The Merry Wives of Windsor

In Act II, 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 unlearned 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 usque ad coelum.

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 unsuccessful 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. [41]

This Merry Wife of Windsor is supposed to know that the highest estate which the devil could hold in any of his victims was 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.

Measure For Measure

In Act I, Sc. 2, the old lady who had kept a lodging-house 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 cousellors lack no clients. [42]

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 Hannibal, 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.

The manner in which, in Act III, Sc. 2, Escalus designates and talks of Angelo, with whom he was joined in commission as Judge, [43] 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 [44] passage in this play—which, lest I should be thought guilty of irreverence, I do not venture to comment upon:

The Comedy of Errors

The following is part of the dialogue between Antipholus of Syracuse and his man Dromio, in Act II, 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. [45]

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.

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. [46]

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 bond, but on a stronger thing: A chain, a chain!

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 sheriff’s officer, or bum-bailiff, in his buff costume, and carrying his prisoner to a sponginghouse—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 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. [47]