly set it aside and grant a
new trial. But the probability is (particularly if the trial
were by a special jury of Fellows of the Society of Anti
quaries) that, after they had been some hours in delibera
tion, I should receive a message from them " there is
no chance of our agreeing, and therefore we wish to be dis
charged ;" that having sent for them into court, and read
them a lecture on the duty imposed upon them by law
of being unanimous, I should be obliged to order them
to be locked up for the night ; that having sat up all
night without eating or drinking, and "without fire,
candle-light excepted,"* they would come into court
* These are the words of the oath administered to the bailiff into
whose custody the jurymen are delivered. I had lately to deter-
B 2
12 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [INTROD.
next morning pale and ghastly, still saying " we cannot
agree," and that, according to the rigour of the law, I
ought to order them to be again locked up as before till
the close of the assizes, and then sentence them to be put
into a cart, to accompany me in my progress towards the
next assize town, and to be shot into a ditch on the con
fines of the county of Warwick.
Yet in the hope of giving the gentlemen of the jury
a chance of escaping these horrors, to which, according
to the existing state of the law, they would be exposed,
and desiring, without departing from my impartiality,
to assist them in coming to a just conclusion, I should not
hesitate to state, with some earnestness, that there has
been a great deal of misrepresentation and delusion as to
Shakespeare's opportunities when a youth of acquiring
knowledge, and as to the knowledge he had acquired.
From a love of the incredible, and a wish to make what
he afterwards accomplished actually miraculous, a band
of critics have conspired to lower the -condition of his
father, and to represent the son, when approaching man's
estate, as still almost wholly illiterate. We have been
mine whether gas-lamps could be considered " candle-light." In
favorem vitce, I ventured to rule in the affirmative ; and, the night
being very cold, to order that the lamps should be liberally supplied
with gas, so that, directly administering light according to law, they
might, contrary to law, incidentally administer heat.
INTROD.] GENTILITY OF HIS FATHEE. 13
told that his father was a butcher in a small provincial
town ; that " pleasant Willy " was bred to his father's
business ; that the only early indication of genius which
he betrayed was his habit, while killing a calf, eloquently
to harangue the bystanders ; that he continued in this
occupation till he was obliged to fly the country for
theft ; that arriving in London a destitute stranger, he
at first supported himself by receiving pence for holding
gentlemen's horses at the theatre; that he then con
trived to scrape an acquaintance with some of the
actors, and being first employed as prompter, although
he had hardly learned to read, he was allowed to play
some very inferior parts himself ; and that without any
further training he produced ' Eichard III.,' ' Othello/
f Macbeth,' and ' King Lear.' But, whether Shakespeare
ever had any juridical education or not, I think it is
established beyond all doubt that his father was of a
respectable family, had some real property by descent,
married a coheiress of an ancient house, received a grant
of armorial bearings from the Heralds with a recognition
of his lineage, was for many years an Alderman of Strat
ford, and, after being intrusted by the Corporation to
manage their finances as Chamberlain, served the office
of Chief Magistrate of the town. There are entries in the
Corporation books supposed to indicate that at one period
of his life he was involved in pecuniary difficulties ; but
this did not detract from his gentility, as is proved by the
14 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [INTUOD.
subsequent confirmation of his armorial bearings, with a
slight alteration in his quarterings, and he seems still
to have lived respectably in Stratford or the neigh
bourhood.* That he was, as has been recently asserted,
a glover, or that he ever sold wool or butcher's meat,
is not proved by anything like satisfactory evidence ;
and, at any rate, according to the usages of society in
those times, occasional dealings whereby the owner of
land disposed of part of the produce of it by retail
were reckoned quite consistent with the position of a
squire. At this day, and in our own country, gentle
men not unfiequently sell their own hay, corn, and
cattle, and on the Continent the high nobility are well
* I am aware of your suggestion in your ' Life of Shakespeare,'
that the first grant of arms to the father was at a subsequent
time, when the son, although he had acquired both popularity
and property, was, on account of his profession (then supposed
to be unfit for a gentleman), not qualified to bear arms. But the
"Confirmation" in 1596 recites that a patent had been before
granted by Clarencieux Cooke to John Shakespeare, when chief
magistrate of Stratford, and, as a ground for the Confirmation, that
this original patent had been sent to the Heralds' Office when Sir
William Dethick was Garter King-at-Arms. Against this positive
evidence we lawyers should consider the negative evidence, that,
upon search, an entry of the first grant is not found, to be of no avail :
and there could be no object in forging the first grant, as an
original grant in 1596 would have been equally beneficial both to
father and son.
INTROD.] GENTILITY OF HIS FATHER. 15
pleased to sell by the bottle the produce of their vine
yards.
It is said that the worthy Alderman could not write
his own name. But the fac simile of the document
formerly relied upon to establish this [an order, dated
29th Sept., 7 Eliz., for John Wheeler to take upon him
self the office of Bailiff, signed by nineteen aldermen
and burgesses] appears to me to prove the contrary, for
the name of Jofjtt o>!)aefe0per is subscribed in a
strong, clear hand, and the mark, supposed to be his,
evidently belongs to the name of <Cl)Oma0 SDpjCUtl in
the line below.* You tell us, in your latest edition, of the
production of two new documents before the Shake
speare Society, dated respectively 3rd and 9th Dec.,
11 Eliz., which, it is said, if John Shakespeare could
have written, would have been signed by him, whereas
they only bear his mark. But in my own experience
I have known many instances of documents bearing a
mark as the signature of persons who could write well,
and this was probably much more common in illiterate
ages, when documents were generally authenticated
by a seal. Even if it were demonstrated that John
Shakespeare had not been "so well brought up that
* See that most elaborate and entertaining book, Knight's ' Life
of Shakspere,' 1st ed., p. 16.
16 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [INTROD;
he could write his name," and that "he had a mark
to himself like an honest, plain-dealing man," con
sidering that he was born not very long after the wars
of the Roses, this deficiency would not weigh much in
disproving his wealth or his gentility. Even supposing
him to have been a genuine marksman, he was only
on a par in this respect with many persons of higher
rank, and with several of the most influential of his
fellow townsmen. Of the nineteen Aldermen and bur
gesses who signed the order referred to, only seven
subscribe their names with a pen, and the High Bailiff
and Senior Alderman are among the marksmen.
Whatever may have been the clownish condition of
John Shakespeare, that the " Divine Williams " (as the
French call our great dramatist) received an excellent
school education can hardly admit of question or doubt.
We certainly know that he wrote a beautiful and busi
ness-like hand, which he probably acquired early.
There was a free grammar school at Stratford, founded
in the reign of Edward IV., and reformed by a charter of
Edward VI. This school was supplied by a succession of
competent masters to teach Greek and Latin ; and here
the sons of all the members of the corporation were
entitled to gratuitous instruction, and mixed with the
sons of the neighbouring gentry. At such grammar
schools, generally speaking, only a smattering of Greek
was to be acquired, but the boys were thoroughly
INTROD.] CULTIVATION OF HIS MIND. 17
grounded in Latin grammar, and were rendered familiar
with the most popular Koman classics. Shakespeare
must have been at this school at least five years. His
father's supposed pecuniary difficulties, which are said to
have interrupted his education, did not occur till
William had reached the age of 14 or 15, when, accord
ing to the plan of education which was then followed,
the sons of tradesmen were put out as apprentices or
clerks, and the sons of the more wealthy went to the
university. None of his school compositions are pre
served, and we have no authentic account of his progress ;
but we know that at these schools boys of industry and
genius have become well versed in classical learning.
Samuel Johnson said that he acquired little at Oxford
beyond what he had brought away with him from Lich-
field Grammar School, where he had been taught, like
Shakespeare, as the son of a burgess ; and many from
such schools, without further regular tuition, have dis
tinguished themselves in literature.
It is said that " the boy is the father of the man ;"
and knowing the man, we may form a notion of the tastes
and habits of the boy. Grown to be a man, Shakespeare
certainly was most industrious, and showed an insatiable
thirst for knowledge. We may therefore fairly infer,
that from early infancy he instinctively availed himself
of every opportunity of mental culture,
18 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [INTROD.
What time, where lucid Avon stray'd,
To him the mighty mother did unveil
Her aAvful face : the dauntless child
Stretched forth his little arms, and smiled."
The grand difficulty is to discover, or to conjecture
with reasonable probability, how Shakespeare was em
ployed from about 1579, when he most likely left school,
till about 1586, when he is supposed to have gone to
London. That during this interval he was merely an
operative, earning his bread by manual labour, in stitch
ing gloves, sorting wool, or killing calves, no sensible
man can possibly imagine. At twenty-three years of
age, although he had not become regularly learned as if
he had taken the degree of M.A. at Oxford or Cam
bridge, after disputing in the schools de omni scibili et quo-
libet ente, there can be no doubt that, like our Scottish
BURNS, his mind must have been richly cultivated, and
that he had laid up a vast stock of valuable knowledge
and of poetical imagery, gained from books, from social
intercourse, and from the survey of nature. Whoever
believes that when Shakespeare was first admitted to
play a part in the Blackfriars Theatre his mind was
as unfurnished as that of the stolid ' Clown ' in the
1 Winter's Tale,' who called forth a wish from his own
father that " there were no age between ten and three
and twenty," will readily give credit to all the most
INTROD.] OCCUPATIONS AFTER LEAVING SCHOOL. 19
extravagant and appalling marvels of mesmerism,
clairvoyance, table-turning, and spirit-rapping.
Of Shakespeare's actual occupations during these
important years, when his character was formed, there
is not a scintilla of contemporary proof ; and the vague
traditionary evidence which has been resorted to was
picked up many years after his death, when the object
was to startle the world with things strange and
supernatural respecting him. That his time was en
grossed during this interval by labouring as a me
chanic, is a supposition which I at once dismiss as
absurd.
Aubrey asserts that from leaving school till he left
Warwickshire Shakespeare was a schoolmaster. If this
could be believed, it would sufficiently accord with the
phenomena of Shakespeare's subsequent career, except
the familiar, profound, and accurate knowledge he dis
played of juridical principles and practice. Being a
schoolmaster in the country for some years (as Samuel
Johnson certainly was), his mental cultivation would
have steadily advanced, and so he might have been
prepared for the arena in which he was to appear on his
arrival in the metropolis.
Unfortunately, however, the pedagogical theory is
not only quite unsupported by evidence, but it is not
consistent with established facts. From the registration
of the baptism of Shakespeare's children, and other well
20 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [INTROD.
authenticated circumstances, we know that he con
tinued to dwell in Stratford, or the immediate neigh
bourhood, till he became a citizen of London: there
was no other school in Stratford except the endowed
grammar school, where he had been a pupil ; of this he
certainly never was master, for the unbroken succession
of masters from the reign of Edward VI. till the reign of
James I. is on record ; none of the mob who stand out
for Shakespeare being quite illiterate will allow that
he was qualified to be usher ; and there is no trace
of there having been any usher employed in this school.
It may likewise be observed that if Shakespeare
really had been a schoolmaster, he probably would have
had some regard for the " order " to which he belonged.
In all his dramas we have three schoolmasters only, and
he makes them all exceedingly ridiculous. First we have
Holofernes in * Love's Labour 's Lost,' who is brought
on the stage to be laughed at for his pedantry and his
bad verses; then comes the Welshman, Sir Hugh
Evans, in the ' Merry Wives of Windsor/ who, although
in holy orders, has not yet learned to speak the English
language; and last of all, Pinch, in the ' Comedy of
Errors,' who unites the bad qualities of a pedagogue and
a conjuror.
By the process of exhaustion, I now arrive at the only
other occupation in which it is well possible to imagine
that Shakespeare could be engaged during the period
WAS HE AN ATTOKNEY'S CLEEK? 21
we are considering that of an attorney's clerk first
suggested by Chalmers, and since countenanced by
Malone, yourself, and others, whose opinions are entitled
to high respect, but impugned by nearly an equal num
ber of biographers and critics of almost equal authority,
without any one, on either side, having as yet discussed
the question very elaborately.
It must be admitted that there is no established fact
with which this supposition is not consistent. At Strat
ford there was, by royal charter, a court of record, with
jurisdiction over all personal actions to the amount of
30, equal, at the latter end of the reign of Elizabeth,
to more than 100?. in the reign of Victoria. This court,
the records of which are extant, was regulated by the
course of practice and pleading which prevailed in the
superior courts of law at Westminster, and employed the
same barbarous dialect, composed of Latin, English, and
Norman-French. It sat every fortnight, and there were
belonging to it, besides the Town-clerk, six attorneys,
some of whom must have practised in the Queen's Bench
and in Chancery, and have had extensive business in
conveyancing. An attorney, steward of the Earl of
Warwick, lord of the manor of Stratford, twice a year
held a court - leet and view of frankpledge there, to
which a jury was summoned, and at which constables
were appointed and various presentments were made.
If Shakespeare had been a clerk to one of these
22 SHAKESPEAKE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [INTROP.
attorneys, all that followed while he remained at
Stratford, and the knowledge and acquirements which
he displayed when he came to London, would not only
have been within the bounds of possibility, but would
seem almost effect from cause in a natural and pro
bable sequence.
From the moderate pay allowed him by his master
he would have been able decently to maintain his wife
and children; vacant hours would have been left to
him for the indulgence of his literary propensity ; and
this temporary attention to law might have quickened
his fancy, although a systematic, life-long devotion to
it, I fear, may have a very different tendency. Burke
eloquently descants upon the improvement of the mental
faculties by juridical studies ; and Warburton, Chatter-
ton, Pitt the younger, Canning, Disraeli, and Lord
Macaulay are a few out of many instances which might
be cited of men of brilliant intellectual career who had
early become familiar with the elements of jurisprudence.
Here would be the solution of Shakespeare's legalism
which has so perplexed his biographers and commen
tators, and which Aubrey's tradition leaves wholly
unexplained. We should only have to recollect the
maxim that " the vessel long retains the flavour with
which it has been once imbued." Great as is the
knowledge of law which Shakespeare's writings display,
and familiar as he appears to have been with all its
INTROD.] WAS HE AN ATTORNEY'S CLERK ? 23
forms and proceedings, the whole of this would easily
be accounted for if for some years he had occupied a
desk in the office of a country attorney in good busi
ness, attending sessions and assizes, keeping leets and
law days, and perhaps being sent up to the metropolis
in term time to conduct suits before the Lord Chancellor
or the superior courts of common law at Westminster,
according to the ancient practice of country attorneys,
who would not employ a London agent to divide their
fees.*
* If Shakespeare really was articled to a Stratford attorney, in all
probability during the five years of his clerkship he visited London
several times on his master's business, and he may then have been
introduced to the green room at Black friars by one of his country
men connected with that theatre.
Even so late as Queen Anne's reign there seems to have been
a prodigious influx of all ranks from the provinces into the metro
polis in term time. During the preceding century Parliament
sometimes did not meet at all for a considerable number of years ;
and being summoned rarely and capriciously, the " London season "
seems to have been regulated, not by the session of Parliament,
but by the law terms,
" and prints before Term ends." Pope.
