Part Three - Introduction to The Law in Shakespeare

One fact seldom proves much beyond itself, but two facts may prove a third, and when among a hundred or a thousand separate facts, each shows a relation, not dependent on another but independent of it, to all the rest, and also a relation to some other fact not susceptible of actual observation, but which is the object to be demonstrated; when each fact points to one cause or result, and to no other; when an analysis of the elements of each fact shows the same unvarying convergence to one point; when any one fact may be removed from any function in the process and the result remain the same; when research and addition to the mass of circumstances, instead of displacing its probative direction only renders it more steady,—the certainty that the object which they indicate is the solution of the question becomes so great that the most stupendous figures are inadequate to express the infallibility of the result. Every one remembers the problem of the blacksmith who engaged to shoe a horse for one cent for the first nail, two cents for the next, four cents for the next, and so on, doubling the preceding number for each nail until all the nails should be computed for. The result is an illustration of the high power of proof to which the accumulated and progressive force of many circumstances can be raised. It is true that one positively established fact, out of many, which points conclusively to another result, may entirely invalidate the demonstration, and this is the fallacy of circumstantial evidence as it is commonly understood to be. The witness may be false, he may be mistaken, he may not be clear, he may unintentionally pervert or suppress something. But in matters of textual criticism, such as are now under consideration, there is no possibility of such perturbations.

I regard Paley's Horae Paulinae as one of the most helpful books that a law student can read. It trains him for the most strenuous dialectics of his profession. Paley's thesis is that all the epistles which the canon attributes to St. Paul were written by one man, and with a power of analysis and application of proofs which has never been surpassed, he proves it by citing examples from each epistle of undesigned coincidences, minute, obscure, latent, and oblique, which abound throughout the Pauline writings. He says "they form no continued story; they compose no regular correspondence; they comprise not the transactions of any particular period; they carry on no connection of argument; they depend not upon one another; no study or care has been employed to preserve the appearance of consistency amongst them; they were not intended by the person, whoever he was, that wrote them to come forth or be read together; they appeared at first separately and have been collected since." If these tests are applied to the books of the Evangelists, it will appear, upon the most cursory examination, that they were each written by a different man.

Some of the most interesting discoveries in astronomical science have been predicted by the application of the calculus of probabilities. Forinstance, Michell, in 1767, noticed that many fixed stars had companions close to them. Such a conjunction as to one or two stars would have no probative force, for they might be at a great distance from each other and lie on the same line of sight. But this optical union was so apparent in many stars that he asserted the existence of a bond between most of the double stars. Struve computed the odds to be 9,570 to 1 that any two stars of not less than the seventh magnitude could fall within the apparent distance of four minutes of each other by chance, and yet ninety-one of such cases had been observed when his computation was made, and many more have been since discovered. There were also four known triple stars, and the odds against the casual conjunction of these were 173,524 to 1. Michell's conjecture was verified nearly a century after it was made by the discovery that many of the double stars are directly connected with each other under the law of gravitation.

Nearly all of the planetary movements have similarity of direction. In the time of Laplace eleven planets were known, and the directions were known for the sun, six planets, the satellites of Jupiter, Saturn's ring, and one of his satellites. There were thus known forty-three concurring motions; that is, the orbital motions of eleven planets and eighteen satellites and fourteen axial rotations. The probability that this number of independent motions should coincide by chance is as an odds of about 4,400,000,000,000 to 1.

The application of the doctrine of probabilities to the argument that Shakespeare was learned in the law is manifest. The nature of the subject, of course, makes the odds inexpressible by numerical notation. But the principle of increment of probative force is the same here as in the case of the visible and ponderable bodies, concerning which Struve and Laplace made their computations.

Suppose that within the last year all of these writings had been collected from scattered sources; some from libraries and family archives in England; some from old repositories in Massachusetts and Virginia. The authorship by one person or by many persons being the question, what testimony could be more convincing that they were written by one man than these undesigned, unstudied, obscure, oblique, latent, and cumulative legal expressions which occur in each play?

