ness. The to play-writing, and that thus the language of the plays of that time should show such a remarkable infusion of law phrases! To what, then, must we attribute the fact, that of all the plays that have survived of those written between 1580 and 1620 Shakespeare's are most noteworthy in this respect? For no dramatist of the time, not even Beaumont, who was a younger son of a Judge of the Common Pleas, and who, after studying in the Inns of Court, abandoned law for the drama, used legal phrases with Shakespeare's readiness and exactAnd the significance of this fact is heightened by another, that it is only to the language of the law that he exhibits this inclination. phrases peculiar to other occupations serve him on rare occasions by way of description, comparison, or illustration, generally when something in the scene suggests them; but legal phrases flow from his pen as part of his vocabulary and parcel of his thought. The word "purchase," for instance, which in ordinary use meant, as now it means, to acquire by giving value, applies in law to all legal modes of obtaining property, except inheritance or descent. And in this peculiar sense the word occurs five times in Shakespeare's thirtyfour plays, but only in a single passage in the fiftyfour plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. And in the first scene of the Midsummer Night's Dream the father of Hermia begs the ancient privilege of Athens, that he may dispose of his daughter either to Demetrius or to death, "according to our law Immediately provided in that case.” He pleads the statute; and the words run off his tongue in heroic verse as if he were reading them from a paper. As the courts of law in Shakespeare's time occupied public attention much more than they do now, their terms having regulated "the season of London society,*—it has been suggested that it was in attendance upon them that he picked up his legal vocabulary. But this supposition not only fails to account for Shakespeare's peculiar freedom and exactness in the use of that phraseology, it does not even place him in the way of learning those terms his use of which is most remarkable; which are not such as he would have heard at ordinary proceedings at nisi prius, but such as refer to the tenure or transfer of real property," fine and recovery," "statutes merchant," "purchase," "indenture," "tenure," "double voucher," "fee simple," "fee farm," " remainder," "reversion," "forfeiture," &c. This conveyancer's jargon could not have been picked up by hanging round the courts of law in London two hundred and fifty years ago, when suits as to the title to real property were comparatively so rare. And beside, Shakespeare uses his law just as freely in his early plays, written in his first London years, as in those * Falstaff, for instance, speaks of "the wearing out of six fashions, which is four terms or two actions." produced at a later period.* Just as exactly too; for the correctness and propriety with which these terms are introduced have compelled the admiration of a Chief Justice and Lord Chancellor.† Again, bearing in mind that genius, although it reveals general truth, and facilitates all acquirement, does not impart facts or acquaintance with technical terms, how can we account for the fact that, in an age when it was the common practice for young lawyers to write plays, one playwright left upon his plays a stronger, sharper legal stamp than appears upon those of any of his contemporaries, and that the characters of this stamp are those of the complicated law of real property? *Thus, in Henry the Sixth, Part II., Jack Cade says, "Men shall hold of me in capite: and we charge and command that wives be as free as heart can wish or tongue can tell";—words which indicate acquaintance with very ancient and uncommon tenures of land. In the Comedy of Errors, when Dromio of Syracuse says, "There's no time for a man to recover his hair that grows bald by nature," (wise words, and fatal to many hopes,) 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 Love's Labor's Lost, almost without a doubt the first comedy that Shakespeare wrote, on Boyet's offering to kiss Maria (Act II. Sc. 1), she declines the salute, and says, "My lips are no common, though sev. eral they be." Maria's allusion is plainly to tenancy in common by several (i. e. divided, distinct) title. †These are Lord Campbell's words: "While novelists and dramatists are constantly making mistakes as to the law of marriage, of wills, and of inheritance, to Shakespeare's law, lavishly as he propounds it, there can neither be demurrer, nor bill of exceptions, nor writ of error." Must we believe that this man was thus distinguished among a crowd of play-writing lawyers, not only by his genius, but by a lack of special knowledge of the law? Or shall we rather believe that the son of the late high bailiff of Stratford, 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 father's misfortunes, 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 resources, — and that then, law failing to supply his pressing need, he turned to the stage, on which he had townsmen and friends? One of these conclusions is in the face of reason, fact, and probability; the other in accordance with them all. But the bare fact that Shakespeare was an attorney's clerk, even if indisputably established, though of some interest, is of little real importance. It teaches us nothing about the man, of what he did for himself, thought for himself, how he joyed, how he suffered, what he was in his mere manhood. It has but a naked material relation to the other fact, that he uses legal phrases oftener, more freely, and more exactly than any other poet. III. Somewhere, then, within the years 1585 and 1586, Shakespeare went from Stratford to London, where we next hear of him as an actor and a mender of old plays. That he went with the intention of becoming an actor, has been universally assumed; but perhaps too hastily. For he had social ambition and high self-esteem; and in his day to become an actor was to cast the one of these sentiments aside, and to tread the other under foot. Betterton's story, told through Rowe, is, that Shakespeare was "obliged to leave his business and family for some time, and shelter himself in London." In so far as this may be relied upon, it shows that Shakespeare had business in Stratford, and that he sought only a temporary refuge in the metropolis. Probably it was with no very definite purpose that he left his native place. Poverty, persecution, and perhaps a third Fury, made Stratford too hot to hold him; and he might well flee, vaguely seeking relief for the present and provision for the future. He would naturally hope to live in London by the business which he had followed at Stratford. Such is the way of ambitious young men who go from rural districts to a metropolis. And, until every other means of livelihood had failed him, it was not in this high-minded, sensitive, aspiring youth to assume voluntarily a profession then scorned of all men. We may |