While term lasted, Westminster Hall was crowded all the morning,
not only by lawyers, but by idlers and politicians in quest of news.
Term having ended, there seems to have been a general dispersion.
Even the Judges spent their vacations in the country, having when
in town resided in their chambers in the Temple or Inns of Court.
The Chiefs were obliged to remain in town a day or two after term
24 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [INTROD.
On the supposition of Shakespeare having been an
attorney's clerk at Stratford we may likewise see how,
when very young, he contracted his taste for thea
tricals, even if he had never left that locality till the
unlucky affair of Sir Thomas Lucy's deer. It appears
from the records of the Corporation of Stratford, that
nearly every year the town was visited by strolling
companies of players, calling themselves " the Earl of
Derby's servants," " the Earl of Leicester's servants,"
and " Her Majesty's servants." These companies are
most graphically represented to us by the strolling
for Nisi Prius sittings; but the Puisnes were entirely liberated
when proclamation was made at the rising of the court on the last
day of term, in the form still preserved, that "all manner of
persons may take their ease, and give their attendance here again
on the first day of the ensuing term." An old lady very lately
deceased, a daughter of Mr. Justice Blackstone, who was a puisne
judge of the Common Pleas and lived near Abingdon, used to relate
that the day after term ended, the family coach, with four black
long-tailed horses, used regularly to come at an early hour to Ser
jeants' Jnn to conduct them to their country house ; and there the
Judge and his family remained till they travelled to London in
the same style on the essoin-day of the following term. When a
student of law, I had the honour of being presented to the oldest
of the judges, Mr. Justice Grose, famous for his beautiful seat in
the Isle of Wight, where he leisurely spent a considerable part of
the year, more majorum. To his question to me, " Where do you
live ? " I answered, " I have chambers in Lincoln's Inn, my Lord."
" Ah ! " replied he, " but I mean when term is over."
INTROD.] STROLLING PLAYERS AT STRATFORD. 25
players in * Hamlet ' and in the ' Taming of the Shrew/
The custom at Stratford ,was for the players on their
arrival to wait upon the Bailiff and Aldermen to obtain
a licence to perform in the town. The Guildhall was
generally allotted to them, and was fitted up as a theatre
according to the simple and rude notions of the age.
We may easily conceive that Will Shakespeare, son of the
chief magistrate who granted the licence, now a bustling
attorney's clerk, would actually assist in these proceed
ings when his master's office was closed for the day ;
and that he might thus readily become intimate with
the manager and the performers, some of whom were
said to be his fellow townsmen. He might well have
officiated as prompter, the duty said to have been first
assigned to him in the theatre at the Black-friars. The
travelling associations of actors at that period consisted
generally of not more than from five to ten members ;
and when a play to be performed in the Guildhall at
Stratford contained more characters than individuals in
the list of strollers, it would be no great stretch of
imagination to suppose that, instead of mutilating the
piece by suppression, or awkwardly assigning two parts
to one performer, " pleasant Willy's " assistance was
called in; and our great dramatist may thus have
commenced his career as an actor in his native
town.
To prove that he had been bred in an attorney's
c
26 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS.
office, there is one piece of direct evidence. This is an
alleged libel upon him by a contemporary published
to the world in his lifetime which, if it do actually
refer to him, must be considered as the foundation of a
very strong inference of the fact.
Leaving Stratford and joining the players in London
in 1586 or 1587, there can be no doubt that his success
was very rapid; for, as early as 1589, he had actually
got a share in the Blackfriars Theatre, and he was a
partner in managing it with his townsman Thomas
Green and his countryman Kichard Burbadge. I do
not imagine that when he went up to London he
carried a tragedy in his pocket to be offered for the
stage as Samuel Johnson did ' IRENE.' The more pro
bable conjecture is, that he began as an actor on the
London boards, and being employed, from the clever
ness he displayed, to correct, alter, and improve dramas
written by others, he went on to produce dramas of his
own, which were applauded more loudly than any that
had before appeared upon the English stage.
" Envy does merit as its shade pursue ;"
and rivals whom he surpassed not only envied Shake
speare, but grossly libelled him. Of this we have an
example in ' An Epistle to the Gentlemen Students
of the Two Universities, by Thomas Nash/ prefixed
INTROD.] ALLEGED LIBEL ON SHAKESPEARE. 27
to the first edition of Robert Greene's *MENAPHON'
(which was subsequently Called ' Greene's AKCADIA '),
according to the title-page, published in 1589. The
alleged libel on Shakespeare is in the words following,
viz. :
" I will turn back to my first text of studies of delight, and talk
a little in friendship with a few of our trivial translators. It is a
common practice now-a-days, amongst a sort of shifting companions
that run through every art and thrive by none, to leave the trade of
Noverint, whereto they were born, and busy themselves with the
endeavours of art, that could scarcely Latinize their neck- verse if
they should have need ; yet English Seneca, read by candle-light,
yields many good sentences, as Hood is a leggar, and so forth ; and
if you intreat him fair, in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole
Hamlets ; I should say handfuls of tragical speeches. But grief !
Tempus edax rerum what is that will last always ? The sea
exhaled by drops will in continuance be dry; and Seneca, let
blood, line by line, and page by page, at length must needs die to
our stage."
Now, if the innuendo which would have been intro
duced into the declaration, in an action, " Shakespeare
v. Nash" for this libel ( "thereby then and there
meaning the said William Shakespeare " ) be made
out, there can be no doubt as to the remaining innuendo
" thereby then and there meaning that the said William
Shakespeare had been an attorney's clerk, or bred an
attorney."
In Elizabeth's reign deeds were in the Latin tongue ;
c 2
28 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [INTROD.
and all deeds poll, and many other law papers, began
with the words " NOVEKINT universi per presentes "
" Be it known to all men by these presents that, &c."
The very bond which was given in 1582, prior to the
grant of a licence for Shakespeare's marriage with Ann
Hathaway, and which Shakespeare most probably himself
drew, commences "NOVEBINT universi per presentes"
The business of an attorney seems to have been then
known as "the trade of NOVEBINT." Ergo, "these
shifting companions " are charged with having aban
doned the legal profession, to which they were bred;
and, although most imperfectly educated, with trying to
manufacture tragical speeches from an English transla
tion of Seneca.
For completing Nash's testimony (valeat quantum)
to the fact that Shakespeare had been bred to the law,
nothing remains but to consider whether Shakespeare is
here aimed at ? Now, independently of the expressions
" whole Hamlets " and " handfuls of tragical speeches,"
which, had Shakespeare's '.HAMLET' certainly been
written and acted before the publication of Nash's
letter, could leave no doubt as to the author's inten
tion, there is strong reason to believe that the intended
victim was the young man from Warwickshire, who
had suddenly made such a sensation and such a
revolution in the theatrical world. Nash and Kobert
Greene, the author of 'Menaphon' or 'Arcadia,' the
INTROD.] ENMITY OP ROBERT GREENE. 29
work to which Nash's Epistle was appended, were very
intimate. In this very epistle Nash calls Greene " sweet
friend." It is well known that this Kobert Greene (who,
it must always be remembered, was a totally different
person from Thomas Green, the actor and part pro
prietor of the Blackfriars Theatre) was one of the chief
sufferers from Shakespeare being engaged by the Lord
Chamberlain's players to alter stock pieces for the Black-
friars Theatre, to touch up and improve new pieces pro
posed to the managers, and to supply original pieces of
his own. Kobert Greene had been himself employed in
this department, and he felt that his occupation was
gone. Therefore, by publishing Nash's Epistle in 1589,
when Shakespeare, and no one else, had, by the display
of superior genius, been the ruin of Greene, the two
must have combined to denounce Shakespeare as having
abandoned " the trade of Noverint " in order to " busy
himself with the endeavours of art," and to furnish
tragical speeches from the translation of Seneca.
In 1592 Greene followed up the attack of 1589 in a
tract called ' The Groatsworth of Wit/ Here he does
not renew the taunt of abandoning "the trade of No-
VERINT," which with Nash he had before made, but he
pointedly upbraids Shakespeare by the nickname of
Shake-scene, as "an upstart crow beautified with our
feathers," having just before spoken of himself as " the
man to whom actors had been previously beholding."
30 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [INTROD.
He goes on farther to allude to Shakespeare as one who
" supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank
verse as the best of his predecessors," as "an absolute
Johannes Factotum," and " in his own conceit the only
SHAKE-SCENE in a country." In 1592 Eobert Greene
frankly complains that Shake-scene had undeservedly
met with such success as to be able to drive him
(Greene) and others similarly circumstanced from an
employment by which they had mainly subsisted.*
This evidence, therefore, seems amply sufficient to prove
that there was a conspiracy between the two libellers,
JSTash and Robert Greene, and that Shakespeare was the
object of it.
But I do not hesitate to believe that Nash, in 1589,
directly alludes to ' HAMLET ' as a play of Shakespeare,
and wishes to turn it into ridicule. I am aware that an
attempt has been made to show that there had been an
edition of ' Menaphon' before 1589 ; but no copy of any
prior edition of it, with Nash's Epistle appended to it,
has been produced. I am also aware that * Hamlet,' in
the perfect state in which we now behold it, was not
finished till several years after; but I make no doubt
* You no doubt recollect that Kobert Greene actually died
of starvation before his ' Groatsworth of Wit,' in which he so
bitterly assailed Shakespeare as " Shake-scene," was published.
INTROD.] ELABORATION OF HIS PLAYS. 31
that before the publication of Nash's Epistle Shake
speare's first sketch of his play of ' Hamlet/ taken pro
bably from some older play with the same title, had
been produced upon the Blackfriars stage and received
with applause which generated envy.
From the saying of the players, recorded by BEN
JONSON, that Shakespeare never blotted a line, an er
roneous notion has prevailed that he carelessly sketched
off his dramas, and never retouched them or cared about
them after. So far from this (contrary to modern prac
tice), he often materially altered, enlarged, and improved
them subsequently to their having been brought out
upon the stage and having had a successful run. There
is clear proof that he wrote and rewrote ' Hamlet,'
* Borneo and Juliet,' ' The Merry Wives of Windsor,'
and several other of his dramas, with unwearied pains,
making them at last sometimes nearly twice as long as
they were when originally represented.
With respect to these dates it is remarkable that an
English translation of Seneca, from which Shakespeare
was supposed to have plagiarised so freely, had been
published several years before Nash's Epistle ; and in
the scene with the players on their arrival at Elsinore
(if this scene appeared in the first sketch of the tragedy,
as it probably did, from being so essential to the plot),
Shakespeare's acquaintance with this author was pro
claimed by the panegyric of Polonius upon the new
32 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS.
company, for whom " SENECA could not be too heavy nor
Plautus too light."
Therefore, my dear Mr. Payne Collier, in support of
your opinion that Shakespeare had been bred to the
profession of the law in an attorney's office, I think you
will be justified in saying that the fact was asserted
publicly in Shakespeare's lifetime by two contemporaries
of Shakespeare, who were engaged in the same pursuits
with himself, who must have known him well, and who
were probably acquainted with the whole of his career.
I must likewise admit that this assertion is strongly
corroborated by internal evidence to be found in
Shakespeare's writings. I have once more perused the
whole of his dramas, that I might more satisfactorily
answer your question, and render you some assistance
in finally coming to a right conclusion.
In * The Two Gentlemen of Verona,' < Twelfth Night,'
'Julius Caesar,' 'Cymbeline,' 'Timon of Athens,' 'The
Tempest,' 'King Kichard II.,' 'King Henry V.,' 'King
Henry VI. Part I.,' ' King Henry VI. Part III.,' King
Kichard III.,' 'King Henry VIII.; 'Pericles of Tyre,'
and ' Titus Andronicus ' fourteen of the thirty-seven
dramas generally attributed to Shakespeare I find
nothing that fairly bears upon this controversy. Of
course I had only to look for expressions and allusions
that must be supposed to come from one who has been
a professional lawyer. Amidst the seducing beauties of
INTROD.] ARRANGEMENT OF EXTRACTS. 33
sentiment and language through which I had to pick
my way, I may have overlooked various specimens of
the article of which I was in quest, which would have
been accidentally valuable, although intrinsically worth
less.
However, from each of the remaining twenty-three
dramas I have made extracts which I think are well
worth your attention. These extracts I will now lay
before you, with a few explanatory remarks, which
perhaps you will think demonstrably prove that your
correspondent is a lawyer, AND NOTHING BUT A LAWYER.
I thought of grouping the extracts as they may be
supposed to apply to particular heads of law or particular
legal phrases, but I found this impracticable ; and I am
driven to examine seriatim the dramas from which the
extracts are made. I take them in the order in which
they are arranged, as "Comedies," "Histories," and
" Tragedies," in the folio of 1623, the earliest authority
for the whole collection.
34 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [COMEDIES.
liters Wiifaz of
In Act n. Sc. 2, where Ford, under the name of
Master Brook, tries to induce Falstaff to assist him in
his intrigue with Mrs. Ford, and states that from all the
trouble and money he had bestowed upon her he had
had no beneficial return, we have the following question
and answer :
Fal. Of what quality was your love, then ?
Ford. Like a fair house built upon another man's ground ; so
that I have lost my edifice by mistaking the place where I erected it.
Now this shows in Shakespeare a knowledge of the
law of real property, not generally possessed. The un
learned would suppose that if, by mistake, a man builds
a fine house on the land of another, when he discovers
his error he will be permitted to remove all the materials
of the structure, and particularly the marble pillars and
carved chimney-pieces with which he has adorned it ;
but Shakespeare knew better. He was aware that, being
fixed to the freehold, the absolute property in them
belonged to the owner of the soil, and he recollected the
maxim, Cujus est solum, ejus est usqite ad coelum.
COMEDIES.] THE MEKBY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 35
Afterwards, in writing the second scene of Act iv.,
Shakespeare's head was so full of the recondite terms
of the law, that he makes a lady thus pour them out,
in a confidential tete-a-tete conversation with another
lady, while discoursing of the revenge they two should
take upon an old gentleman for having made an unsuc
cessful attempt upon their virtue :
Mrs. Page. I'll have the cudgel hallowed, and hung o'er the altar :
it hath done meritorious service.
Mrs. Ford. What think you? May we, with the warrant of
womanhood, and the witness of a good conscience, pursue him with
any farther revenge ?
Mrs. Page. The spirit of wantonness is, sure, scared out of him :
if the devil have him not in fee simple, with fine and recovery, he
will never, I think, in the way of waste, attempt us again.
This Merry Wife of Windsor, is supposed to know
that the highest estate which the devil could hold in
any of his victims was a fee simple, strengthened by fine
and recovery. Shakespeare himself may probably have
become aware of the law upon the subject, when it was
explained to him in answer to questions he put to the
attorney, his master, while engrossing the deeds to be
executed upon the purchase of a Warwickshire estate
with a doubtful title.
