Part Two William Shakespeare Attorney At Law Essay Example For Students

Part Two William Shakespeare Attorney At Law Essay Part Two William Shakespeare Attorney At Law Lord Campbell, as we have just seen, mentions Henry VIII as one of the fourteen plays in which he has found nothing which relates to the question in hand; but Mr. Rushton opens his batteries with the following passage from the very play just named; and to most readers it will seem a bomb of the largest dimensions, sent right into the citadel of his opponents: Suff. Lord Cardinal, the kings further pleasure is, Because all those things you have done of late By your power legatine within this kingdom Fall into compass of a premunire, 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 kings protection:ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?this is my charge. ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?King Henry VIII, Act iii. Sc. 2. We shall first remark, that, in spite of his declaration as to Henry VIII, Lord Campbell does cite and quote this very, passage p. 2; and, indeed, he must have been as unappreciative as he seems to have been inaccurate, had he failed to do so; for, upon its face, it is, with one or two exceptions, the most important passage of the kind to be found in Shakespeares works. Premunire is thus defined in an old law-book, which was accessible to Shakespeare: Premunire is a writ, and it lieth where any man sueth any other in the spirituall court for anything that is determinable in the Kings Court, and that is ordeined by certaine statutes, and great punishment therefore ordeined, as it appeareth by the same statutes, viz. that he shall be out of the Kings protection, and that he be put in prison without baile or mainprise till that he have made fine at the Kings will, and that his landes and goods shal be forfait, if he come not within ij. moneths. ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?Termes de la Ley, 1595, fol. 144. The object of the writ was to prevent the abuse of spiritual power. Now, here is a law-term quite out of the common, which is used by Shakespeare with a well-deployed knowledge of the power of the writ of which it is the name. Must we, therefore, suppose that Shakespeare had obtained his knowledge of the purpose and the power of this writ in the course of professional reading or practice? If we looked no farther than Shakespeares page, such a supposition might seem to be warranted. But if we turn to Michael Draytons Legend of Great Cromwell, first published, we believe, in 1607, but certainly some years before Henry VIII was written, and the subject of which figures in that play, we find these lines, This Me to urge the Premunire wonne, Ordaind in matters dangerous and hie; In t which the heedlesse Prelacie were runne That back into the Papacie did flie.  ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬? Ed. 1619, p. 382. Here is the very phrase in question, used with a knowledge of its meaning and of the functions of the writ hardly less remarkable than that evinced in the passage from Henry VIII, though expressed in a different manner, owing chiefly to the fact that Drayton wrote a didactic poem and Shakespeare a drama. But Drayton is not known to have been an attorneys clerk, nor has he been suspected, from his writings, or any other cause, to have had any knowledge of the law. Both he and Shakespeare, however, read the Chronicles. Reading men perused Halls and Holinsheds huge blackletter folios in Queen Elizabeths time with as much interest as they do Macaulays or Prescotts elegant octavos in the reign of her successor, Victoria. Shakespeare drew again and again upon the former for the material of his historical plays; and in writing Henry VIII he adopted often the very language of the Chronicler. The well-known description of Wolsey, which he puts into the mouth of Queen Katherine, He was a man Of an unbounded stomach, ever ranking Himself with princes; one that by suggestion Tithd all the kingdom: Simony was fair play: His own opinion was his law: I the presence He would say untruths; and be ever double, Both in his words and meaning: He was never, But where he meant to ruin, pitiful: His promises were, as he then was, mighty; But his performance, as he is now, nothing: Of his own body he was ill, and gave The clergy ill example, is little more than the following paragraph from Holinshed put into verse: This cardinal as you may perceive in this storie was of a great stomach, for he compted himselfe equall with princes, and by craftie suggestion gat into his hands innumerable treasure: he forced little on simonie, and was not pittiful, and stood affectionate in his owne opinion: in open presence he would lie and saie untruth, and was double both in speach and meaning: he wou ld promise much and performe little: he was vicious of his bodie, and gave the clergie evill example. ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?Ed. 1587, vol. iii. p. 922. Turning back from the page on which the Chronicler comments upon the life of the dead prime-minister, to that on which he records his fall, we find these passages: In the meane time, the king, being informed that all those things that the cardinall had doone by his power legatine within this realme were in the case of the premunire and provision, caused his attornie, Christopher Hales, to sue out a writ of premunire against him. . . . . . After this in the kings bench his matter for the premunire being called upon, two atturneis which he had authorised by his warrant, signed with his owne hand, confessed the action, and so bad judgement to forfeit all his lands, tenements, goods, and cattels, and to be out of the kings protection. ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?Ib. p. 909. If the reader will look back at the passage touching the premunire, quoted above, he will see that these few lines from Raphael Holinshed are somewhat fatal to an argument in favor of Shakespeares legal acquirements, in so far as it rests in any degree upon the use of terms or the knowledge displayed in that passage. Shakespeare and Drayton are here in the same boat, though not with the same sculls. Before we shelve HolinshedÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?for the good Raphaels folios are like Falstaff in size, if not in wit, and, when once laid flat-long, require levers to set them up on end againÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?let us see if he cannot help us to account for more of the legalisms that our Lord Chief Justice and our barrister have smelt out in Shakespeares historical plays. Mr. Rushton quotes the following passages from Richard II: York. Is not Gaunt dead? and doth not Hereford live? * * * Take Herefords rights away, and take from time His charters and his customary rights; Let not to-morrow, then, ensue to-day: Be not thyself; for how art thou a king, But by fair sequence and succession? Now, afore God, God forbid I say true! If you do wrongfully seize Herefords rights, Call in the letters patents that he hath By his attorneys-general to sue, His livery, and deny his offerd homage, You pluck a thousand dangers on your head. ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?Act ii. Sc. 1. Bol. I am denied to sue my livery here, And yet my letters patents give me leave: My fathers goods are all distraind and sold; And these, and all, are all amiss employed. What would you have me do? I am a subject, And challenge law: Attorneys are denied me; And therefore personally I lay my claim To my inheritance of free descent. ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?Ib. Sc. 3. And Lord Campbell, although he passes by these passages in Richard II, quotes, as important, from a speech of Hotspurs in the First Part of Henry IV, the following lines, which, it will be seen, refer to the same act of oppression on the part of Richard II towards Bolingbroke: He came but to be Duke of Lancaster, To sue his livery and beg his bread. ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?Act iv. Sc. 3. But, here again, Shakespeare, although he may have known more law than Holinshed, or even Hall, who was a barrister, only used the law-terms that he found in the paragraph which furnished him with the incident that he dramatized. For, after recording the death of Gaunt, the Chronicle goes on: The death of this duke gave occasion of increasing more hatred in the people of this realme toward the king; for he seized into his hands all the rents and reuenues of his hands which ought to have descended unto the duke of Hereford by lawfull inheritance, in reuoking his letters patents which he had granted to him before, by virtue whereof he might make, his attorneis generall to sue liverie for him of any manner of inheritances or possessions that might from thencefoorth fall unto him, and that his homage might be respited with making reasonable fine, etc. ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?HOLINSHED, Ed. 1587, p. 496. The only legal phrase, however, in these passages of Richard II, which seems to imply very extraordinary legal knowledge, is the one repeated in Henry IVÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?sue his livery,ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?which was the term applied to the process by which, in the old feudal tenures, wards, whether of the king or other guardian, on arriving at legal age, could compel a delivery of their estates to them from their guardians. But hence, it became a metaphorical expression to mean merely the attainment of majority, and in this sense seems to have been very generally understood and not uncommonly used. See the following, from an author who was no attorney or attorneys clerk: If Cupid Shoot arrows of that weight, Ill swear devoutly Has sued his livery and is no more a boy. ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?FLETCHERS Womans Prize, Act ii. Sc. 1. And this, from the works of a divine: Our little Cupid hath sued livery And is no more in his minority. ÃÆ' ¢Ã ƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?DONNES Eclogues, 1613. Spenser, too, uses the phrase figuratively in another sense, in the following passageÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?which may be one of those which Chalmers had in his eye, when, according to Lord Campbell, he first suggested that Shakespeare was once an attorneys clerk: She gladly did of that same Babe accept, As of her owne by liverey and seisin; And having over it a little wept, She bore it thence, and ever as her owne it kept. ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?Faerie Queene, B. VI. C. iv. st. 37. So, for instance of the phrase fee, which Lord Campbell notices as one of those expressions and allusions which crop out in Hamlet, showing the substratum of law in the author mind, 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. ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?Act iv. Sc. 2. and of which Mr. Rushton quotes several instances in its fuller form, fee simple,ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?we have but to turn back a few stanzas in this same canto of the Faerie Queene, to find one in which the term is used with the completest apprehension of its meaning: So is my lord now seizd of fill the land, As in his fee, with peaceable estate, And quietly doth hold it in his hand, Ne any dares with him for it debate. ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?Ib. st. 30. And in the next canto: Of which the greatest part is due to me, And heaven itself, by heritage in fee. ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?Ib. C. vii. st. 15. And in the first of these two passages from the Faerie Queene, we have two words, seized and estate, intelligently and correctly used in their purely legal sense, as Shakespeare himself uses them in the following passages, which our Chief Justice and our barrister have both passed by, as, indeed, they have passed many others equally worthy of notice: Did forfeit with his life all those his lands Which he stood seizd of to the conqueror. ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?Hamlet, Act i. Sc. 1. The terms of our estate may not endure Hazard so near us, ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?Ib. Act iii. Sc. 3. Part Three William Shakespeare Attorney At Law Among the most important passages cited by both our authors is one that every reader of Shakespeare will recollect, when it is mentioned to himÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?Hamlets speech over the, skull in the grave-digging scene. But although this speech is remarkable for the number of law terms used in it, only one of them seems to evince any recondite knowledge of the law. This is the word statutes, in the following sentence: This fellow might be ins time a buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries. ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?Act v. Sc. 1. The general reader supposes, we believe, and very naturally, that here statutes means laws, Acts of Parliament concerning real estate. But, as Mr. Rushton remarks, Malone having explained the term before him, The statutes referred to by Hamlet are, doubtless, statutes merchant and statutes staple. And a statute merchant so called from the 13th Edward I, De mercatoribus was a bond acknowledged before one of the clerks of the statutes merchant, and the mayor, etc. , etc. A statute staple, properly so called, was a bond of record, acknowledged before the mayor of the staple, etc. , etc. Here we again have a law-term apparently so out of the ken of an unprofessional writer, that it would seem to flavor the Attorney and Solicitor theory. But let us see if the knowledge which its use implies was confined to Shakespeare among the dramatists of his time. In Fletchers Noble Gentleman, a comedy, first performed in 1625, we find a lady, sorely pushed for ready cash, crying out, Take up at any use: give bond, or land, Or mighty statutes, able by their strength To tie up Samson, were he now alive. ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?Act i. Sc. 1. And in Middletons Family of Love, where, by the way, the Free-Love folk of our own day may find their peculiar notions set forth and made the basis of the action, though the play was printed two hundred and fifty years ago we find a female free-loveyer thus teaching a mercantile brother of the family, that, although she has a sisterly disregard for some worldly restraints, she yet keeps an eye on the main chance: Tut, you are master Dryfab, the merchant: your skill is greater in cony-skins and woolpacks than in gentlemen. His lands be in statutes: you merchants were wont to be merchant staplers; but now gentlemen have gotten up the trade; for there is not one gentleman amongst twenty but his lands be engaged in twenty statutes staple. ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?Act i. Sc. 3. And in the very first speech of the first scene of the same play, the husband of this virtuous and careful dame says of the same Gerardine, who, as he is poor and a gentleman, it need hardly be said, is about the only honest man in the piece,ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?His lands be in statutes. And that poor debauchee, Robert Greene, who knew no more of law than be might have derived from such limited, though authentic information as to its powers over gentlemen who made debts without the intention of paying them, as he may have received at frequent unsolicited interviews with a sergeant or a bum-bailiff, has this passage in his Quip for an Upstart Courtier, 1592: The mercer he followeth the young upstart gentleman that bath no government of himself and feedeth his humour to go brave: he shall not want silks, sattins, velvets to pranke abroad in his pompe; but with this proviso, that he must bind over his land in a statute merchant or staple; and so at last forfeit all unto the merciless mercer, and leave himself never a foot of land in England. Very profound legal studies, therefore, cannot be predicated of Shakespeare on the ground of the knowledge which he has shown of this peculiar kind of statute. It is not surprising that both our legal Shakespearean commentators cite the following passage from As You Like It in support of their theory; for in it the word extent is used in a sense so purely technical, that not one in a thousand of Shakespeares lay readers nowadays would understand it without a note: Duke F. Well, push him out of doors, And let my officers of such a nature Make an extent upon his house and lands. ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ã ƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?Act iii. Sc. 1. Extent, as Mr. Rushton remarks, is directed to the sheriff to seize and value lands and goods to the utmost extent; an extendi facias, as Lord Campbell authoritatively says, applying to the house and lands as a fieri facias would apply to goods and chattels, or a capias ad satisfaciendum to the person. But that John Fletcher knew, as well as my Lord Chief Justice, or Mr. Barrister Rushton, or even, perhaps, William Shakespeare, all the woes that followed an extent, the elder Mr. Weller at least would not have doubted, had he in the course of his literary leisure fallen upon the following passage in Wit Without Money 1630: Val. Mark me, widows Are long extents in law upon mens livings, Upon their bodies winding-sheets: they that enjoy em. Lie but with dead mens monuments, find beget Only their own ill epitaphs. ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?Act ii. Sc. 2. George Wilkins, too, the obscure author of The Miseries of Enforced Marriage, uses the term with as full an understanding, though not with so feeling an expression or so scandalous an illustration of it, in the following passage from the fifth act of that play, which was produced about 1605 or 1606: They are usurers; they come yawning for money; and the sheriff with them is come to serve an extent upon your land, and then seize your body by force of execution. Another seemingly recondite law-phrase used by Shakespeare, which Lord Campbell passes entirely by, though Mr. Rushton quotes three instances of it, is taken with the manner. This has nothing to do with good manners or ill manners; but, in the words of the old law-book before cited, is when a theefe hath stollen and is followed with hue and crie and taken, having that found about him which he stoleÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?that is called ye maynour. And so we commonly use to saye, when wee finde one doing of an unlawfull act, that we tooke him with the maynour or manner. ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?Termes de la Ley, 1595, fol. 126, b. Shakespeare, therefore, uses the phrase with perfect understanding, when he makes Prince Hal say to Bardolph, O villain, thou stolest a cup of sack eighteen years ago, and wert taken with the manner, and ever since thou hast blushed extempore. ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?1 Henry IV. Act ii. Sc. 4. But so Fletcher uses the same phrase, and as correctly, when he makes Perez say to Estefania, in Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, How like a sheep-biting rogue, taken I the manner, And ready for the halter, dost thou look now! ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?Act v. Sc. 4. But both Fletcher and Shakespeare, in their use of this phrase, unusual as it now seems to us, have only exemplified the custom referred to by our contemporary local authority,ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?And so we commonly use to saye, when wee finde one doing of an unlawfull act, that we tooke him with the maynour; though this must doubtless be understood to refer to persons of a certain degree of education and knowledge of the world. It seems, then, that the application of legal phraseology to the ordinary affairs of life was more common two hundred and fifty years ago than now; though even now-a-days it is much more generally used in the rural districts than persons who have not lived in them would suppose. There law shares with agriculture the function of providing those phrases of common conversation which, used figuratively at first, and often with poetic feeling, soon pass into mere thought-saving formulas of speech, and which in large cities are, chiefly drawn from tr ade and politics. And if in the use of the law-terms upon which we have remarked, which are the more, especially technical and remote from the language, of unprofessional life, among all those which occur in Shakespeares works, he was not singular, but, as we have seen, availed himself only of a knowledge which other contemporary poets and playwrights possessed, how much more easily might we show that those commoner legal words and phrases, to remarks upon Shakespeares use of which both the books before us and especially Lord Campbells are mainly devoted, judgment, fine, these presents, testaments, attorney, arbitrator, fees, bond, lease, pleading, arrest, session, mortgage, vouchers, indentures, assault, battery, dower, covenant, distrain, bail, non-suit, etc. , etc. , etc. ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?words which everybody understandsÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?are scattered through all the literature of Shakespeares time, and, indeed, of all time since there were courts and suits at la w! Many of the passages which Lord Campbell cites as evidence of Shakespeares legal acquirements excite only a smile at the self-delusion of the critic who could regard them for a moment in that light. For instance, these lines in that most exquisite song in Measure for MeasureÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?Take, oh, take those lips awayÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬? But my kisses bring again Seals of love, but seald in vain and these from Venus and Adonis, Pure lips, sweet seals in my soft lips imprinted, What bargains may I make, still to be sealing! to which Mr. Rushton adds from Hamlet A combination and a form, indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal. ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?Act iii. Sc. 4. Now must your conscience my acquittance seal. ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?Act iv. Sc. 7. And because indentures and deeds and covenants are scaled, these passages must be accepted as part of the evidence that Shakespeare narrowly escaped being made Lord High Chancellor of England It requires all the learning and the logic of a Lord Chief Justice and a London barrister to establish a connection between such premises and such a conclusion. And if Shakespeares lines smell of law, how strong is the odor of parchment and red tape in these, from Draytons Fourth Eclogue 1605: Kindnesse againe with kindnesse was repayd, And with sweet kisses couenants were sealed. We ask pardon of the reader for the production of contemporary evidence, that, in Shakespeares day, a knowledge of the significance and binding nature of a seal was not confined to him among poets; for surely a man must be both a lawyer and a Shakespearean commentator to forget that the use of seals is as old as the art of writing, and, perhaps, older, and that the practice has furnished a figure of speech to poets from the time when it was written, that out of the whirlwind Job heard, It is turned as clay to the seal, and probably from a period yet more remote. How does Act 3, scene 1 fit into the structure of 'Romeo and Juliet', and how does Shakespeare create dramatic tension in the scene? EssayBut, as far as regards its reference to a leaving of law for literature, it is clearly of general application. Nash says, It is a common practice, now-a-days, amongst a sort of shifting companions, etc. , to leave the trade of Noverint, whereto they were born, and busy themselves, etc. By the trade of Noverint be meant that of an attorney. The term was not uncommonly applied to members of that profession, because of the phrase, Noverint universi per presentes, Know all men by these presents, with which deeds, bonds, and many other legal instruments then began. And Nashs testimony accords with what we know of the social and literary history of the age. There was no regular army in Elizabeths time; and the younger sons of gentlemen and well-to-do yeomen, who received from their fathers little more than an education and a very small allowance, and who did not become either military or maritime adventurers, opening their oyster with a sword, entered the Church or the profession of the law in its higher or lower grade; and as at that period there was much more demand for lawyers and much less for clergymen than there is now, and the Church had ceased to be a stepping stone to political power and patronage, while the law had become more than ever before an avenue to fame, to fortune, and to rank, by far the greater number of these young gentlemen aspired to the woolsack. But then, as now, the early years of professional life were seasons of sharp trial and bitter disappointment. Necessity pressed sorely or pleasure wooed resistlessly, and the slender purse wasted rapidly away while the young attorney or barrister awaited the employment that did not come. He knew then, as now he knows, the rich mans scorn, the proud mans contumely; nay, he felt, as now he sometimes feels, the tooth of hunger gnawing through the principles and firm resolves that partition a life of honor and self-respect from one darkened by conscious loss of rectitude, if not by open shame. HappyÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?yet, perhaps, oh, unhappyÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?he who now in such a strait can wield the pen of a ready writer!  ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?for the press, perchance, may afford him a support which, though temporary and precarious, will hold him up until he can stand upon more stable ground. But in the reigns of Good Queen Bess and Gentle Jami e there was no press. There was, however, an incessant demand for new plays. Play-going was the chief intellectual recreation of that day for all classes, high and low. It filled the place of our newspapers, our books, our lectures, our concerts, our pictureseeing and, in a great measure, of our social gatherings and amusements, of whatever nature. It is hardly extravagant to say, that there were then more new plays produced in London in a month than there are now in Great Britain and the United States in a year. To play-writing, then, the needy young attorney or barrister possessed of literary talent turned his eyes at that day, as he does now to journalism; and it is almost beyond a doubt, that, of the multitudinous plays of that period which have survived and the thousands which have perished, a large proportion were produced by the younger sons of country gentlemen, who, after taking their degrees at Oxford or Cambridge, or breaking away from those classic bounds ungraduated, entered the Inns of Court, according to the custom of their day and their condition. They wrote plays in Latin, and even in English, for themselves to act; and they got the professional players to act popular plays for them on festal days. What more natural, then, than that those who had the ability and the need should seek to recruit their slender means by supplying the constant demand for new plays? and how inevitable that some of them, having been successful. n their dramatic efforts, should give themselves up to play-writing! As do the great, so will the small. What the Inns-of-Court man did, the attorney would try to do. The players, though they loved the patronage of a lord, were very democratic in the matter of playmaking. If a play filled the house, they did not trouble themselves about the social or professional rank of him who wrote it; and thus came about that common practice for shifting companions to leave the trade of Noverint and busy themselves with the endeavors of art; and hence it is that the plays of the period of which we are writing have, in many passages, so strong a tinge of law. One reason for the regarding of Nashs sneer as especially directed against Shakespeare is the occurrence in it of the phrase, whole HamletsÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?I should say, handfuls of tragical speeches, which has been looked upon as an allusion to Shakespeares great tragedy. But the earliest edition of Hamlet known was published in 1603, and even this is all imperfect and surreptitiously obtained copy of an early sketch of the play. That Shakespeare had written this tragedy in 1586, when he was but twenty-two years old, is improbable to the verge of impossibility; and Nashs allusion, if, indeed, he meant a punning sneer at a play, which is not certain, was, doubtless, to an old lost version of the Danish tragedy