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 A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the Heart, The clear Eye's moiety, and the dear Heart's part; And my Heart's right, thine inward love of heart." It would seem, indeed, as if passages like these must be received as evidence that Shakespeare had more familiarity with legal phraseology, if not a greater knowledge of it, than could have been acquired except by habitual use in the course of professional occupation. But that he is not peculiar even in this crowding of many law-terms into one brief passage, take this evidence from The Miseries of Enforced Marriage, a poor play written by George Wilkins, an obscure contemporary playwright: "Doctor. Now, Sir, from this your oath and bond, Justice hath now in suit against your soul: Sits now as Judge of your transgression: "Scarborow. What then ensues to me? D. O. P., Vol. III. p. 91, ed. 1825. which in large cities are mostly drawn from trade and politics.* There are reasons, however, for believing that Shakespeare had more than a layman's knowledge of the technical language of the law. The familiarity with that language manifested by other playwrights and poets of his day precludes us, indeed, from accepting the mere occurrence of law phrases in his works as indications of a distinctive professional training. On the other hand, we have direct contemporary evidence that many dramatic authors of the Elizabethan period (1575 – 1625) were bred attorneys or barristers. Thomas Nash, a playwright, poet, and novelist, whose works were in vogue just before Shakespeare wrote, in an "Epis * And yet Lord Chief Justice Campbell could cite these lines from the exquisite song in Measure for Measure as among the evidences of Shakespeare's legal acquirements: "But my kisses bring again Seals of love, but sealed in vain." If Shakespeare's lines smell of law, how strong is the odor of parchment and red tape in these, from Drayton's Fourth Eclogue (1605)! "Kindnesse againe with kindnesse was repay'd, And with sweet kisses couenants were sealed." Surely a man must be both a Lord Chancellor and a Shakespea rian 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. tle to the Gentleman Students of the Two Universities," with which, according to the fashion of the time, he introduced Greene's Menaphon (1587) to the reader, has the following paragraph : "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 endeavors 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, Blood is a beggar, &c.; and if you intreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say, handfuls of tragical speeches. But, oh, 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." It has most unaccountably been assumed that this passage refers to Shakespeare, chiefly, it would seem, if not only, because of the phrase, "whole Hamlets, I should say, handfuls of tragical speeches," which has been looked upon as an allusion to Shakespeare's great tragedy. That Shakespeare had written this tragedy in 1586, when he was but twenty-two years old, is improbable to the verge of impossibility; and Nash's allusion, if indeed he meant a punning sneer at a play, (which is not certain,) was doubtless to an old, lost dramatic version of the Danish story upon which Shakespeare built his Hamlet. But on the contrary, it seems clear that Nash's object was to sneer at Jasper Heywood, Alexander Nevil, John Studley, Thomas Nuce, and Thomas Newton, one or more of them, whose Seneca, his Tenne Tragedies translated into Englysh, was published in 1581. It is a very grievous performance; and Shakespeare, who had read it thoroughly, made sport of it in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Indeed, Nash introduces the passage above given by this paragraph, which has been hitherto omitted in noticing the subject: "I will turn my back to my first text of studies of delight, and talk a little in friendship with a few of our trivial translators." Upon the leaving of law* for dramatic literature the passage in question is plainly of general application. Such a change of occupation Nash says was common; and his testimony accords with all that we know of the social and literary history of that age. There was no regular army in Elizabeth's time; and the younger sons of gentlemen not rich and of well-to-do yeomen flocked to the church and to the bar; and as the former had ceased to be a stepping-stone to power and wealth while the latter was gaining in that regard, most of these young men became attorneys or barristers. But then, as now, the early years of professional life were seasons of sharp trial and * Attorneys were called noverints because of the phrase Noverint universi per presentes (Know all men by these presents) with which many legal instruments then began. bitter disappointment. Necessity pressed sorely, or pleasure wooed resistlessly; and the slender purse wasted rapidly away while the young lawyer awaited the employment that did not come. He knew then, as now he knows, the heart sickness that waits on hope deferred; 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. Happy (yet, it may be, O unhappy) he who now in such a strait can wield the pen of a ready writer! 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 Jamie 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 is not extravagant to say that there were then more new plays produced in London in one month, than there are now in both Great Britain and the United States in a whole year. To play-writing, therefore, the needy and gifted young lawyer turned his hand at that day, as he does now to journalism; and of those who had been successful in their dramatic efforts, how inevitable it was that many would give themselves up |