36 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [COMEDIES.
ar
In Act I. Sc. 2, the old lady who had kept a lodging-
home of a disreputable character in the suburbs of
Vienna being thrown into despair by the proclamation
that all such houses in the suburbs must be plucked
down, the Clown thus comforts her :
Clo. Come ; fear not you : good counsellors lack no clients.
This comparison is not very flattering to the bar, but
it seems to show a familiarity with both the professions
alluded to.
In Act ii. Sc. 1, the ignorance of special pleading
and of the nature of actions at law betrayed by Elbow,
the constable, when slandered, is ridiculed by the Lord
Escalus in a manner which proves that the composer
of the dialogue was himself fully initiated in these
mysteries :
Elbow. Oh, thou caitiff! Oh, thou varlet! Oh, thou wicked
Hannibal ! I respected with her, before I was married to her ? If
ever I was respected with her, or she with me, let not your worship
think me the poor duke's officer. Prove this, thou wicked Han
nibal, or I'll have mine action of battery on thee.
Escal. If he took you a box o' th' ear, you might have your
action of slander too.
COMEDIES.] MEASUEE FOR MEASURE. 37
The manner in which, in Act in. Sc. 2, Escalus
designates and talks of Angelo, with whom he was
joined in commission as Judge, is so like the manner
in which one English Judge designates and talks of
another, that it countenances the supposition that
Shakespeare may often, as an attorney's clerk, have
been in the presence of English Judges :
Escal. Provost, my brother Angelo will not be altered ; Claudio
must die to-morrow. * * * If my brother wrought by my pity,
it should not be so with him. * * * I have laboured for the
poor gentleman to the extremest shore of my modesty; but my
brother justice have I found so severe, that he hath forced me to
tell him, he is indeed JUSTICE.*
Even where Shakespeare is most solemn and sublime,
his sentiments and language seem sometimes to take a
tinge from his early pursuits, as may be observed from
a beautiful passage in this play, which, lest I should
be thought guilty of irreverence, I do not venture to
comment upon :
* I am glad to observe that our " brethren" in America adhere to
the old phraseology of Westminster Hall. A Chief Justice in New
England thus concludes a very sound judgment : " My brother
Blannerhasset, who was present at the argument, but is prevented
by business at chambers from being here to-day, authorises me to
say that he has read this judgment, and that he entirely concurs
in it."
38 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [COMEDIES.
Angela. Your brother is a forfeit to the law.
Isabella. Alas ! alas !
Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once ;
And He that might the vantage best have took
Found out the remedy : How would you be
If He, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are ? 0, think on that ;
And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
Like man new made.
(Act ii. Sc. 2.)
The following is part of the dialogue between Anti-
pholus of Syracuse and his man Dromio, in Act n.
Sc. 2 :
Dro. S. There's no time for a man to recover his hair, that grows
bald by nature.
Ant. S. May he not do it by fine and recovery ?
Dro. S. Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig, and recover the lost hair
of another man.
These jests cannot be supposed to arise from anything
in the laws or customs of Syracuse ; but they show the
author to be very familiar with some of the most
abstruse proceedings in English jurisprudence.
COMEDIES.] THE COMEDY OF ERRORS. 39
In Act iv. Sc. 2, Adriana asks Dromio of Syracuse,
" Where is thy master, Dromio ? Is he well ?" and
Dromio replies
No, he's in Tartar limbo, worse than hell :
A devil in an everlasting garment hath him,
One whose hard heart is button'd up with steel ;
A fiend, a fairy, pitiless and rough ;
A wolf; nay worse, a fellow all in buff;
A back-friend, a shoulder-clapper, one that countermands
The passages and alleys, creeks, and narrow lands :
A hound that runs counter, and yet draws dry- foot well ;
One that before the judgment carries poor souls to hell.
Adr. Why, man, what is the matter ?
Dro. S. I do not know the matter ; he is 'rested on the case.
Adr. What, is he arrested ? tell me at whose suit.
Dro. S. I know not at whose suit he is arrested, well
But he's in a suit of buff which 'rested him, that can I tell. * * *
Adr. * * * This I wonder at :
That he, unknown to me, should be in debt.
Tell me, was he arrested on a bond ?
Dro. S. Not on a lond, but on a stronger thing :
A chain, a chain I
Here we have a most circumstantial and graphic
account of an English arrest on mesne process [" before
judgment"], in an action on the case, for the price
of a gold chain, by a sheriffs officer, or bum-bailiff,
in his buff costume, and carrying his prisoner to a
sponging-house a spectacle which might often have
been seen by an attorney's clerk. A fellow-student
of mine (since an eminent Judge), being sent to an
attorney's office, as part of his legal education, used to
40 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [COMEDIES.
accompany the sheriff's officer when making captions
on mesne process, that he might enjoy the whole feast
of a law-suit from the egg to the apples and he was
fond of giving a similar account of this proceeding,
which was then constantly occurring, but which, like
" Trial by Battle," may now be considered obsolete.
ife ft.
In Act I. Sc. 2, Shakespeare makes the lively Rosa
lind, who, although well versed in poesy and books of
chivalry, had probably never seen a bond or a law-
paper of any sort in her life, quite familiar with the
commencement of all deeds poll, which in Latin was,
Noverint universi per presentes, in English, " Be it known
to all men by these presents " :
Le Beau. There comes an old man and his three sons,
Gel. I could match this beginning with an old tale.
Le Beau* Three proper young men, of excellent growth and
presence ;
Eos. With bills on their necks, " Be it known unto all men ly
these presents"
This is the technical phraseology referred to by
Thomas Nash in his * Epistle to the Gentlemen Stu-
COMEDIES.] AS YOU LIKE IT. 41
dents of the two Universities,' in the year 1589, when
he is supposed to have denounced the author of
' Hamlet' as one of those who had "left the trade of
Noverint, whereto they were born, for handfuls of tra
gical speeches " that is, an attorney's clerk become a
poet, and penning a stanza when he should engross.
* As You Like It ' was not brought out until shortly
before the year 1600, so that Nash's Noverint could not
have been suggested by it. Possibly Shakespeare now
introduced the "Be it known unto all men," &c., in
order to show his contempt for Nash's sarcasm.
In Act ii. Sc. 1, there are illustrations which would
present themselves rather to the mind of one initiated
in legal proceedings, thai of one who had been brought
up as an apprentice to a glover, or an assistant to a
butcher or a woolstapler : for instance, when it is said
of the poor wounded deer, weeping in the stream
thou mak'st a testament
As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more
To that which hath too much."
And again where the careless herd, jumping by him
without greeting him, are compared to " fat and greasy
citizens," who look
11 Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there,"
D
42 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [COMEDIES.
without pitying his sufferings or attempting to relieve
his necessities.
It may perhaps be said that such language might be
used by any man of observation. But in Act in. Sc. 1,
a deep technical knowledge of law is displayed, how
soever it may have been acquired.
The usurping Duke, Frederick, wishing all the real
property of Oliver to be seized, awards a writ of extent
against him, in the language which would be used by
the Lord Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer
Duke Fred. Make an extent upon his house and lands
an extendi facias applying to house and lands, as a
fieri facias would apply to goods and chattels, or a
capias ad satisfaciendum to the person.
So in ' King Henry VIII.' we have an equally accu
rate statement of the omnivorous nature of a writ of
PR^MUNIRE. The Duke of Suffolk, addressing Cardinal
Wolsey, says,
" Lord Cardinal, the King's further pleasure is,
Because all those things you have done of late
By your power legatine within this kingdom
Fall into the compass of a prcemunire,
That therefore such a writ be sued against you,
To forfeit all your goods, lands, tenements,
Chattels, and whatsoever, and to be
Out of the King's protection?
COMEDIES.] AS YOU LIKE IT. 43
In the next scene of ' As You Like It ' Shakespeare
shows that he was well acquainted with lawyers them
selves and the vicissitudes of their lives. Rosalind
having told " who Time ambles withal, who Time trots
withal, who Time gallops withal," being asked, " Who
Time stands still withal ?" answers
With lawyers in the vacation ; for they sleep between term and
term, and then they perceive not how Time moves.
Our great poet had probably observed that some
lawyers have little enjoyment of the vacation after a
very few weeks, and that they again long for the excite
ment of arguing demurrers and pocketing fees.
In the first scene of Act iv. Shakespeare gives us the
true legal meaning of the word " attorney/' viz. repre
sentative or deputy. [Celui qui vient a tour d'autrui ;
Qui alterius vices subit ; Legatus ; Vakeel.]
Bos. Well, in her person I say I will not have you.
Orl. Then, in my own person, I die.
.Res. No, faith, die by attorney. The poor world is almost six
thousand years old, and in all this time there was not any man died
in his own person, videlicet, hi a love-cause.*
* So in ' Richard III.,' Act iv. Sc. 4, the crook-backed tyrant,
after murdering the infant sons of Edward IV., audaciously pro-
D 2
44 SHAKESPEAKE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [COMEDIES.
I am sorry to say that in our time the once most
respectable word "attorney" seems to have gained a
new meaning, viz. " a disreputable legal practitioner ;"
so that attorneys at law consider themselves treated
discourteously when they are called " Attorneys." They
now all wish to be called Solicitors, when doing the
proper business of attorneys in the Courts of Common
Law. Most sincerely honouring this branch of our
profession, if it would please them, I am ready to sup
port a bill " to prohibit the use of the word Attorney,
and to enact that on all occasions the word Solicitor
shall be used instead thereof."
Near the end of the same scene Shakespeare again
evinces his love for legal phraseology and imagery by
converting Time into an aged Judge of Assize, sitting
on the Crown side :
JRos. Well, Time is the old JUSTICE that examines all such
offenders, and let Time try.
As in ' Troilus and Cressida ' (Act iv. Sc. 5) Shake
speare makes Time an Arbitrator :
" And that old common ARBITRATOR, Time,
Will one day end it."
poses to their mother to marry the Princess Elizabeth, their sister,
and wishing the Queen to intercede with her in his favour, says
Be the attorney of my love to her.
Again in the same play (Act v. Sc. 3) Lord Stanley, meeting
Eichmond on the field at Bosworth, says
I by attorney bless thee from thy mother.
COMEDIES.] MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 45
SNr
It has been generally supposed that Shakespeare, in
the characters of Dogberry and Verges, only meant to
satirize the ignorance and folly of parish constables a
race with which we of this generation were familiar till
the establishment of the metropolitan and rural police ;
but I cannot help suspecting that he slily aimed at
higher legal functionaries Chairmen at Quarter-ses
sions, and even Judges of assize, with whose perform
ances he may probably have become acquainted at
Warwick and elsewhere.
There never has been a law or custom in England to
"give a charge " to constables ; but from time immemo
rial there has been " a charge to grand juries " by the
presiding judge. This charge, we are bound to believe,
is now-a-days always characterised by simplicity, perti
nence, and correctness, although, according to existing
etiquette, in order that it may not be too severely
criticised, the barristers are not admitted into the Crown
Court till the charge is over. But when Justice Shallow
gave the charge to the grand jury at sessions in the
county of Gloucester, we may conjecture that some of
his doctrines and directions were not very wise; and
Judges of the superior courts in former times made
themselves ridiculous by expatiating, in their charges to
grand juries, on vexed questions of manners, religion,
46 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [COMEDIES.
politics, and political economy. Dogberry uses the very
words of the oath administered by the Judges' marshal
to the grand jury at the present day :
Keep your fellows' counsels and your own.
(Act in. Sc. 3.)
If the different parts of Dogberry's charge are strictly
examined, it will be found that the author of it had a
very respectable acquaintance with crown law. The
problem was to save the constables from all trouble,
danger, and responsibility, without any regard to the
public safety :
Dogb. If you meet a thief, you may suspect him, by virtue of
your office, to be no true man ; and for such kind of men, the less
you meddle or make with them, why, the more is for your honesty.
2 Watch. If we know him to be a thief, shall we not lay hands
on him ?
Dogb. Truly, by your office you may; but, I think, they that
touch pitch will be defiled. The most peaceable way for you, if
you do take a thief, is to let him show himself what he is, and steal
out of your company.
Now there can be no doubt that Lord Coke himself
could not more accurately have defined the power of a
peace-officer.
I cannot say as much for the law laid down by Dog
berry and Verges in Act iv. Sc. 2, that it was "flat
perjury" to call a prince's brother villain; or "flat
burglary as ever was committed " to receive a thousand
COMEDIES.] LOVE'S LABOUR 's LOST. 47
ducats " for accusing a lady wrongfully." But the
dramatist seems himself to have been well acquainted
with the terms and distinctions of our criminal code, or
he could not have rendered the blunders of the parish
officers so absurd and laughable.
'B fabowr's 0st.
In Act i. Sc. 1, we have an extract from the Keport
by Don Adriano de Armado of the infraction he had
witnessed of the King's proclamation by Costard with
Jaquenetta ; and it is drawn up in the true lawyerlike,
tautological dialect, which is to be paid for at so much
a folio :
Then for the place where ; where, I mean, I did encounter that
obscene and most preposterous event that draweth from my snow-
white pen the ebon-coloured ink, which here thou viewest, behold-
est, surveyest, and seest. * * * Him I (as my ever-esteemed
duty pricks me on) have sent to thee to receive the meed of punish
ment, by thy sweet Grace's officer, Antony Dull, a man of good
repute, carriage, bearing, and estimation.
The gifted Shakespeare might perhaps have been
capable, by intuition, of thus imitating the conveyancer's
jargon ; but no ordinary man could have hit it off so
exactly, without having engrossed in an attorney's office.
48 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [COMEDIES.
Egeus makes complaint to Theseus, in Act I. Sc. 1,
against Ms daughter Hermia, because, while he wishes
her to marry Demetrius, she prefers Lysander ; and he
seeks to enforce the law of Athens, that a daughter, who
refuses to marry according to her father's directions,
may be put to death by him :
And, my gracious duke,
Be it so, she will not here, before your grace,
Consent to marry with Demetrius.
I beg the ancient privilege of Athens,
As she is mine, I may dispose of her,
Which shall be either to this gentleman
Or to her death, according to our law
Immediately provided in that case.
Commenting on this last line, Steevens observes,
" Shakespeare is grievously suspected of having been
placed, while a boy, in an attorney's office. The line
before us has an undoubted smack of legal common
place : Poetry disclaims it."
The precise formula " In such case made and pro
vided " would not have stood in the verse. There is
certainly no nearer approach in heroic measure to the
technical language of an indictment ; and there seems
COMEDIES.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 49
no motive for the addition made to the preceding line,
except to show a familiarity with legal phraseology,
which Shakespeare, whether he ever were an attorney's
clerk or not, is constantly fond of displaying.
[mjmrtt 0f
In Act I. Sc. 3, and Act n. Sc. 8, Antonio's bond to
Shylock is prepared and talked about according to all
the forms observed in an English attorney's office. The
distinction between a " single bill " and a " bond with a
condition " is clearly referred to ; and punctual payment
is expressed in the technical phrase " Let good Antonio
keep his day"
It appears by Act in. Sc. 3, between Shylock, Salarino,
Antonio, and a Jailer, that the action on the bond had
been commenced, and Antonio had been arrested on
mesne process. The trial was to come on before the
Doge ; and the question was., whether Shylock was en
titled to judgment specifically for his pound of flesh, or
must be contented with pecuniary damages.
