I.
SHAKESPEARE NOT NECESSARILY
A LAWYER BE CAUSE HE USED
LEGAL TERMINOLOGY.

[1] ENGLAND is, and always has been, the true home of the lawyer; and the Englishman takes as naturally to a legal contest as the Irishman to a rough and tumble fight, or the Frenchman to a duel. In no country in the world have the bench and the bar been held in so high esteem as in England. While in all other parts of Europe the pulpit or the sword afforded the only avenues of employment for a gentleman, and the only means for social or political advancement, in England ambition has always found an ample arena in the legal forum. Prior to the reign of Queen Anne, science, literature, and art were lightly regarded, but the lawyer has always been, in English estimation, second only to the soldier. Bacon himself was esteemed by his contemporaries for his legal rather than his scientific or literary attainments. Hooker’s famous statement that "law hath her seat in the bosom of God; her voice is the harmony of the world," has ever [2] been applied literally by Englishmen to the Common. Law. A love of law, a spirit of litigation, a tenacious and pertinacious determination to maintain his legal rights at all hazards and at every cost are characteristics of every trueborn Englishman. Von Ihering, in his remarkable work, The Struggle for Law, to which I shall have occasion hereafter to refer, says "We [on the Continent] frequently see the typical figure of the traveling Englishman who resists being duped by innkeepers and hackmen, with a manfulness which would induce one to think he was defending the law of Old England—who, in case of need, postpones his departure, remains days in the place, and spends ten times the amount he refuses to pay. The people laugh at him, and do not understand him. It were better if they did understand him. For, in the few shillings which the man here defends, Old England lives."

The English love for law, and even for its intricacies, subtleties, and fictions is visible in all English history and literature. Blackstone’s "Commentaries "were written, not for professed students of law, but as an advanced course of study for the English gentleman. The fascination that courts and the law had for Dickens is manifest throughout his novels, while Dr. Johnson never ceased to regret that he had not actively embraced the legal profession; but these are mere illustrations, and to multiply instances of this kind were tedious. This English characteristic is manifest in every age of English life; it is pre-eminently so in the Elizabethan [3] era. Then was witnessed the great struggle between the Common Law and Chancery. The recently enacted Statute of Uses was the occasion of a great multitude of cases involving the title to real estate. It was emphatically an age of litigation. And the spirit of their race and times seized strongly on the Shakespeare family. There was a fortnightly court held at Stratford-on-Avon; and though all its records have not been preserved, it appears, from such as remain, that John Shakespeare, from his first settlement in that town about 1551 or 1552 down to 1600, was engaged either as plaintiff or defendant in nearly fifty law-suits. Besides he frequently served as juror, assessor of fines, and as arbitrator. His son, the future poet, was thus brought up in an atmosphere of litigation. That the little provincial town of Stratford, having at that time about 1800 inhabitants, with little or no commerce or intercourse with the outside world, was able to support a half dozen or more attorneys, with a session of court every two weeks, shows a most extraordinary amount of litigation. It may well be imagined that the greater part of the male population of Stratford was in constant attendance at the sessions of the court; that the arguments of the lawyers, the verdicts of the juries, and the judgments of the court were in the long evenings rehashed over and over again by these worthies of Stratford in the midst of their potations of homebrewed ale, in the love of which they excelled no less than in the love of litigation, there being at the time about thirty alehouses in the town. [4]

John Shakespeare was a man of prominence and importance in Stratford, for twenty years holding office of one kind or another; and, as high bailiff, he presided over the court.

From these circumstances it can readily be seen how Shakespeare acquired his extensive knowledge of legal expressions, and his love of litigation which involved him in almost as many law-suits as his father. It is noticeable that, while Shakespeare’s works abound with law-terms, they are devoid of terms peculiarly applicable to Chancery practice or to Chancery jurisprudence. The High Court of Chancery sat at London; the management of a suit therein was expensive; and Shakespeare had no opportunity of attending its sessions. His father had two suits in that court, but apparently they were abandoned, he being the complainant in both cases.

Such being the surroundings of Shakespeare’s youth, in a bookless community, with a school where "small Latin and less Greek," and no English at all, were taught, it might well be imagined that a bright, intellectual boy would find the best educational facilities were to be had by a faithful attendance at the sessions of court. And when we consider that Shakespeare’s father was almost constantly there, and when we further consider his own evident fondness for the law, shown not only in his use of legal expressions, but in his frequent resort to the courts as litigant, his legal tastes and fondness for legal terminology are accounted for. But that he got this terminology wrong quite as often as he got it right is apparent to any serious examination: [5] certainly it is apparent to any lawyer not tempted by an appetite for tours de force, or burning to make a fellow-barrister out of the greatest of dramatists!

