All’s Well That Ends 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 [68] 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 constructed, 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 Rousillon, 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:

Hel. Then shalt thou give me with thy kingly hand
What husband in thy power I will command.

Adding, however: [69]

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
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:

Hel. I dare not say I take you; but I give
Me and my 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:

But the King, after much discussion, thus addresses him:

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 embraced 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, [71] 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 inexhaustible fancy.

The Winter’s Tale

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 themselves actually been in prison on a criminal charge—that, whether guilty or innocent, the prisoner was liable to pay a fee on his liberation. [72] Hermione, trying to persuade Polixenes, King of Bohemia, to prolong his stay at the court of Leontes in Sicily, says to him:

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, excepting 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 custody of the Black Rod or the Serjeant-at-Arms, "You are discharged, paying your fees."

When the trial of Queen Hermione for high treason comes off in Act III, Sc. 2, although [73] 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 committed 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. [74]

King John

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 are called, our great dramatist is known to have worked upon foundations already laid by other men who had no technical knowledge, and in several instances 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. [75]

Thus in the controversy, in the opening scene of King John, between Robert and Philip Faulconbridge, as to which of them was to be considered the true heir of the deceased Sir Robert, the King, in giving judgment, lays down the law of legitimacy most perspicuously and soundly—thus addressing Robert, the plaintiff:

This is the true doctrine, "Pater est quem nuptiae demonstrant." [The father is he whom the marriage points out.]

It was likewise properly ruled that the father’s will, in favour of his son Robert, had [76] 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 Richard.

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 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,

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 Reformers and the Romanists, he spurned the ultramontane pretensions of the Pope, which some of our Roman Catholic fellow subjects are now too much disposed to countenance, although they were stoutly resisted before the Reformation by our ancestors, who were good Catholics. King John declares, Act III, 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.

King Philip. Brother of England, you blaspheme in this.

King John. Though you and all the kings of Christendom [78]
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 veneration all who seek to imitate the meek example of the divine founder of the Christian religion.

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* 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 mesalliance.—Co. Litt. 80a. back