50 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [COMEDIES.
Shylock threatens the Jailer with an action for
" escape " for allowing Antonio to come for a short
time beyond the walls of the prison :
I do wonder,
Thou naughty Jailer, that thou art so fond
To come abroad with him at his request.
Antonio is made to confess that Shylock is entitled
to the pound of flesh, according to the plain meaning
of the bond and condition, and the rigid strictness of
the common law of England :<-
Sdlarino. I am sure the Duke
Will never grant this forfeiture to hold.
Antonio. The Duke cannot deny the course of law.
All this has a strong odour of Westminster Hall.
The trial comes on in Act IV. Sc. 1, and it is duly
conducted according to the strict forms of legal pro
cedure. Portia, the PODESTA or judge called in to act
under the authority of the Doge, first inquires if there
be any plea of non est factum.
She asks Antonio, " Do you confess the bond ? " and
when he answers, " I do," the judge proceeds to con
sider how the damages are to be assessed. The plaintiff
claims the penalty of the bond, according to the words
of the condition ; and Bassanio, who acts as counsel for
the defendant, attempting on equitable grounds to have
COMEDIES.] THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. 51
him excused by paying twice the sum of money lent,
or " ten times o'er," judgment is given :
Portia. It must not be. There is no power in Venice
Can alter a decree established.
'Twill be recorded for a precedent,
And many an error by the same example
Will rush into the state. * * *
This bond is forfeit,
And lawfully by this the Jew may claim
A pound of flesh, to be by him cut off
Nearest the merchant's heart.
However, oyer of the bond being demanded, the judge
found that it gave " no jot of blood ;" and the result
was that Shylock, to save his own life, was obliged to
consent to make over all his goods to his daughter
Jessica and her Christian husband Lorenzo, and him
self to submit to Christian baptism.
Shakespeare concludes this scene with an ebullition
which might be expected from an English lawyer, by
making Gratiano exclaim,
In christening thou shalt have two godfathers :
Had I been judge, thou shouldst have had ten more,
To bring thee to the gallows, not ihefont
meaning a jury of twelve men, to find him guilty of the
capital offence of an attempt to murder ; whereupon he
must have been hanged.
52 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [COMEDIES.
I may further observe that this play, in the last scene
of the last act, contains another palpable allusion to
English legal procedure. In the Court of Queen's
Bench, when a complaint is made against a person for
a "contempt" the practice is that before sentence is
finally pronounced, he is sent into the Crown Office, and
being there " charged upon interrogatories" he is made
to swear that he will "answer all things faithfully."
Accordingly, in the moonlight scene in the garden at
Belmont, after a partial explanation between Bassanio,
Gratiano, Portia, and Nerissa, about their rings, some
farther inquiry being deemed necessary, Portia says,
Let us go in,
And charge us there upon inter 'gatories,
And we will answer all things faithfully.
Gratiano assents, observing,
Let it be so : the first inter'gatory
That my Nerissa shall be sworn on is,
Whether till the next night she had rather stay,
Or go to bed now, being two hours to day.
COMEDIES.] THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. 53
Cmning 0f % Sjrrcto.
In the " Induction " Shakespeare betrays an intimate
knowledge of the matters which may be prosecuted as
offences before the Court Leet, the lowest court of
criminal judicature in England. He puts this speech
into the mouth of a servant, who is trying to persuade
Sly that he is a great lord, and that he had been in a
dream for fifteen years, during which time he thought
he was a frequenter of alehouses :
For though you lay here in this goodly chamber,
Yet would you say, ye were beaten out of door,
And rail upon the hostess of the house,
And say you would present her at the leet,
Because she brought stone jugs, and no sealed quarts.
Now, in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I., there
was a very wholesome law, that, for the protection of the
public against " false measures/' ale should be sold only
in sealed vessels of the standard capacity ; and the viola
tion of the law was to be presented at the " Court Leet,"
or "View of Frankpledge," held in every hundred,
manor, or lordship, before the steward of the leet.
Malone, in reference to this passage, cites the well-
known treatise of ' Kitchen on Courts,' and also copies
a passage from a work with which I am not acquainted
54 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [COMEDIES.
1 Characterismi, or Lenton's Leasures,' 12mo. 1631
which runs thus : " He [an informer] transforms him-
selfe into several shapes, to avoid suspicion of inneholders,
and inwardly joyes at the sight of a blacke pot or jugge,
knowing that their sale by sealed quarts spoyles his
market."
In Act i. Sc. 2, the proposal of Tranio that the rival
lovers of Bianca, while they eagerly in her presence
should press their suit, yet, when she is absent, should
converse freely as friends, is illustrated in a manner to
induce a belief that the author of Tranio's speech had
been accustomed to see the contending counsel, when
the trial is over, or suspended, on very familiar and
friendly terms with each other :
Tra. Sir, I shall not be slack : in sign whereof,
Please ye, we may contrive this afternoon,
And quaff carouses to our mistress' health ;
And do as adversaries do in law,
Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.
This clearly alludes not to the parties litigating, who,
if they were to eat and drink together, would generally
be disposed to poison each other, but to the counsel on
opposite sides, with whom, notwithstanding the fiercest
contests in court, when they meet in private immediately
after, it is " All hail, fellow, and well met."
COMEDIES.] THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. 55
In the first encounter of wits between Katherine and
Petruchio, Shakespeare shows that he was acquainted
with the law for regulating " trials by battle " between
champions, one of which had been fought in Tothill
Fields before the judges of the Court of Common Pleas
in the reign of Elizabeth.
Kath. "What is your crest ? a coxcomb ?
Pet. A combless cock, so Kate will be my hen.
Kath. No cock of mine ; you crow too like a craven.
(Act ii. Sc. 1.)
This all lawyers know to be the word spoken by a
champion who acknowledged that he was beaten, and
declared that he would fight no more : whereupon
judgment was immediately given against the side which
he supported, and he bore the infamous name of Craven
for the rest of his days.
We have like evidence in * Hamlet ' (Act iv. Sc. 4) of
Shakespeare's acquaintance with the legal meaning of
this word, where the hero says
Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on th' event.
56 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS.
's Well %t tfnbs Well.
In this play we meet with proof that Shakespeare had
an accurate knowledge of the law of England respecting
the incidents of military tenure, or tenure in chivalry,, by
which the greatest part of the land in this kingdom was
held till the reign of Charles II. The incidents of that
tenure here dwelt upon are "wardship of minors" and
" the right of the guardian to dispose of the minor in
marriage at his pleasure." The scene lies in France,
and, strictly speaking, the law of that country ought to
prevail in settling such questions ; but Dr. Johnson, in
his notes on ' All 's Well that Ends Well,' justly intimates
his opinion that it is of no great use to inquire whether
the law upon these subjects was the same in France as
in England, " for Shakespeare gives to all nations the
manners of England."
According to the plot on which this play is con
structed, the French King laboured under a malady
which his physicians had declared incurable ; and
Helena, the daughter of a deceased physician of great
eminence, knew of a cure for it. She was in love with
Bertram, Count of Eousillon, still a minor, who held
large possessions as tenant in capite under the crown,
and was in ward to the King. Helena undertook the
cure, making this condition :
COMEDIES.] ALL 's WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 57
Hel. Then shalt thou give me with thy kingly hand
What husband in thy power I will command.
Adding, however :
Exempted be from me the arrogance
To choose from forth the royal blood of France * * *
But such a one, thy vassal, whom I know
7rv Is free for me to ask, thee to bestow. (Act n. Sc. 1.)
She effects the cure, and the King, showing her all the
noble unmarried youths whom he then held as wards,
says to her
Fair maid, send forth thine eye : this youthful parcel
A Of noble bachelors stand at my bestowing * * *
thy frank election make :
Thou hast power to choose, and they none to forsake.
(Act ii. Sc. 3.)
Helena, after excusing herself to several of the others,
comes to Bertram, and, covered with blushes, declares
her election :
Eel. I dare not say I take you ; but I give
Me an3~rny~service, ever whilst I live,
Into your guiding power. This is the man.
King. Why then, young Bertram, take her: she's thy wife.
Bertram at first strenuously refuses, saying
In such a business give me leave to usej
The help of mine own eyes.
But the King, after much discussion, thus addresses
him:
58 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [COMEDIES.
It is in us to plant thine honour where
We please to have it grow. Check thy contempt.
Obey our will, which travails in thy good. * * *
, Take her by the hand,
And tell her she is thine. * * *
Bert. I take her hand. (Act n. Sc. 3.)
The ceremony of marriage was immediately performed,
and no penalty or forfeiture was incurred. But the law
not extending to a compulsion upon the ward to live
with the wife thus forced upon him, Bertram escapes
from the church door, and abandoning his wife, makes
off for the wars in Italy, where he unconsciously em
braced the deserted Helena.
For the cure of the King by the physician's daughter,
and her being deserted by her husband, Shakespeare is
indebted to Boccaccio ; but the wardship of Bertram, and
the obligation of the ward to take the wife provided for
him by his guardian, Shakespeare drew from his own
knowledge of the common law of England, which, though
now obsolete, was in full force in the reign of Elizabeth,
and was to be found in Littleton.* The adventure of
Parolles's drum and the other comic parts of the drama
are quite original, and these he drew from his own inex
haustible fancy.
* However, according to Littleton, it is doubtful whether Bertram,
without being liable to any penalty or forfeiture, might not have
refused to marry Helena, on the ground that she was not of noble
descent. The lord could not " disparage " the ward by a mesal
liance. Go. Litt. 80a.
COMEDIES.] THE WINTER'S TALE. 59
In this play, Act I. Sc. 2, there is an allusion to a
piece of English law procedure, which, although it might
have been enforced till very recently, could hardly be
known to any except lawyers, or those who had them
selves actually been in prison on a criminal charge,
that, whether guilty or innocent, the prisoner was liable
to pay a fee on his liberation. Hermione, trying to per
suade Polixenes, King of Bohemia, to prolong his stay at
the court of Leontes in Sicily, says to him
You put me off with Umber vows ; but T,
Though you would see': t' unsphere the stars with oaths,
Should yet say, " Sir, no going." * * *
Force me to keep you as a prisoner,
Not like a guest ; so you shall pay your fees
When you depart, and save your thanks.
I remember when the Clerk of Assize and the Clerk
of the Peace were entitled to exact their fee from all
acquitted prisoners, and were supposed in strictness to
have a lien on their persons for it. I believe there is now
no tribunal in England where the practice remains, ex
cepting the two Houses of Parliament ; but the Lord
Chancellor and the Speaker of the House of Commons
still say to prisoners about to be liberated from the
E 2
60 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [COMEDIES.
custody of the Black Bod or the Serjeant-at-Arms, " You
are discharged, paying your fees."
When the trial of Queen Hermione for high treason
comes off in Act in. Sc. 2, although the indictment is
not altogether according to English legal form, and
might be held insufficient on a writ of error, we lawyers
cannot but wonder at seeing it so near perfection in
charging the treason, and alleging the overt act com
mitted by her " contrary to the faith and allegiance of a
true subject."
It is likewise remarkable that Cleomenes and Dion,
the messengers who brought back the response from the
oracle of Delphi, to be given in evidence, are sworn to
the genuineness of the document they produce almost
in the very words now used by the Lord Chancellor
when an officer presents at the bar of the House of
Lords the copy of a record of a court of justice :
You here shall swear * * *
That you, Cleomenes and Dion, have
Been both at Delphos ; and from thence have brought
The seal'd-up oracle, by the hand delivered
Of great Apollo's priest ; and that since then
You have not dar'd to break the holy seal,
Nor read the secrets in 't.
HISTORIES.] KING JOHN. 01
In Shakespeare's dramas founded upon English
history, more legalisms might have been expected ; but
I have met with fewer than in those which are taken
from the annals of foreign nations, or which, without
depending on locality, "hold the mirror up to nature."
This paucity of reference to law or to law proceedings
may, perhaps, in part be accounted for by the fact that,
in these "Histories," as they were called, our great
dramatist is known to have worked upon foundations
already laid by other men who had no technical know
ledge, and in several ir stances he appears only to have
introduced additions and improvements into stock pieces
to revive their popularity. Yet we find in several of
the " Histories," Shakespeare's fondness for law terms ;
and it is still remarkable, that whenever he indulges
this propensity he uniformly lays down good law.
Thus in the controversy, in the opening scene of
1 KING JOHN,' between Eobert and Philip Faulcon-
bridge, as to which of them was to be considered the
true heir of the deceased Sir Eobert, the King, in giving
judgment, lays down the law of legitimacy most per
spicuously and soundly, thus addressing Robert, the
plaintiff :
62 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [HISTORIES.
" Sirrah, your brother is legitimate :
Your father's wife did after wedlock bear him ;
*And if she did play false, the fraud was hers,
Which fault lies on the hazards of all husbands
That marry wives. Tell me, how if my brother,
Who, as you say, took pains to get this son,
Had of your father claim'd this son for his ?
In sooth, good friend, your father might have kept
This calf, bred from his cow, from all the world :
In sooth, he might : then, if he were my brother's,
My brother might not claim him, nor your father,
Being none of his, refuse him. This concludes
My mother's son did get your father's heir ;
Your father's heir must have your father's land."
This is the true doctrine, "Pater est quern nuptice
demonstrant"
It was likewise properly ruled that the father's will,
in favour of his son Kobert, had no power to dispossess
the right heir. Philip might have recovered the land,
if he had not preferred the offer made to him by his
grandmother, Elinor, the Queen Dowager, of taking the
name of Plantagenet, and being dubbed Sir Kichard.
In Act ii. Sc. 1, we encounter a metaphor which is
purely legal, yet might come naturally from an
attorney's clerk, who had often been an attesting
witness to the execution of deeds. The Duke of
Austria, having entered into an engagement to support
Arthur against his unnatural uncle, till the young
HISTORIES.] KING JOHN. 63
prince should be put in possession of the dominions in
France to which he was entitled as the true heir of the
Plantagenets, and should be crowned king of England,
says, kissing the boy to render the covenant more
binding,
" Upon thy cheek I lay this zealous kiss,
As seal to this indenture of my love."
In a subsequent part of this play, the true ancient
doctrine of " the supremacy of the crown " is laid down
with great spirit and force; and Shakespeare clearly
shows that, whatever his opinion might have been
on speculative dogmas in controversy between the
Eeformers and the Komanists, he spurned the ultra
montane pretensions of the Pope, which some of our
Eoman Catholic fellow subjects are now too much dis
posed to countenance, although they were stoutly re
sisted before the Reformation by our ancestors, who were
good Catholics. King John declares, Act in. Sc. 1,
" No Italian priest
Shall tithe or toll in our dominions ;
But as we under heaven are supreme head,
So, under heaven, that great supremacy,
Where we do reign, we will alone uphold,
Without th' assistance of a mortal hand.