This being settled, the next question would be what manner of man was he who produced this incomparable body of thought and imagination? Was he merely a man of letters, or was he also a physician, or a lawyer, or a soldier? The same process of induction can be employed. It is found that the test of the use of technical phrases is applicable. It is found that they abound. Their use is accurate, unstudied, cumulative, incidental, undesigned for any purpose except their special employment in the places where they occur; is so subtle in illustrative function, as often to require special research to apply it; that the productions in which they occur form no continued story; that they were originality separate productions; that many of them were not published at all in the life-time of the author, but were handed out to actors to be learnt; that they cover the term of a long literary life; that they do not comprise the transactions of any one period; that they carry on no connection of argument, nor do they depend upon one another; that they exhibit no such familiarity with other arts, sciences, or vocations, but that as to them they are full of errors and carelessness. All this makes out a case by demonstration so absolute that no hypothesis is left except that the writer was learned in the law. The most persuasive argument concerning the authorship of the letters of Junius is the familiarity which they display with the routine of the war office, in which Francis was employed. Chatterton hoaxed profound scholars by his wonderful simulation of coincidences and archaisms, apparently undesigned, and was detected by the inaccuracies which cannot be avoided in any such attempt. Sir John Coleridge broke down the Tichborne claimant by a cross-examination which proved his ignorance of facts, or the details of events, which must have been known to him had he been what he pretended to be.

The dyer's hand is always subdued to what it works in. Professor Greenleaf examined the testimony of the Evangelists by the rules of evidence administered in courts of justice. That St. Matthew was a native Jew, familiar with the opinions, ceremonies, and customs of his countrymen, conversant with their sacred writings, and of little learning except what he derived from them, he holds to be established by the internal evidence of his gospel. That St. Mark wrote at Rome for the use of the Gentile converts, he argues from the numerous Latinisms which he employs and from the explanations he gives, which would be useless to a Jew. That St. Luke was a physician, he maintains, is apparent from his gospel, which shows that he was an acute observer, who had given particular and even professional attention to all of our Savior's miracles of healing; that where Matthew and Mark describe a man simply as a leper, he writes that he was full of leprosy; that he whom they mention as having a withered hand is described by him as having his right hand withered; that he alone, with a physician's accuracy, says that the virtue went out of Jesus and healed the sick; that he alone relates the fact that the sleep of the disciples in Gethsemane was induced by excessive sorrow, and attributes the blood-like sweat of our Redeemer to the intensity Of His agony, and that he alone relates the miraculous healing of Malchas' ear.

It has been maintained that the company of players to which Shakespeare belonged visited Scotland in the autumn of 1601, and that they were at Aberdeen in October of that year. It has been argued that Shakespeare in Macbeth displays a knowledge of the topography of the country around Forres and of the local superstitions and traditions, so much beyond any information given in Holinshed's Chronicle, that he must have accompanied the players, and it must be admitted that a most plausible showing is made.

This branch of the argument can best be enforced by the words of an eminent text-writer on the law of evidence:

"In estimating the force of a number of circumstances tending to the proof of the disputed fact, it is of essential importance to consider whether they be dependent or independent. If the facts A, B, C, D, be so essential to the particular inference to be derived from them, when established, that the failure of the proof in any one would destroy the inference altogether, they are dependent facts. If, on the other hand, notwithstanding the failure in proof of one or more of those facts, the rest would still afford the same inference or probability as to the contested fact which they did before, they would be properly termed independent facts. The force of a particular inference drawn from a number of dependent facts is not augmented, neither is it diminished, in respect of the number of such dependent facts, provided they be established; but the probability that the inference itself rests upon sure grounds, is, in general, weakened by the multiplication of the number of circumstances essential to the proof; for the greater the number of circumstances essential to the proof is, the greater latitude is there for mistake or deception. On the other hand, where each of a number of independent circumstances, or combination of circumstances, tends to the same conclusion, the probability of the truth of the fact is necessarily greatly increased in proportion to the number of those independent circumstances."