upon which Shakespeare built Hamlet. We have, then, direct contemporary testimony, that, at the period of Shakespeares entrance upon London ife, it was a common practice for those lawyers whom want of success or all unstable disposition impelled to a change in their avocation to devote themselves to writing or translating plays; and this statement is not only sustained by all that we know of the customs of the time to which it refers, but is strongly confirmed by the notably frequent occurrence of legal phrases in the dramatic literature of that age. But the question, then, arisesÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?and it is one which, under the, circumstances, must be answeredÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?To what must we attribute the fact, that, of all the plays that have come down to us, written between 1580 and 1620, Shakespeares are most noteworthy in this respect? For it is true, that, among all the dramatic writers of that period, whose works have survived, not one uses the phraseology of the law with the frequency, the freedom, and the correctness of Shakespeare. Beaumont, for instance, was a younger son of a Judge of the Common Pleas, and, following the common routine that we have noticed, after leaving the University, became an Inns-of-Court man, but soon abandoned law for literature; his friend and associate, Fletcher, was the son of a bishop, but had an uncle who was a lawyer and a diplomatist, and is himself believed to have been of the Inns of Court. Rich gleanings of law-terms might, therefore, be expected from the plays written by these dramatists; yet it may safely be asserted, that from. Shakespeares thirty-seven plays at least twice as many passages marked by legal phraseology might be produced, as from the fifty-four written by Beaumont and Fletcher, together or alone! a fact the great significance of which is heightened by anotherÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?that it is only the vocabulary of the law to the use of which Shakespeare exhibits this proclivity. He avails himself, it is true, of the peculiar language of the physician, the divine, the husbandman, the soldier, and the sailor; but he uses these only on very rare occasions, by way of description, comparison, or illustration, when something in the scene or the subject in hand suggests them. But the technical language of the law runs from his pen as part of his vocabulary and parcel of his thought. The word purchase, for instance, which in ordinary use means to acquire by giving value, in law applies to all legal modes of obtaining property, except inheritance of descent. And the word in this peculiar and most technical sense occurs five times in Shakespeares thirty-seven plays, but only in a single passage if our memory and Mr. Dyces notes serve us in the fifty-four plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. Equal, or greater, is the comparative frequency with which Shakespeare uses other legal phrases; and much wider is the, disparity, in this regard, between him and the other dramatic writers of his whole periodÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?Marlowe, Greene, Peele, Kyd, Lilly, Chapman, Jonson, Middleton, Marston, Ford, Webster, Massinger, and the undistinguished crowd. These facts dispose in great measure of the plausible suggestion which has been madeÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?that, as the courts of law in Shakespeares time occupied public attention much more than they do at present, they having then regulated the season, as the sittings of Parliament not then frequent or stated do now,ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ ¡ they would naturally be frequented by the restless, inquiring spirits of the time, Shakespeare among them, and that there he and his fellow-dramatists picked up the law-phrases which they wove into their plays and poems. But if this view of the case were the correct one, we should not find that disparity in the use of legal phrases which we have just remarked. Shakespeares genius would manifest itself in the superior effect with which he used knowledge acquired in this manner; but his genius would not have led him to choose the dry and affected phraseology of the law as the vehicle of his flowing thought, and to use it so much oftener than any other of the numerous dramatists of his time, to all of whom the courts were as open as to him. And the suggestion which we are now considering fails in two other most important respects. For we do not find either that Shakespeares use of legal phrases increased with his opportunities of frequenting the courts of law, or that the law-phrases, his use of which is most noteworthy and of most importance in the consideration of the question before us, are those which he would have heard oftenest in the course of the ordinary business of the courts in his day. To look at the latter point first, the law-terms used by Shakespeare are generally not those which he would have heard in ordinary trials at nisi prius or before the Kings Bench, but such as refer to the tenure or transfer of real property, fine and recovery, statutes, purchase, indenture, tenure, double voucher, fee simple, fee farm, remainder, reversion, dower, forfeiture, etc. , etc. ; and it is important to remember that suits about the title to real estate are very much rarer in England than they are with us, and in England were very much rarer in Shakespeares time than they are now. Here we buy and sell houses and lands almost as we trade in corn and cotton; but in England the transfer of the title of a piece of real estate of any consequence is a serious and comparatively rare occurrence, that makes great work for attorneys and conveyancing counsel; and two hundred and