So tell the Pope ; all reverence set apart
To him and his usurp'd authority.
64 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [HISTORIES.
King Philip. Brother of England, you blaspheme in this.
King John. Though you and all the kings of Christendom
Are led so grossly by this meddling priest,
Dreading the curse that money may buy out,
And by the merit of vile gold, dross, dust,
Purchase corrupted pardon of a man,
Who in that sale sells pardon from himself,
Though you and all the rest, so grossly led,
This juggling witchcraft with revenue cherish,
Yet I alone, alone do me oppose
Against the Pope, and count his friends my foes."
At the same time, it is clear, from Shakespeare's
portraiture of Friar Lawrence and other Roman
Catholic ecclesiastics, who do honour to their church,
that he was no bigot, and that he regarded with venera
tion all who seek to imitate the meek example of the
divine founder of the Christian religion.
PART I.
In Act in. Sc. 1, we have the partition of England
and Wales between Mortimer, Glendower, and Hotspur,
and the business is conducted in as clerk-like, attorney-
like fashion, as if it had been the partition of a manor
HISTORIES.] KING HENKY THE FOURTH. PAET I. 65
between joint tenants, tenants in common, or co
parceners.
Olend. Come, here 's the map : shall we divide our right,
According to our three-fold order ta'en ?
Mort. The archdeacon hath divided it
Into three limits very equally.
England, from Trent and Severn hitherto,
By south and east is to my part assign'd :
And westward, Wales, beyond the Severn shore :
And all the fertile land within that bound,
To Owen Glendower : and, dear Coz, to you
The remnant northward, lying off from Trent ;
And our indentures tripartite are drawn,
Which being sealed interchangeably,
(A business that this night may execute,)
To-morrow, cousin Percy, you and I,
And my good Lord of Worcester, will set forth.
It may well be imagined, that in composing this
speech Shakespeare was recollecting how he had seen
a deed of partition tripartite drawn and executed in his
master's office at Stratford.
Afterwards, in the same scene, he represents that the
unlearned Hotspur, who had such an antipathy to
" metre ballad-mongers " and " mincing poetry," fully
understood this conveyancing proceeding, and makes
him ask impatiently,
" Are the indentures drawn ? shall we be gone ?"
Shakespeare may have been taught that " livery of
seisin " was not necessary to a deed of partition, or he
G6 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [HISTORIES.
would probably have directed this ceremony to com
plete the title.
So fond was he of law terms, that afterwards, when
Henry IV. is made to lecture the Prince of Wales on
his irregularities, and to liken him to Kichard II., who,
by such improper conduct, lost the crown, he uses the
forced and harsh figure, that Eichard
" Enfeoffed himself to popularity " (Act in. Sc. 2).
I copy Malone's note of explanation on this line:
"Gave himself up absolutely to popularity. A feoff-
ment was the ancient mode of conveyance, by which all
lands in England were granted in fee-simple for several
ages, till the conveyance of lease and release was
invented by Serjeant Moor about the year 1630. Every
deed of feoffment was accompanied with livery of seisin,
that is, with the delivery of corporal possession of the
land or tenement granted in fee."
To " sue out livery " is another law term used in this
play (Act IV. Sc. 3), a proceeding to be taken by a
ward of the crown, on coming of age, to obtain posses
sion of his lands, which the king had held as guardian
in chivalry during his minority. Hotspur, in giving a
description of Henry the Fourth's beggarly and sup
pliant condition when he landed at Kavenspurg, till
assisted by the Percys, says,
HISTORIES.] KING HENRY THE FOURTH. PART II. 67
" And when lie was not six-and-twenty strong,
Sick in the world's regard, wretched and low,
A poor unminded outlaw, sneaking home,
My father gave him welcome to the shore :
And when he heard him swear, and vow to God,
He came but to be Duke of Lancaster,
To sue his livery, and beg his peace,
With tears of innocency and terms of zeal,
My father, in kind heart and pity mov'd,
Swore him assistance."
% Jmrffc,
PART II.
Arguments have been drawn from this drama against
Shakespeare's supposed great legal acquirements. It
has been objected to the very amusing interview, in
Act I. Sc. 2, between Falstaff and the Lord Chief
Justice, that if Shakespeare had been much of a lawyer,
he would have known that this great magistrate could
not examine offenders in the manner supposed, and
could only take notice of offences when they were
regularly prosecuted before him in the Court of King's
Bench, or at the assizes. But although such is the
practice in our days, so recently as the beginning of
68 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [HISTORIES.
the eighteenth century that illustrious Judge, Lord
Chief Justice Holt, acted as a police magistrate, quell
ing riots, taking depositions against parties accused,
and, where a prima facie case was made out against
them, committing them for trial. Lord Chief Justice
Coke actually assisted in taking the Earl and Countess of
Somerset into custody when charged with the murder of
Sir Thomas Overbury, and examined not less than three
hundred witnesses against them, writing the deposi
tions with his own hand. It was quite in course that
those charged with the robbery at Gadshill should be
"had up" before Lord Chief Justice Gascoigne, and
that he should take notice of any of them who, having
disobeyed a summons to appear before him, happened
to come casually into his presence.
His Lordship is here attended by the tipstaff (or
orderly), who, down to the present day, follows the Chief
Justice, like his shadow, wherever he officially appears.
On this occasion the Chief Justice meeting Sir John,
naturally taxes him with having refused to obey the
summons served upon him to attend at his Lordship's
chambers, that he might answer the information laid
against him ; and Sir John tries to excuse himself by
saying that he was then advised by his " counsel learned
in the laws," that, as he was marching to Shrewsbury
by the king's orders, he was not bound to come.
Again, it is objected that a Chief Justice could not be
supposed, by any person acquainted with his station and
functions, to use such vulgar language as that put into
HISTORIES.] KING HENRY THE FOURTH. PART II. 69
the mouth of Sir William Gascoigne when Falstaff
will not listen to him, and that this rather smacks of
the butcher's shop in which it is alleged that young
Shakespeare employed himself in killing calves.
Ch. Just. To punish you by the heels would amend the attention
of your ears ; and I care not if I do become your physician.
But " to lay by the heels " was the technical expres
sion for committing to prison, and I could produce from
the Reports various instances of its being so used by
distinguished judges from the bench. I will content
myself with one. A petition being heard in the Court
of Chancery, before Lord Chancellor Jeffreys, against a
great City attorney who had given him many briefs at
the bar, an affidavit was read, swearing that when the
attorney was threatened with being brought before my
Lord Chancellor, he exclaimed " My Lord Chancellor !
I made him ! " Lord Chancellor Jeffreys : " Then will
I lay my MAKER by the heels" A warrant of commit
ment was instantly signed and sealed by the Lord Chan
cellor, and the poor attorney was sent off to the Fleet.
I must confess that I am rather mortified by the
advantage given to the fat knight over my predecessor
in this encounter of their wits. Sir John professes to
treat the Chief Justice with profound reverence, inter
larding his sentences plentifully with your Lordship
" God give your Lordship good time of day : I am glad
to see your Lordship abroad : I heard say your Lordship
was sick : I hope your Lordship goes abroad by advice.
70 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [HISTORIES.
Your Lordship, though not clean past your youth, hath
yet some smack of age in you, some relish of the salt-
ness of time ; and I most humbly beseech your Lord
ship to have a reverend care of your health." Yet
Falstaff' s object is to turn the Lord Chief Justice into
ridicule, and I am sorry to say that he splendidly suc-
ceeds, insomuch that after the party accused of felony
has vaingloriously asserted that he himself had done
great service to the state, and that his name was terrible
to the enemy, the Chief Justice, instead of committing
him to Newgate to answer for the robbery at Gadshill,
is contented with admonishing him to be honest, and dis
misses him with a blessing; upon which Sir John is
emboldened to ask the Chief Justice for the loan of a
thousand pounds. To lower the law still further, my Lord
Chief Justice is made to break off the conversation, in
which FalstafFs wit is so sparkling, with a very bad pun.
Ch. Just. Not a penny, not a penny : you are too impatient to
bear crosses.*
The same superiority is preserved in the subsequent
scene (Act n. Sc. 1), where Falstaff being arrested on
mesne process for debt at the suit of Dame Quickly, he
gains his discharge, with the consent of the Chief
* So bad is this pun that perhaps it may not be useless to remind
you thaj; the penny and all the royal coins then had impressed
upon them the sign of the cross.
HISTORIES.] KING HENRY THE FOURTH. PART II. 71
Justice, by saying to his Lordship " My Lord, this is
a poor mad soul ; and she says, up and down the town,
that her eldest son is like you :" and by insisting that
although he owed the money, he was privileged from
arrest for debt, " being upon hasty employment in the
king's affairs."
In Act v. Sc. 1, Falstaff, having long made Justice
Shallow his butt during a visit to him in Gloucester
shire, looks forward with great delight to the fun of
recapitulating at the Boar's Head, East Cheap, Shal
low's absurdities; and, meaning to intimate that this
would afford him opportunities of amusing the Prince of
Wales for a twelvemonth, he says
" I will devise matter enough out of this Shallow to keep Prince
Henry in continual laughter the wearing out of six fashions (which
is four terms, or two actions), and he shall laugh without inter-
vallums."
Dr. Johnson thus annotates on the "two actions:"
" There is something humorous in making a spendthrift
compute time by the operation of an action for debt."
The critic supposes, therefore, that in Shakespeare's
time final judgment was obtained in an action of debt
in the second term after the writ commencing it was
sued out ; and as there are four terms in the legal year,
Michaelmas Term, Hilary Term, Easter Term, and
72 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [HISTORIES.
Trinity Term this is a legal circumlocution for a twelve
month. It would seem that the author who dealt in
such phraseology must have been early initiated in the
mysteries of terms and actions.
Shakespeare has likewise been blamed for an extra
vagant perversion of law in the promises and threats
which Falstaff throws out on hearing that Henry IV.
was dead, and that Prince Hal reigned in his stead.
Fal. Master Eobert Shallow, choose what office thou wilt in the
land, 'tis thine. Pistol, I will double-charge thee with dignities.
* * * Master Shallow, my Lord Shallow, be what thou wilt, I
am Fortune's steward. * * * Come, Pistol, utter more to me ;
and withal devise something to do thyself good. Boot, boot,
master Shallow : I know the young King is sick for me. Let us
take any man's horses ; the laws of England are at my command
ment. Happy are they which have been my friends, and woe unto
my Lord Chief Justice I Act v. Sc. 4.
But Falstaff may not unreasonably be supposed to
have believed that he could do all this, even if he were
strictly kept to the literal meaning of his words. In
the natural and usual course of things he was to become
(as it was then called) " favourite " (or, as we call it,
Prime Minister) to the new king, and to have all the
power and patronage of the crown in his hands. Then,
why might not Ancient Pistol, who had seen service,
have been made War Minister f And if Justice Shallow
HISTORIES.] KING HENRY THE FOURTH. PART II. 73
had been pitchforked into the House of Peers, he might
have turned out a distinguished Law Lord. By taking
" any man's horses " was not meant stealing them, but
pressing them for the king's service, or appropriating
them at a nominal price, which the law would then
have justified under the king's prerogative of pre
emption. Sir W. Gascoigne was continued as Lord
Chief Justice in the new reign ; but, according to law
and custom, he was removable, and he no doubt ex
pected to be removed, from his office.
Therefore, if Lord Eldon could be supposed to have
written the play, I do not see how he would be charge
able with having forgotten any of his law while writing it.
It is remarkable that while Falstaff and his com
panions, in Act v. Sc. 5, are standing in Palace Yard
to see the new king returning from his coronation in
Westminster Abbey, Pistol is made to utter an expres
sion used, when the record was in Latin, by special
pleaders in introducing a special traverse or negation
of a positive material allegation of the opposite side,
and so framing an issue of fact for the determination
of the jury; absque hoc, "without this that;" then
repeating the allegation to be negatived. But there is
often much difficulty in explaining or accounting for
the phraseology of Ancient Pistol, who appears "to
have been at a great feast of languages and stolen the
74 SHAKESPEAKE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [HISTORIES.
scraps ;" so that if, when " double charged with dig
nities," he had been called upon to speak in debate as
a leading member of the government, his appointment
might have been carped at.
% Sktjr,
PART II.
In the speeches of Jack Cade and his coadjutors in
this play we find a familiarity with the law and its
proceedings which strongly indicates that the author
must have had some professional practice or education
as a lawyer. The second scene in Act iv. may be
taken as an example.
Dick. The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
Cade. Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable thing,
that the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment ?
that parchment, being scribbled o'er, should undo a man ? Some
say the bee stings ; but I say 'tis the bee's wax, for I did but seal
once to a thing, and I was never mine own man since.
The Clerk of Chatham is then brought in, who could
"make obligations and write court hand," and who,
instead of " making his mark like an honest plain-
dealing man," had been " so well brought up that he
HISTORIES.] KING HENRY THE SIXTH. PART II. 76
could write his name." Therefore he was sentenced
to be hanged with his pen and ink-horn about his
neck.
Surely Shakespeare must have been employed to
write deeds on parchment in court hand, and to apply
the wax to them in the form of seals: one does not
understand how he should, on any other theory of his
bringing up, have been acquainted with these details.
Again, the indictment on which Lord Say was ar
raigned, in Act IV. Sc. 7, seems drawn by no inexpe
rienced hand :-*-
" Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in
erecting a grammar-school : and whereas, before, our forefathers had
no other books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused print
ing to be used ; and contrary to the king, his crown and dignity,
thou hast built a paper-mill. It will be proved to thy face that
thou hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun and a verb,
and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear.*
Thou bast appointed justices of peace, to call poor men before them
about matters they were not able to answer. Moreover thou hast
put them in prison ; and because they could not read, thou hast
hanged them, when indeed only for that cause they have been most
worthy to live."
How acquired I know not, but it is quite certain
that the drawer of this indictment must have had some
" Inter Christianas non nominand' "
F 2
76 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [HISTORIES.
acquaintance with ' The Crown Circuit Companion,' and
must have had a full and accurate knowledge of that
rather obscure and intricate subject " Felony and
Benefit of Clergy."
Cade's proclamation, which follows, deals with still
more recondite heads of jurisprudence. Announcing
his policy when he should mount the throne, he says :
" The proudest peer in the realm shall not wear a head on his
shoulders unless he pay me tribute : there shall not a maid be
married but she shall pay me her maidenhead ere they have it.
Men shall hold of me in capite ; and we charge and command that
their wives be as/ree as heart can wish, or tongue can tell"
He thus declares a great forthcoming change in the
tenure of land and in the liability to taxation : he is
to have a poll-tax like that which had raised the rebel
lion ; but, instead of coming down to the daughters of
blacksmiths who had reached the age of fifteen, it was
to be confined to the nobility. Then he is to legislate
on the mercheta mulierum. According to Blackstone
and other high authorities this never had been known
in England ; although, till the reign of Malcolm III., it
certainly appears to have been established in Scotland ;
but Cade intimates his determination to adopt it, with
this alteration, that instead of conferring the privilege
on every lord of a manor, to be exercised within the
HISTORIES.] TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 77
manor, he is to assume it exclusively for himself all
over the realm, as belonging to his prerogative royal.