"The probability derived from the concurrence of a number of independent probabilities increases not in a merely cumulative, but in a compound and multiplied, proportion. This is a consequence derived from pure abstract arithmetical principles. For although no definite arithmetical ratio can be assigned to each independent probability, yet the principle of increase must obtain wherever independent probabilities in favor of an event occur, although they cannot be precisely measured by space or numbers, and even although every distinct probability which is of a conclusive tendency exceeds every merely definite numerical ratio."

"The nature of such coincidences is most important. Are they natural ones, which bear not the marks of artifice and premeditation? Do they occur in points obviously material, or in minute and remote points which were not likely to be material, or in matters the importance of which could not have been foreseen? The number of such coincidences is also worthy of the most attentive consideration. Human cunning, to a certain extent, may fabricate coincidences, even with regard to minute points, the more effectually to deceive; but the coincidences of art and invention are necessarily circumscribed and limited; while those of truth are indefinite and unlimited. The witnesses of art will be copious in their detail of circumstances as far as their prevision extends. Beyond this, they will be sparing and reserved for fear of detection, and thus their testimony will not be even and consistent throughout; but the witnesses of truth will be equally ready and equally copious upon all points."

Paley also remarks that "the undesignedness of coincidences is to be gathered from their latency, their minuteness, their obliquity; the suitableness of the circumstances in which they consist to the places in which those circumstances occur, and the circuitous references by which they are traced out, demonstrate that they have not been produced by meditation or by any fraudulent contrivance; but coincidences from which these causes are excluded, and which are too close and numerous to be accounted for by accidental concurrence of fiction, must necessarily have truth for their foundation."

Shakespeare had a lawyer's conservatism. He respected the established order of things. He chisels the republican Brutus in cold and marble beauty, but paints with beams of sunlight the greatness, bravery, and generosity of imperial Caesar. Coriolanus is the impersonation of patrician contempt for popular rights. Shakespeare passes unnoticed the causes which led to Cade's insurrection because he cares not for them,—; causes so just that hon-orable terms were exacted by the insurgents. His portrait of Joan of Arc, the virgin mother of French nationality, who raised it to glory because the people believed in her, is a great offence. There is nowhere a hint of sympathy with personal rights as against the sovereign, nor with parliament, then first assuming its protective attitude towards the English people, nor with the few judges who, like Coke, showed a glorious obstinacy in their resistance to the prerogative. In all his works there is not one direct word for liberty of speech, thought, religion,—; those rights which in his age were the very seeds of time, into which his eye, of all men's, could best look to see which grain would grow and which would not. In all ages great men and great women have died for humanity, but none of these have been commemorated by him. The fire of no martyr gleams in his pages.

That the stage was under censorship cannot explain or excuse all this. Such was the disposition of the man. He had noble conceptions of national grandeur, but they were of great kings and their conquests. Macbeth, Richard, and Claudius enthrone themselves through assassination, and there is not a word for the popular distress which such crimes always inflict. Every revolt is to him a riot. The leaders are contemptible miscreants. There is no pity for common suffering, no lash for the great man's contumely towards the lowly; only a languid murmur against the insolence of office, contemptuous pity for the whipped and carted strumpet, and nothing which would have hindered his promotion had he entered the debasing scramble of favoritism which disgraced his time. He pleased Elizabeth, he pleased James, he would have pleased Napoleon.

The plea cannot be made for him that he was not superior to his age. His greatest cotemporaries were contained within it, but he, the man of whom Jonson wrote that—;

He was not for a day, but for all time;

who has set his serene firmament, with all its suns and stars, over all men and all ages, who stands in his works like the angel Uriel in the sun, is as unsympathetic as the planets themselves with those plebeian calamities which constitute the sorrows of common life.