fifty years ago the facilities in this respect were very much less than they are now. Shakespeare could hardly have picked up his conveyancers jargon by hanging round the courts of law; and we findÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?to return to the first objectionÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?that, in his early plays, written just after he arrived in London, he uses this peculiar phraseology just as freely and with as exact a knowledge as he displayed in after years, when on the supposition in question he must have become much more familiar with it. Shakespeares earliest work that has reached us is, doubtless, to be found in King Henry the Sixth, The Comedy of Errors, and Loves Labors Lost. In the very earliest form of Part II of the first-named play The First Part of the Contention betwixt the two Houses of York and Lancaster, to which Shakespeare was doubtless a contributor, the part of Cade being among his contributions we find him making Cade declare Act iv. Sc. 7 Men shall hold of me in capite; and we charge and command that wives be as free as heart can wis h or tongue can tell. Both the phrases that we have Italicized express tenures, and very uncommon tenures of land. In the Comedy of Errors, when Dromio of Syracuse says Theres no time for a man to recover his hair that grows bald by nature, his master replies, May he not do it by fine and recovery? Fine and recovery was a process by which, through a fictitious suit, a transfer was made of the title in an entailed estate. In Loves Labors Lost, almost without a doubt the first comedy that Shakespeare wrote, on Boyets offering to kiss Maria, Act ii. Sc. 1 she declines the salute, and says, My lips are no common, though several they be. This passageÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?an important one for his purposeÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?Lord Campbell has passed by, as he has some others of nearly equal consequence. Marias allusion is plainly to tenancy in common by several i. e. , divided, distinct title. See Coke upon Littleton, Lib. iii. Cap. iv. See. 292. She means, that her lips are several as being two, and as she says in the next line as belonging in common to her fortunes and herselfÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?yet they were no common pasture. Here, then, is Shakespeare using the technical language of conveyancers in his earliest works, and before he had ha d much opportunity to haunt the courts of law in London, even could he have made such legal acquirements in those schools. We find, too, that he uses law-terms in general with frequency notably greaterÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?in an excess of three or four to oneÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?than any of the other playwrights of his day, when so many playwrights were or had been Noverints or of the Inns of Court; that this excess is not observable with regard to his use of the vocabulary peculiar to any other occupation or profession, even that of the actor, which we know that he practised for many years but that, on the contrary, although he uses other technical language correctly, he avails himself of that of any single art or occupation with great rarity, and only upon special occasions. Lord Campbell remarks, as to the correctness with which Shakespeare uses legal phrasesÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬? and this is a point upon which his Lordship speaks with authorityÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?that he is amazed by the accuracy and propriety with which they are introduced, and in another place adds that Shakespeare uniformly lays down good law; and it is not necessary to be a Chief Justice of the Queens Bench to know that his Lordship is fully justified in assuring us that there is nothing so dangerous as for one not of the craft to tamper with our free-masonry. Remembering, then, that genius, though it reveals general and even particular truths, and facilitates all acquirement, does not impart facts or the knowledge of technical terms, in what manner can we answer or set aside the question that we have partly stated beforeÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?How did it happen that in an age when it was a common practice for young attorneys and barristers to leave their profession and take to writing plays and poems, one playwright left upon his works a stronger, clearer, sharper legal stamp than we can detect upon those of any other, and that he used the very peculiar and, to a layman, incomprehensible language of the law of real property, as it then existed, in his very earliest plays, written soon after he, a raw, rustic youth, bred in a retired village, arrived in London? How did it happen that this playwright ell into the use of that technical phraseology, the proper employment of which, more than any other, demands special training, and that he availed himself of it with apparent unconsciousness, not only so much oftener than all of his contemporaries, but with such exact knowledge, that one who has passed a long life in the professional employment of it, speaking as it were officially from the eminent position which he has wonÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?Lord CampbellÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?declares that, While novelists and dramatists are constantly making mistakes as to the law of marriage, of wills, and of inheritance, to Shakespeares law, lavishly as he propounds it, there can neither be demurrer, nor bill of exceptions, nor writ of error? Must we believe, that the man, who, among all the lawyer-playwrights of his day, showedÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?not, be it