He proceeds to announce his intention to abolish
tenure in free soccage, and that all men should hold of
him in capite, concluding with a licentious jest, that
although his subjects should no longer hold in free
soccage, " their wives should be as free as heart
can wish, or tongue can tell." Strange to say, this
phrase, or one almost identically the same, " as free as
tongue can speak or heart can think," is feudal, and was
known to the ancient law of England. In the tenth
year of King Henry VII., that very distinguished judge,
Lord Hussey, who was Chief Justice of England during
four reigns, in a considered judgment delivered the
opinion of the whole Court of King's Bench as to the
construction to be put upon the words "as free as
tongue can speak or heart can think." See YEAR BOOK,
EH. Term, 10 Hen. VIL, fol. 13, pL 6.
attir
In this play the author shows his insatiable desire to
illustrate his descriptions of kissing by his recollection
of the forms used in executing deeds. When Pandarus
78 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [TRAGEDIES.
(Act in. Sc. 2) lias brought Troilus and Cressida together
in the Orchard to gratify their warm inclinations, he
advises Troilus to give Cressida " a kiss in fee-farm,"
which Malone explains to be " a kiss of a duration that
has no bounds, a fee-farm being a grant of lands in
fee, that is for ever, reserving a rent certain."
The advice of Pandarus to the lovers being taken, he
exclaims
" What ! billing again ? Here 's In witness the parties inter
changeably "
the exact form of the testatum clause in an indenture
" In witness whereof the parties interchangeably have
hereto set their hands and seals."
To avoid a return to this figure of speech I may here
mention other instances in which Shakespeare intro
duces it. In ' Measure for Measure/ Act iv. Sc. 1
" But my kisses bring again
Seals of love, but seal'd in vain : "
and in his poem of ' Venus and Adonis '
" Pure lips, sweet seals in my soft lips imprinted,
What bargains may I make, still to be sealing f "
TRAGEDIES.] KING LEAE. 79
In Act I. Sc. 4 the Fool makes a lengthy rhyming
speech, containing a great many trite but useful moral
maxims, such as
Have more than thou showest,
Speak less than thou knowest, &c.,
which the testy old King found rather flat and tire
some.
Lear. This is nothing, fool.
Fool. Then, 'tis like the breath of an unfeed lawyer : you gave me
nothing for it.
This*seems to show that Shakespeare had frequently
been present at trials in courts of justice, and now
speaks from his own recollection. There is no trace of
such a proverbial saying as " like the breath of an
unfeed lawyer," while all the world knows the proverb,
"Whosoever is his own counsel has a fool for his client."
How unfeed lawyers may have comported themselves
in Shakespeare's time I know not ; but I am bound to
say, in vindication of " my order," that in my time there
has been no ground for the Fool's sarcasm upon the bar.
The two occasions when "the breath of an unfeed
lawyer " attracts notice in this generation are when he
80 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [TRAGEDIES.
pleads for a party suing in forma pauperis, or when he
defends a person prosecuted by the crown for high
treason. It is contrary to etiquette to take a fee in the
one case as well as in the other ; and on all such occa
sions counsel, from a regard to their own credit, as well
as from conscientious motives, uniformly exert them
selves with extraordinary zeal, and put forth all their
learning and eloquence.
I confess that there is some foundation for the saying
that " a lawyer's opinion which costs nothing is worth
nothing;" but this can only apply to opinions given
off-hand, in the course of common conversation, where
there is no time for deliberation, where there is a desire
to say what will be agreeable, and where no responsi
bility is incurred.
In Act II. Sc. 1, there is a remarkable example of
Shakespeare's use of. technical legal phraseology.
Edmund, the wicked illegitimate son of the Earl of
Gloster, having succeeded in deluding his father into
the belief that Edgar, the' legitimate son, had attempted
to commit parricide, and had been prevented from
accomplishing the crime by Edmund's tender solicitude
for the Earl's safety, the Earl is thus made to express a
determination that he would disinherit Edgar (who was
supposed to have fled from justice), and that he would
leave all his possessions to Edmund :
TRAGEDIES.] KING LEAR. 81
Glo. Strong and fasten'd villain !
*****
All ports I'll bar ;,the villain shall not 'scape.
*****
Besides, his picture f*
I will send far and near, that all the kingdom
May have due note of him ;f and of my land,
Loyal and natural boy, I '11 work the means / *-f J
To make thee capable. j> *
In forensic discussions respecting legitimacy, the
question is put, whether the individual whose status is to
be determined is " capable," i. e. capable of inheriting ;
but it is only a lawyer who would express the idea of
legitimising a natural son by simply saying
I '11 work the means
To make him capable.
Again, in Act in. Sc. 5, we find Edmund trying to
incense the Duke of Cornwall against his father for
having taken part with Lear when so cruelly treated
by Goneril and Regan. The two daughters had become
the reigning sovereigns, to whom Edmund professed to
owe allegiance. .Cornwall having created Edmund
Earl of Gloster says to him
f One would suppose that photography, by which this mode of
catching criminals is now practised, had been invented in the reign
of King Lear.
82 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [TRAGEDIES.
" Seek out where thy father is, that he may be ready for our
apprehension."
On which Edmund observes aside
" If I find him comforting the King, it will stuff his suspicion
more fully."
Upon this Dr. Johnson has the following note :
" He uses the word [comforting] in the juridical sense,
for supporting, helping."
The indictment against an accessary after the fact,
for treason, charges that the accessary " comforted " the
principal traitor after knowledge of the treason.
In Act in. Sc. 6 the imaginary trial, of the two un
natural daughters is conducted in a manner showing a
perfect familiarity with criminal procedure.
Lear places the two Judges on the bench, viz., Mad
Tom and the Fool. He properly addresses the former
as " the robed man of justice," but, although both were
"of the commission," I do not quite understand why
the latter is called his "yokefellow of equity," unless
this might be supposed to be a sp'ecial commission,
like that which sat on Mary, Queen of Scots, including
Lord Chancellor Audley.
Lear causes Goneril to be arraigned first, and then
proceeds "as a witness to give evidence against her, to
prove an overt act of high treason :
TRAGEDIES.] HAMLET. 83
" I here take my oath before this honourable assembly, she kicked
the poor king, her father."
But the trial could not be carried on with perfect
regularity on account of Lear's madness, and, without
waiting for a verdict, he himself sentences Regan to be
anatomized :
" Then, let them anatomize Regan ; see what breeds about her
heart."
xmht
In this tragedy various expressions and allusions crop
out, showing the substratum of law in the author's mind,
e. g., the description of the disputed territory which was
the cause of the war between Norway and Poland :
We go to gain a little patch of ground,
That hath in it no profit but the name.
To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it,
Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole
A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee. (Act iv. Sc. 4.)
Earlier in the play (Act I. Sc. 1) Marcellus inquires
what was the cause of the warlike preparations in
Denmark
84 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [TRAGEDIES.
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
And foreign mart for implements of war ?
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week ?
Such confidence has there been in Shakespeare's
accuracy, that this passage has been quoted, both by
text writers and by Judges on the bench, as an authority
upon the legality of \hspress-gang, and upon the debated
question whether shipwrights, as well as common seamen,
are liable to be pressed into the service of the royal
navy.*
Hamlet, when mortally wounded in Act v. Sc. 2,
represents that Death comes to him in the shape of a
sheriffs officer, as it were to take him into custody
under a capias ad satisfaciendum :
" Had I but time (as this fell serjeant, Death,
Is strict in his arrest), Oh ! I could tell you," &c.
The Grave-diggers' scene, however, is the mine which
produces the richest legal ore. The discussion as to
whether Ophelia was entitled to Christian burial proves
that Shakespeare had read and studied Plowden's
Report of the celebrated case of Hales v. Petit, tried in
the reign of Philip and Mary, and that he intended to
See Barrington on the Ancient Statutes, p. 300.
TRAGEDIES.] HAMLET. 85
ridicule the counsel who argued and the Judges who
decided it.
On the accession of Mary Tudor, Sir James Hales,
a puisne Judge of the Common Pleas, was prosecuted
for being concerned in the plot which placed the Lady
Jane Grey for a few days upon the throne ; but, as he
had previously expressed a strong opinion that the suc
cession of the right heir ought not to be disturbed, he
was pardoned and released from prison. Nevertheless,
so frightened was he by the proceedings taken against
him that he went out of his mind, and, after attempting
suicide by a penknife, he drowned himself by walking
into a river. Upon an inquisition before the Coroner, a
verdict of felo de se was returned. Under this finding
his body was to be buried in a cross-road, with a
stake thrust through it, and all his goods were forfeited
to the crown. It so happened that at the time of
his death he was possessed of a lease for years of a
large estate in the county of Kent, granted by the
Archbishop of Canterbury jointly to him and his wife,
the Lady Margaret, who survived him. Upon the sup
position that this lease was forfeited, the estate was
given by the crown to one Cyriac Petit, who took
possession of it, and Dame Margaret Hales, the widow,
brought this action against him to recover it. The only
question was whether the forfeiture could be considered
as having taken place in the lifetime of Sir James
Hales ; for, if not, the plaintiff certainly took the estate
by survivorship.
86 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [TRAGEDIES.
Her counsel, Serjeants Southcote and Puttrel, power
fully argued that, the offence of suicide being the
killing of a man's self, it could not be completed in his
lifetime, for as long as he was alive he had not killed
himself, and, the moment that he died, the estate vested
in the plaintiff. " The felony of the husband shall not
take away her title by survivorship, for in this manner
of felony two things are to be considered first, the cause
of the death ; secondly, the death ensuing the cause ;
and these two make the felony, and without both of
them the felony is not consummate. And the cause of
the death is the act done in the party's lifetime, which
makes the death to follow. And the act which brought
on the death here was the throwing himself voluntarily
into the water, for this was the cause of his death.
And if a man kills himself by a wound which he gives
himself with a knife, or if he hangs himself, as the
wound or the hanging, which is the act done in the
party's lifetime, is the cause of his death, so is the
throwing himself into the water here. Forasmuch as he
cannot be attainted of his own death, because he is dead
before there is any time to attaint him, the finding of
his death by the Coroner is by necessity of law equiva
lent to an attainder in fact coming after his death.
He cannot be felo de se till the death is fully con
summate, and the death precedes the felony and the
forfeiture."
WALSH, Serjeant, contra, argued that the felony was
to be referred back to the act which caused the death.
TRAGEDIES.] HAMLET. 87
" The act consists of three parts : the first is the imagina
tion, which is a reflection or meditation of the mind,
whether or not it is convenient for him to destroy him
self, and what way it can be done ; the second is the
resolution, which is a determination of the mind to
destroy himself; the third is the perfection, which is
the execution of what the mind had resolved to do.
And of all the parts, the doing of the act is the greatest
in the judgment of our law, and it is in effect the whole.
Then here the act done by Sir James Hales, which is
evil, and the cause of his death, is the throwing himself
into the water, and the death is but a sequel thereof."
Lord C. J. Dyer and the whole court gave judgment
for the defendant, holding that although Sir James Hales
could hardly be said to have killed himself in his life
time, " the forfeiture shall have relation to the act done
by Sir James Hales in his lifetime, which was the cause
of his death, viz., the throwing himself into the water."
Said they, " Sir James Hales was dead, and how came
he to his death ? by drowning ; and who drowned him ?
Sir James Hales; and when did he drown him? in
his lifetime. So that Sir James Hales, being alive,
caused Sir James Hales to die ; and the act of the
living man was the death of the dead man. He there
fore committed felony in his lifetime, although there was
no possibility of the forfeiture being found in his lifetime,
for until his death there was no cause of forfeiture."
The argument of the gravediggers upon Ophelia's
case is almost in the words reported by Plowden :
88 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [TRAGEDIES.
1 Clo. Is she to be buried in Christian burial, that wilfully
seeks her own salvation ?
2 Clo. The crowner hath sate on her, and finds it Christian burial.
1 Clo. How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her own
defence ?
2 Clo. Why, 'tis found so.
1 Clo. It must be se offendendo ; it cannot be else. For here
lies the point : if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act ; and
an act hath three branches ; it is to act, to do, and to perform.
Argal she drowned herself wittingly. * * * Here lies the
water ; good : here stands the man ; good. If the man go to this
water and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes ; mark you
that : but if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not
himself. Argal he that is not guilty of his own death shortens
not his own life
2 Clo. But is this law ?
1 Clo, Ay, marry ib't, crowner's quest law.
Hamlet's own speech, on taking in his hand what he
supposed might be the skull of a lawyer, abounds with
lawyer-like thoughts and words :
" Where be his quiddits now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures,
and his tricks ? Why does he suffer this rude knave now to
knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell
him of his action of battery ? Humph ! This fellow might be
in's time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recog
nizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries : is this the
fine of his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his
fine pate full of fine dirt? will his vouchers vouch him no more
of his purchases, and double ones too,, than the length and breadth
of a pair of indentures ? "
TRAGEDIES.] MACBETH. 80
These terms of art are all used seemingly with a full
knowledge of their import; and it would puzzle some
practising barristers with whom I am acquainted to go
over the whole seriatim, and to define each of them
satisfactorily.
In perusing this unrivalled tragedy I am so carried
away by the intense interest which it excites, that I fear
I may have passed over legal phrases and allusions
which I ought to have noticed ; but the only passage I
find with the juridical mark upon it in * Macbeth ' is in
Act iv. Sc. 1, where, the hero exulting in the assurance
from the Weird Sisters that he can receive harm from
" none of woman born," he, rather in a lawyer-like
manner, resolves to provide an indemnity, if the worst
should come to the worst,
" But yet m make assurance double sure,
And take a bond of fate ;"
without much considering what should be the penalty
of the bond, or how he was to enforce the remedy, if the
condition should be broken.
He, immediately after, goes on in the same legal
jargon to say,
a
90 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [TRAGEDIES.
our high-plac'd Macbeth
Shall live the lease of nature."
But, unluckily for Macbeth, the lease contained no
covenants for title or quiet enjoyment : there were like
wise forfeitures to be incurred by the tenant, with a
clause of re-entry, and consequently he was speedily
ousted.*
In the very first scene of this play there is a striking
instance of Shakespeare's proneness to legal phrase
ology : where lago, giving an explanation to Roderigo
of the manner in which he had been disappointed in not
obtaining the place of Othello's lieutenant, notwith
standing the solicitations in his favour of " three great
ones of the city," says
* The lease frequently presents itself to Shakespeare's mind, as
in < Eichard III.,' Act iv. Se. 4
Tell me what state, what dignity, what honour,
Canst thou demise to any child of mine ?
This is as clear a reference to leasing, as if he had said in full,
" demise, lease, grant and to farm let."
TRAGEDIES.] OTHELLO. 91
" But he, as loving his own pride and purposes,
Evades them with a bombast circumstance
Horribly stuffd with epithets of war,
And, in conclusion,
Nonsuits my mediators."
" Nonsuiting " is known to the learned to be the most
disreputable and mortifying mode of being beaten: it
indicates that the action is wholly unfounded on the
plaintiffs own showing, or that there is a fatal defect in
the manner in which his case has been got up : inso
much that Mr. Chitty, the great special pleader, used
to give this advice to young barristers practising at nisi
prius : " Always avoid your attorney when nonsuited,
for till he has a little time for reflection, however much
you may abuse the Judge, he will think that the
nonsuit was all your fault."
In the next scene Shakespeare gives us very distinct
proof that he was acquainted with Admiralty law, as
well as with the procedure of Westminster Hall. De
scribing the feat of the Moor in carrying off Desdemona
against her father's consent, which might either make
or mar his fortune, according as the act might be
sanctioned or nullified, lago observes
" Faith, he to-night hath boarded a land carack :
If it prove lawful prize, he's made for ever;"
G 2
92 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [TRAGEDIES.
the trope indicating that there would be a suit in the
High Court of Admiralty to determine the validity of
the capture.
Then follows, in Act I. Sc. 3, the trial of Othello
before the Senate, as if he had been indicted on Stat.
33 Hen. YII. c. 8, for practising " conjuration, witch
craft, enchantment, and sorcery, to provoke to unlawful
love." Brabantio, the prosecutor, says
" She is abused, stol'n from me, and corrupted
By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks ;
For Nature so preposterously to en- * * *
Sans witchcraft could not."
The presiding Judge at first seems alarmingly to
favour the prosecutor, saying
Duke. Whoe'er he be that in this foul proceeding
Hath thus beguil'd your daughter of herself,
And you of her, the bloody book of law
You shall yourself read, in the bitter letter,
After your own sense.
The Moor, although acting as his own counsel, makes
a noble and skilful defence, directly meeting the sta-
tutable misdemeanour with which he is charged, and
referring pointedly to the very words of the indictment
and the Act of Parliament :
TRAGEDIES.] OTHELLO. 93
" I will a round unvarnish'd tale deliver
Of my whole course of love ; what drugs, what charms,
What conjuration, and what mighty magic
(For such proceedings I am charged withal)
I won his daughter with."
Having fully opened his case, showing that he had used
no forbidden arts, and having explained the course which
he had lawfully pursued, he says in conclusion :
" This only is the witchcraft I have used :
Here comes the lady let her witness it."
He then examines the witness, and is honourably
acquitted.
Again, the application to Othello to forgive Cassio is
made to assume the shape of a juridical proceeding.
Thus Desdemona concludes her address to Cassio, as
suring him of her zeal as his Solicitor :
" I'll intermingle every thing he does
With Cassio's suit : Therefore be merry, Cassio ;
For thy Solicitor shall rather die
Than give thy cause away" (Act in. sc. 3.)
The subsequent part of the same scene shows that
Shakespeare was well acquainted with all courts, low as
well as high ; where lago asks
94 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [TRAGEDIES.
Who has a breast so pure
But some uncleanly apprehensions
Keep leets and law-days, and in session sit
With meditations lawful?
In ' Julius Caesar ' I could not find a single instance
of a Roman being made to talk like an English lawyer ;
but in ' Antony and Cleopatra ' (Act I. Sc. 4) Lepidus,
in trying to palliate the bad qualities and misdeeds of
Antony, uses the language of a conveyancer's chambers
in Lincoln's Inn :
" His faults, in him, seem as the spots of heaven,
More fiery by night's blackness ; hereditary
Bather than purchased"
That is to say, they are taken by descent, not by
purchase*
* So in 'the Second Part of Henry IV.,' Act iv. Sc. 4, the King,
who had usurped the crown, says to the Prince of Wales
for what in me was purchas'd
Falls upon thee in a more fairer sort.
146, I took by purchase, you will take by descent.
TRAGEDIES.] ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. 95
Lay gents (viz., all except lawyers) understand by
"purchase" buying for a sum of money, called the
price ; but lawyers consider that " purchase " is opposed
to descent that all things come to the owner either by
descent or by purchase, and that whatever does not
come through operation of law by descent is purchased,
although it may be the free gift of a donor. Thus, if
land be devised by will to A. in fee, he takes by purchase,
or to B. for life, remainder to A. and his heirs, B. being
a stranger to A., A. takes by purchase ; but upon the
death of A., his eldest son would take by descent.
English lawyers sometimes use these terms meta
phorically, like LEPIDUS. Thus a Law Lord who has
suffered much from hereditary gout, although very tem
perate in his habits, says, " I take it by descent, not by
purchase" Again, Lord Chancellor Eldon, a very bad
shot, having insisted on going out quite alone to shoot,
and boasted of the heavy bag of game which he had
brought home, Lord Stowell, insinuating that he had
filled it with game bought from a poacher, used to say,
" My brother takes his game not by descent, but by
purchase ;" this being a pendant to another joke Lord
Stowell was fond of " My brother, the Chancellor, in
vacation goes out with his gun to kill time."
96 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [TRAGEDIES.
In this drama, in which we should not expect to find
any allusion to English juridical proceedings, Shake
speare shows that he must have been present before
some tiresome, testy, choleric judges at Stratford, War
wick, or Westminster, whom he evidently intends to
depict and to satirise, like my distinguished friend
CHARLES DICKENS, in his famous report of the trial of
Bardel v. Pickwick, before Mr. Justice Starey, for breach
of promise of marriage. Menenius (Act n. Sc. 1), in
reproaching the two tribunes, Sicinius and Brutus, with
their own offences, which they forget while they inveigh
against Coriolanus, says
*' You wear out a good wholesome forenoon in hearing a cause
between an orange- wife and a posset-seller, and then re-journ the
controversy of three pence to a second day of audience. When you
are hearing a matter between party and party, if you chance to be
pinched with the colic, you make faces like mummers, set up the
bloody flag against all patience, and in roaring for a pot
dismiss the controversy pleading more entangled by your hearing :
all the peace you make in their cause is, calling both the parties
knaves."
Shakespeare here mistakes the duties of the Tribune
for those of the Praetor ; but in truth he was recollecting
TRAGEDIES.] COEIOLANUS EOMEO AND JULIET. 97
with disgust what he had himself witnessed in his own
country. Nowadays all English judges are exemplary
for despatch, patience, and good temper ! ! !
|lante0 %nb ijnlui.
The first scene of this romantic drama may be studied
by a student of the Inns of Court to acquire a knowledge
of the law of "assault and battery," and what will
amount to a justification. Although Sampson exclaims,
" My naked weapon is out : quarrel, I will back thee,"
he adds, " Let us take the law of our sides ; let them
begin." Then we learn that neither frowning, nor biting
the thumb, nor answering to a question, "Do you bite
your thumb at us, Sir?" "I do bite my thumb, Sir,"
would be enough to support the plea of se defen-
dendo*
* To show the ignorance and stupidity of Sir Andrew Aguecheek
(' Twelfth Night,' Act iv. Sc. 1) in supposing that son assault
demesne (or that the Plaintiff gave the first blow) i* not a good
defence to an action of battery, he is made to say, " I'll have an
action of battery against him, if there be any law in Illyria : though
I struck him first, yet ifs no matter for that."
98 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [TRAGEDIES,
The scene ends with old Montagu and old Capulet
being bound over, in the English fashion, to keep the
peace, in the same manner as two Warwickshire clowns,
who had been fighting, might have been dealt with at
Charlecote before Sir Thomas Lucy.
The only other scene in this play I have marked to
be noticed for the use of law terms is that between
Mercutio and Benvolio, in which they keenly dispute
which of the two is the more quarrelsome; at last
Benvolio, not denying that he had quarrelled with a
man for coughing in the street, whereby he wakened
Benvolio's dog that lay asleep in the sun, or that he
had quarrelled with another for tying his new shoes with
old riband, contents himself with this tu quoque answer
to Mercutio :
An I were so apt to quarrel as thou art, any man should buy the
fee-simple of my life for an hour and a quarter. (Act in. Sc. 1.)
Talking of the fee-simple of a man's life, and cal
culating how many hours' purchase it was worth, is cer
tainly what might not unnaturally be expected from the
clerk of a country attorney.*
* So in All's Well that Ends Well' (Act iv. Sc. 3) Parolles, the
bragging cowardly soldier, is made to talk like a conveyancer in
Lincoln's Inn : " He will sell the fee-simple of his salvation * *
and cut the entail from all remainders"
POEMS.] VENUS AND ADONIS. 99
faints.
With a view to your inquiry respecting the learning
of Shakespeare I have now, my dear Mr. Payne Collier,
gone through all his plays, and I can venture to speak
of their contents with some confidence, having been long
familiar with them. His Poems are by no means so
well known to me; for, although I have occasionally
looked into them, and I am not blind to their beauties,
I must confess that I never could discover in them (like
some of his enthusiastic admirers) the same proofs of
surpassing genius which render him immortal as a
dramatist. But a cursory perusal of them does dis
cover the propensity to legal thoughts and words which
might be expected in an attorney's clerk who takes to
rhyming.
I shall select a few instances, without unnecessarily
adding any comment.
From VENUS AND ADONIS.
" But when the heart's attorney once is mute,
The client breaks as desperate in the suit."
" Which purchase if thou make for fear of slips,
Set thy seal-manual on my wax-red lips."
Her pleading hath deserved a greater fee'
100 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS. [POEMS.
From the EAPE OF LUCRECE.
<* Dim register and notary of shame,"
" For me I force not argument a straw,
Since that my case is past the help of law"
" No rightful plea might plead for justice there.'
*' Hath served a dumb arrest upon his tongue."
From the SONNETS.
" When, to the sessions of sweet silent thought
" So should that beauty which you hold in lease'
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.'
And 'gainst thyself a lawful plea commence. '
POEMS.] SONNETS. 101
" But be contented ; when that fell arrest
Without all bail shall carry me away." *
" Of faults concealed, wherein I am attainted."
" Which works on leases of short numbered hours.
" Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage
Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit,
To thee I send this written embassage."f
" And I myself am mortgaged"
" Why so large cost, having so short a lease ?
" So should that beaut/, which you hold in lease,
Find no determination "
* Death is the sheriff's officer, strict in his arrest, and will take no
bail.
t This is the beginning of a love-letter, in the language of a vassal
doing homage to his liege lord.
J Taxing an overcharge in the attorney's bill of costs.
The word " determination " is always used by lawyers instead
of " end."
102 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS.
SONNET XL VI.
" Mine Eye and Heart are at a mortal war
How to divide the conquest of thy sight ;
Mine Eye my Heart thy picture's sight would bar,
My Heart mine Eye the freedom of that right.
My Heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie
(A closet never pierced with crystal eyes),
But the Defendant doth that plea deny,
And says in him thy fair appearance lies.
To 'cide this title is impannelled
A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the Heart ;
And by their verdict is determined
The clear Eye's moiety, and the dear Heart's part ;
As thus : mine Eyes' due is thine outward part,
And my Heart's right, thine inward love of heart."
I need not go further than this sonnet, which is
so intensely legal in its language and imagery, that
without a considerable knowledge of English forensic
procedure it cannot be fully understood. A lover being
supposed to have made a conquest of [i. e. to have gained
by purchase] his mistress, his EYE and his HEART,
holding as joint-tenants, have a contest as to how she is
to be partitioned between them, each moiety then to be
held in severalty. There are regular Pleadings in the
suit, the HEART being represented as Plaintiff and the
EYE as Defendant. At last issue is joined on what the
one affirms and the other denies. Now a jury [in the
nature of an inquest] is to be impannelled to 'cide
HIS WILL. 103
[decide] and by their verdict to apportion between the
litigating parties the subject matter to be divided.
The jury fortunately are unanimous, and after due
deliberation find for the EYE in respect of the lady's
outward form, and for the HEART in respect of her
inward love.
Surely Sonnet XLVI. smells as potently of the
attorney's office as any of the stanzas penned by Lord
Kenyon while an attorney's clerk in Wales.
Among Shakespeare's writings, I think that attention
should be paid to his WILL, for, upon a careful perusal,
it will be found to have been in all probability composed
by himself. It seems much too simple, terse, and
condensed, to have been the composition of a Stratford
attorney, who was to be paid by the number of lines
which it contained. But a testator, without professional
experience, could hardly have used language so appro
priate as we find in this will, to express his meaning.
Shakespeare, the greatest of British dramatists,
appears to have been as anxious as Sir Walter Scott,
the greatest of British novelists, to found a family,
104 SHAKESPEARE S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS.
although he does not require all his descendants to
"bear the name and arms of Shakespeare." But, as
far as the rules of English law would permit, he seeks
to perpetuate in an heir male, descended from one of
his daughters (his son having died in infancy, and there
being no longer any prospect of issue male of his own),
all the houses and lands he had acquired, which were
quite sufficient for a respectable Warwickshire squire.
His favourite daughter, Susanna, married to Dr. Hall,
an eminent physician, was to be the stirps from which
this line of male heirs was to spring; and the tes
tator creates an estate in tail male, with remainders
over, which, but for fines and recoveries, would have
kept the whole of his property in one male represen
tative for generations to come.
The will, dated 25th March, 1616, a month before
his death, having given legacies to various friends and
relations, thus proceeds :
" Item, I give, will, bequeath, and devise unto my daughter,
Susanna Hall, for better enabling of her to perform this my will and
towards performance thereof, all that capital messuage or tenement,
with the appurtenances, in Stratford aforesaid, called the New Place,
wherein I now dwell, and two messuages or tenements with the
appurtenances, situate, lying, and being in Henley Street, within
the borough of Stratford aforesaid; and all my barns, stables,
orchards, gardens, lands, tenements, and hereditaments whatsoever,
situate, lying, and being, or to be had, received, perceived, or taken,
within the towns, hamlets, villages, fields, and grounds of Stratford-
upon-Avon, Old Stratford, Bishopton, and. Welcombe, or in any of
them, in. the said county of Warwick ; and also all that messuage
HIS WILL. 105
or tenement, with the appurtenances, wherein one John Robinson
dwelleth, situate, lying, and being in the Blackfriars in London, near
the Wardrobe ; and all other my lands, tenements, and heredita
ments whatsoever ; to have and to hold all and singular the said
premises, with their appurtenances, unto the said Susanna Hall, for
and during the term of her natural life ; and after her decease, to
the first son of her body lawfully issuing, and to the heirs males of
the body of the said first son lawfully issuing ; and for default of
such issue, to the said second son of her body lawfully issuing, and to
the heirs males of the body of the second son lawfully issuing ; and
for default of such heirs, to the third son of the body of the said
Susanna lawfully issuing, and to the heirs males of the body of the
said third son lawfully issuing ; and for default of such issue, the
same so to be and remain to the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh sons
of her body, lawfully issuing one after another, and to the heirs
males of the bodies of the said fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh sons
lawfully issuing, in such manner as it is before limited to be and
remain to the first, second, and third sons of her body, and to their
heirs males ; and for default of such issue, the said premises to be
and remain to my said niece Hall, and the heirs males of her body
lawfully issuing; and for default of such issue, to my daughter
Judith, and the heirs males of her body lawfully issuing ; and for
default of such issue, to the right heirs of me the said William
Shakespeare for ever."