noticed as we are at present regarding his works the profoundest knowledge of the great principles of law and equity, although he did that tooÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?but the most complete mastery of the technical phrases, the jargon, of the law and of its most abstruse branchÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?that relating to real estateÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?and who used it very much the oftenest of them all, and with an air of as entire unconsciousness as if it were a part of the language of his daily life, making no mistakes that can be detected by a learned professional criticÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?must we believe that this man was distinguished among those play-writing lawyers, not only by his genius, but his lack of particular acquaintance with the law? Or shall we rather believe that the son of the High Bailiff of Stratford, whose father was well-to-do in the world, and who was a somewhat clever lad and ambitious withal, was allowed to commence his studies for a profession for which his cleverness fitted him and by which he might reasonably hope to rise at least to moderate wealth and distinction, and that he continued these studies until his fathers loss of property, aided, perhaps, by some of those acts of youthful indiscretion which clever lads as well as dull ones sometimes will commit, threw him upon his own resourcesÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?and that then, having townsmen, perhaps fellow-students and playfellows, among the actors in London, and having used his pen, as we may be sure he had, for other purposes than engrossing and drawing precedents, he, like so many others of his time, left his trade of Noverint and went up to the metropolis to busy himself with endeavors of art? One of these conclusions is in the fac e of reason, probability, and fact; the other in accordance with them all. But of how little real importance is it to establish the bare fact, that Shakespeare was an attorneys cleric before he was an actor! Suppose it proved, beyond a doubtÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?what have we learned? Nothing peculiar to Shakespeare; but merely what was equally true of thousands of other young men, his contemporaries, and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of those of antecedent and succeeding generations. It has a naked material relation to the other fact, that he uses legal phrases oftener than any other dramatist or poet; but with his plastic power over those grotesque and rugged modes of speech it has nought to do whatever. That was his inborn mastery. Legal phrases did nothing for him; but he much for them. Chance cast their uncouth forms around him, and the golden overflow from the furnace of his glowing thought fell upon them, glorifying and enshielding them forever. It would have been the same with the lumber of any other craft; it was the same with that of many othersÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?the difference being only of quantity, and not of kind. How, then, would the certainty that he had been bred to the law help us to the knowledge of Shakespeares lifeÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?of what he did for himself, thought for himself, how he joyed, how he suffered, what he was? Would it help us to know what the Stratford boys thought of him and felt toward him who was to write Lear and Hamlet, or how the men of London rewarded him who was a-writing them? Not a whit. To prove the fact would merely satisfy sheer aimless, fruitless curiosity; and it is a source of some reasonable satisfaction to know that the very people who would be most interested in the perusal of a biography of Shakespeare made up of the relation of such facts are they who have least right to know anything about him. Of the hundreds of thousands of people who giggled through their senseless hour at the American CousinÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?a play which in language, in action, in character, presents no semblance to human life or human creatures, as they are found on any spot under the canopy, and which seems to have been written on the model of the Interlude of Pyramus and Thisbe, for, in all the play, there is not one word apt, one player fittedÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬?of the people to whom this play owed its monstrous success, and who, for that very reason, it is safe to say, think Shakespeare a bore on the stage and off it, a goodly number would eagerly buy and read a book that told them when he went to bed and what he had for breakfast, and would pay a ready five-cent piece for a picture of him, as he appeared in the attorneys office, to preserve as a companion to the equally veritable portrait of the Hon. Daniel E. Sickles, as he appeared in prison. Nay, it must be confessed that there are some Shakespearean enthusiasts ever dabbling and gabbling about what they call Shakespeariana, who would give more for the pen with which he engrossed a deed or wrote Hamlet, than for the ability to understand better than they do or ever can, what he meant by that mysterious tragedy. Biography has its charms and its uses; but it is not by what we know of their bare external facts that Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And departing leave behind us Footprints on the sands, of time. What the readers of Shakespeare, who are worthy to know aught of him long to know, would have been the same, had he been bred lawyer, physician, soldier, or sailor. It is of his real life, not of its mere accidents, that they crave a knowledge; and of that life, it is to be feared, they will remain forever ignorant, unless he himself has written it.