In his will, when originally engrossed, there was no
notice whatever taken of his wife; but immediately
after these limitations he subsequently interpolated a
bequest to her in the following words :
"I give unto my wife my second best bed with the furniture."
The subject of this magnificent gift being only per
sonal property, he shows his technical skill by omitting
106 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS.
the word devise, which he had used in disposing of his
realty.*
* The idolatrous worshippers of Shakespeare, who think it neces
sary to make his moral qualities as exalted as his poetical genius,
account for this sorry bequest, and for no other notice being taken
of poor Mrs. Shakespeare in the will, by saying that he knew she
was sufficiently provided for by her right to dower out of his landed
property, which the law would give her ; and they add that he must
have been tenderly attached to her, because (they take upon them
selves to say) she was exquisitely beautiful as well as strictly vir
tuous. But she was left by her husband without house or furniture
(except the second best bed), or a kind word, or any other token of
his love ; and I sadly fear that between William Shakespeare and
Ann Hathaway the course of true love never did run smooth. His
boyish inexperience was no doubt pleased for a short time with her
caresses ; but he probably found that their union was " misgraffed
in respect of years," and gave advice from his own experience when
he said,
' Let still the woman take
An elder than herself ; so wears she to him,
So sways she level in her husband's heart.
For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,
Our fancies are more giddy and infirm,
More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn,
Than women's are. * *
Then let thy love be younger than thyself,
Or thy affection cannot hold the bent;
For women are like roses ; whose fair flower,
Being once displayed, doth fall that very hour."
To strengthen the suspicion that Shakespeare was likely not to
have much respect for his wife, persons animated by the spirit of
the late John Wilson Croker (although Shakespeare's biographers, in
the absence of any register of his marriage, had conjectured that it
took place in June, 1582), by searching the records of the Eccle
siastical Court at Worcester, have lately made the very awkward
discovery that the bond given on grant of the licence for William
RETKOSPECT. 107
Having concluded my examination of Shakespeare's
juridical phrases and forensic allusions, on the retro
spect I am amazed, not only by their number, but by
the accuracy and propriety with which they are uni
formly introduced. There is nothing so dangerous as
for one not of the craft to tamper with our free-masonry.
In the House of Commons I have heard a county
member, who meant to intimate that he entirely con
curred with the last preceding speaker, say, " I join issue
with the honourable gentleman who has just sat down ; *
the legal sense of which is, " I flatly contradict all his
facts and deny his inferences." JUNIUS, who was fond
of dabbling in law, and who was supposed by some to
be a lawyer (although Sir Philip Francis, then a clerk
in the War Office, is now ascertained, beyond all doubt,
to have been the man), in his address to the English
nation, speaking of the House of Commons, and wishing
Shakespeare to marry Ann Hathaway is dated 26th November, 1582,
while the entry in the parish register of the baptism of Susanna,
their eldest child, is dated 26th May, 1583. As Shakespeare, at
the time of this misfortune, was a lad of eighteen years of age, and
Miss Hathaway was more than seven years his senior, he could
hardly have been the seducer ; and I am afraid that she was " no
better than she should be," whatever imaginary personal charms may
be imputed to her.
H 2
108 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS.
to say that the beneficial interest in the state belongs to
the people, and not to their representatives, says,
" They are only trustees ; the fee is in us." Now every
attorney's clerk knows that when land is held in trust,
the fee (or legal estate) is in the trustee, and that
the beneficiary has only an equitable interest. While
Novelists and Dramatists are constantly making mis
takes as to the law of marriage, of wills, and of inherit
ance, to Shakespeare's law, lavishly as he propounds it,
there can neither be demurrer, nor bill of exceptions,
nor writ of error.
He is no doubt equally accurate in referring to some
other professions, but these references are rare and com
paratively slight. Some have contended that he must
have been by trade a gardener, from the conversation, in
the ' WINTER'S TALE,' between Perdita, Polixenes, and
Florizel, about raising carnations and gilliflowers, and
the skilful grafting of fruit trees. Others have con
tended that Shakespeare must have been bred to the sea 9
from the nautical language in which directions are given
for the maneuvering of the ship in the ' TEMPEST/ and
from the graphic description in Henry IV.'s soliloquy of
the "high and giddy mast," of the "ruffian billows," of
the "slippery shrouds," and of "sealing up the ship
boy's eyes." Nay, notwithstanding the admonition to
be found in his works, "Throw physic to the dogs,"
it KAR been gravely suggested that he must have been
HIS REFERENCES TO OTHER PROFESSIONS. 109
initiated in medicine, from the minute inventory of the
contents of the apothecary's shop in 'Romeo and Juliet.'
But the descriptions thus relied upon, however minute,
exact, and picturesque, will be found to be the result of
casual observation, and they prove only nice percep
tion, accurate recollection, and extraordinary power of
pictorial language. Take the last instance referred to
Romeo's photograph of the apothecary and his shop.
" Meagre were his looks,
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones :
And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
An alligator stuffed, and other skins
Of ill-shaped fishes ; and about his shelves
A beggarly account of empty boxes.
Green earthen pots, bladders and musty seeds,
Kemnants of packthread and old cakes of roses,
Were thinly scattered to make up a show."
(Act v. Sc. 1.)
Any observing customer, who had once entered the
shop to buy a dose of rhubarb, might have safely given
a similar account of what he saw, although utterly
ignorant of Galen and Hippocrates. But let a non-
professional man, however acute, presume to talk law,
or to draw illustrations from legal science in discussing
other subjects, and he will very speedily fall into some
laughable absurdity.
To conclude my summing up of the evidence under
110 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS.
this head, I say, if Shakespeare is shown to have
possessed a knowledge of law, which he might have
acquired as clerk in an attorney's office in Stratford,
and which he could have acquired in no other way, we
are justified in believing the fact that he was a clerk in
an attorney's office at Stratford, without any direct
proof of the fact. Logicians and jurists allow us to
infer a fact of which there is no direct proof, from facts
expressly proved, if the fact to be inferred may have
existed, if it be consistent with all other facts known to
exist, and if facts known to exist can only be accounted
for by inferring the fact to be inferred.
But, my dear Mr. Payne Collier, you must not from
all this suppose that I have really become an absolute
convert to your side of the question. ^ENEAS, while in
the shades below, for a time believed in the reality of all
he seemed to see and to hear; but, when dismissed
through the ivory gate, he found that he had been
dreaming. I hope that my arguments do not "come
like shadows, so depart." Still I must warn you that
I myself remain rather sceptical. All that I can
admit to you is that you may be right, and that while
there is weighty evidence for you, there is nothing con
clusive against you.
Kesuming the Judge, however, I must lay down that
your opponents are not called upon to prove a negative,
and that the onus prdbandi rests upon you. You must
STATE OF THE EVIDENCE. Ill
likewise remember that yon require us implicitly to
believe a fact, which, were it true, positive and irre
fragable evidence in Shakespeare's own handwriting
might have been forthcoming to establish it. Not
having been actually inrolled as an attorney, neither
the records of the local court at Stratford, nor of the
superior courts at Westminster, would present his name,
as being concerned in any suits as an attorney ; but it
might have been reasonably expected that there would
have been deeds or wills witnessed by him still extant ;
and, after a very diligent search, none such can
be discovered. Nor can this consideration be disre
garded, that between Nash's Epistle in the end of
the 16th century, and Chalmers's suggestion more
than two hundred years after, there is no hint by his
foes or his friends of Shakespeare having consumed
pens, paper, ink, and pounce in an attorney's office at
Stratford.*
I am quite serious and sincere in what I have written
about Nash and Robert Greene having asserted the fact ;
but I by no means think that on this ground alone
it must necessarily be taken for truth. Their statement
" Three years I sat his smoky room in,
Pens, paper, ink, and pounce consuminV
Pleaders Guide.
112 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS.
that he had belonged to the profession of the law may
be as false as that he was a plagiarist from Seneca.
Nash and Robert Greene may have invented it, or re
peated it on some groundless rumour. Shakespeare
may have contradicted and refuted it twenty times ; or,
not thinking it discreditable, though untrue, he may
have thought it undeserving of any notice. Observing
what fictitious statements are introduced into the pub
lished " Lives " of living individuals, in our own time,
when truth in such matters can be so much more easily
ascertained, and error so much more easily corrected,
we should be slow to give faith to an uncorroborated
statement made near three centuries ago by persons
who were evidently actuated by malice.*
* In several successive Lives of Lord Chief Justice Campbell it is
related that, by going for a few weeks to Ireland as Chancellor,
he obtained a pension of 4000Z. a year, which he has ever since
received, thereby robbing the public ; whereas in truth and in
fact, he made it a stipulation on his going to Ireland that he
should receive no pension and pension he never did receive and,
without pension or place, for years after he returned from Ireland
he regularly served the public in the Judicial Committee of the
Privy Council, and in the judicial business of the House of Lords.
This erroneous statement is to be found in a recent Life of Lord C.,
which is upon the whole laudatory above due measure, but in which
the author laments that there was one fault to be imputed to him
which could not be passed over by an impartial biographer, viz.,
that he had most improperly obtained this Irish pension, which he
STATE OF THE EVIDENCE. 113
What you have mainly to rely upon (and this con
sideration may prevail Jn your favour with a large
majority of the literary world) is the seemingly utter
impossibility of Shakespeare having acquired, on any
other theory, the wonderful knowledge of law which he
undoubtedly displays. But we must bear in mind that,
although he was a mortal man, and nothing miraculous
can be attributed to him, he was intellectually the most
gifted of mankind, and that he was capable of acquiring
knowledge where the opportunities he enjoyed would
have been insufficient for any other. Supposing that
John the father lived as a gentleman, or respectably
carried on trade as one of the principal inhabitants of
the town, and -that William the son, from the time of
leaving the grammar-school till he went to London,
resided with his fathei, assisting him in the manage
ment of his houses and land and any ancillary business
carried on by him, the son might have been in the
habit of attending trials in the Stratford Court of Ee-
cord, and when of age he might have been summoned
to serve as a juryman there or at the Court Leet ; he
might have been intimate with some of the attorneys
still continues to receive without any benefit being derived by the
public from his services. Lord C. ought to speak tenderly of
Biographers, but I am afraid that they may sometimes be justly
compared to the hogs of Westphalia, who without discrimination
pick up what falls from one another.
114 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS.
who practised in the town and with their clerks, and
while in their company at fairs, wakes, church ales,
bowling-, bell-ringing-, and hurling-matches, he might
not only have picked up some of their professional
jargon, but gained some insight into the principles of
their calling, which are not without interest to the
curious.
Moreover, it is to be considered that, although
Shakespeare in 1589 was unquestionably a shareholder
in the Blackfriars Theatre, and had trod the boards as
an actor, the time when he began to write for the stage
is uncertain ; and we are not in possession of any piece
which we assuredly know to have been written and
finished by him before the year 1592. Thus there was
a long interval between his arrival in London and the
publication of any of the dramas from which my selec
tions are made. In this interval he was no doubt con
versant with all sorts and conditions of men. I am
sorry to say I cannot discover that at any period of his
life Lord Chancellors or Lord Chief Justices showed the
good taste to cultivate his acquaintance.* But he must
have been intimate with the students at the Inns of
* Although it is said that Shakespeare was introduced to Lord
Chancellor Ellesmere, Lord Somers is the first legal dignitary I
find forming friendships with literary men.
STATE OF THE EVIDENCE. 115
Court, who were in the habit of playing before Queen
Elizabeth at Greenwich^ as he took a part in these court
theatricals ; and the author, in all probability, was
present among the lawyers when ' Twelfth Night ' was
brought out at the Headers' Feast in the Middle
Temple, and when ' Othello ' was acted at Lord Chan
cellor Ellesmere's before Queen Elizabeth.
Shakespeare, during his first years in London, when
his purse was low, may have dined at the ordinary in
Alsatia, thus described by Dekker, where he may have
had a daily surfeit of law, if, with his universal thirst for
knowledge, he had any desire to drink deeply at this
muddy fountain :
" There is another ordinary at which your London usurer, your
stale bachelor, and your thi ifty attorney do resort ; the price three
pence ; the rooms as full of company as a gaol ; and indeed divided
into several wards, like the beds of an hospital. * * * If they
chance to discourse, it is of nothing but of statutes, bonds, recog
nizances, fines, recoveries, audits, rents, subsidies, sureties, en
closures, liveries, indictments, outlawries, feoffments, judgments,
commissions, bankrupts, amercements, and of such horrible matter."
Dekker's GuWs Hornbook, 1609.
In such company a willing listener might soon make
great progress in law ; and it may be urged, that I
have unconsciously exaggerated the difficulty to be
encountered by Shakespeare in picking up his know-
I
116 SHAKESPEARE'S LEGAL ACQUIREMENTS.
ledge of that which I myself have been so long labouring
to understand. Many may think that Shakespeare
resembles his own Prince Hal, when reformed and
become Henry V., who, notwithstanding his revels in
East Cheap, and with no apparent opportunities of
acquiring the knowledge he displayed, astonished the
world with his universal wisdom :
" Hear him but reason in divinity,
And, all-admiring, with an inward wish,
You would desire the king were made a prelate.
Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,
You would say, it hath been all-in-all his study.
List his discourse of war, and you shall hear
A fearful battle render'd you in music.
Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian knot of it he will unloose
Familiar as his garter ; that, when he speaks,
The air, a chartered libertine, is still,
And the mute wonder lurketh in man's ears
To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences ;
So that the art, and practick part of life,
Must be the mistress to this theorick."
Henry V., Act i. Sc. 1.
We cannot argue with confidence on the principles
which would guide us to safe conclusions respecting
ordinary men, when we are reasoning respecting one of
whom it was truly said :
CONCLUSION. 117
" Each change of many-coloured life he drew,
Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new ;
Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign,
And panting Time toiled after him in vain."
And now, my dear Mr. Payne Collier, I must con
clude. Long ago, I dare say, you were heartily sorry
that you ever thought of taking the opinion of counsel
on this knotty point; and at last you may not only
exclaim, " I am no wiser than I was," but shaking your
head, like old DEMIPHO in ' Terence,' after being present
at a consultation of lawyers on the validity of his son's
marriage, you may sigh and say, " Incertior sum multo
quam dudum."
However, if my scepticism and my argumentation
(worthy of Serjeant Eitherside) should stimulate you
deliberately to reconsider the question, and to com
municate your matured judgment to the world, I shall
not have doubted or hallucinated in vain. By another
outpouring of your Shakespearian lore you may entirely
convince, and at all events you will much gratify,
Your sincere admirer and friend,
(Signed) CAMPBELL.
THE END.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET,
AND CHARING CROSS.
ALBEMARLK STBEET, LONDOS.
January, 1859.
MR MURRAY'S
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