When he arrived in London and was thrown into that brilliant society of lawyer-playwrights, he continued to breathe the same legal atmosphere in their company at the taverns. Gifford, in his Memoirs of Ben Jonson, says, "Domestic entertainments were, at that time, rare. The accommodations of a private house were ill calculated for the purposes of a social meeting, and taverns and ordinaries are therefore almost the only p1aces in which we hear of such assemblies." The contemporary authority as to these meetings of the lawyers at the taverns is also ample. Dekker, in his Gull’s Hornbook (1600) says: "There is another ordinary at which your London usurer, your stale bachelor, and your thrifty attorneys do resort; the price, three-pence; the rooms as full of company as a gaol. . . If they chance to discourse, it is of nothing but statutes, bonds, recognizances, audits, subsidies, rents, sureties, enclosures, liveries, indictments, outlawries, feoffments, judgments, commissions, bankrupts, amercements, and of such horrible matter."

That the poets and actors of the period were deep drinkers, and that "The Mermaid" and other taverns and tippling houses were their customary meeting places, are matters of common knowledge. Chapman’s "temperance "was noted as a quality rarely met with in a poet. —Warton’s Hist. Eng. Poetry, vol. iv., p. 276. [6]

To meet there and exchange jest and witticism in the midst of their "bumpers "was their ideal of pleasure and good-fellowship. In Dekker’s A Knight’s Conjuring, 1607, a number of poets are introduced together in the Elysian fields. "Beyond all these places there is a groave which stands by itself like an island—This is called The Groave of Bay-trees, and to this consort-room resort none but the children of Phoebus, poets and musitians." To this Company is admitted Chettle, "sweating and blowing by reason of his fatnes, to welcome whom, because he was of old acquaintance, all rose up and fell presentlie on their knees to drink a health to all lovers of Helicon."

But members of the legal profession were quite as frequent visitors to the taverns as the poets. For this we have a vast body of contemporary testimony. In Webster’s The Devil’s Law Case, Sanitonella, a lawyer, complains, [7]

There’s one thing too that has a vile abuse in it.

Pros. What’s that?

San. Marry, this, —that no proctor in term-time be tolerated to go to the tavern above six times i’ the forenoon. —Act V. scene 2.

This same play also furnishes evidence that it was not merely the lawyers who were interested in legal gossip.

San. Do you hear, officers?
You must take special care that you let in
No brachygraphy-men [i.e., stenographers] to take notes.

Off. No, Sir?

San. By no means:
We cannot have a cause of any fame
But you must have scurvy pamphlets and lewd ballads
Engendered of it presently. —Act IV. scene 2.

Sidney Lee, in his Life of William Shakespeare, p. 32, n. 2, says, "Legal terminology abounded in all plays and poems of the period," the truth of which statement must be admitted by everyone at all familiar with Elizabethan literature. The whole population seems to have taken an interest in law and litigation. "Every man in those days was to a certain point his own lawyer; that is, he was well versed in all the technical forms and procedure. Therefore Counsel were brought into very close relations with their somewhat exacting clients, by whom they might be said to be chiefly instructed, the solicitor or attorney being rather in the position of an agent for the general conduct of cases" [8] (Hubert Hall’s Society in the Elizabethan Age, 2d Edition, p. 140).

That Shakespeare uses legal expressions rather more frequently than his contemporaries simply proves that he entered into the spirit of his times more fully than they. Wordsworth says of Milton that "his soul was like a star, and dwelt apart"; but Shakespeare was verily "the soul of his age," as Ben Jonson aptly described him, and, being its soul, he did not live apart from it, but in the very centre and the midst of it!

John Webster was a contemporary of Shakespeare. His father was a merchant tailor, and he himself is supposed to have followed that trade. In his play above mentioned, The Devil’s Law Case, occur more legal expressions (some of them highly technical, and all correctly used), than are to be found in any single one of Shakespeare’s works. Among other legalisms, the law in regard to pre-contract (of which such capital is made by those who ascribe to Shakespeare great legal knowledge) is stated more fully than it is by Shakespeare, and quite as accurately. Webster doubtless acquired his knowledge of law in the same way in which I believe Shakespeare acquired his—that is, he absorbed it from the legal atmosphere by which he was surrounded.

But, if the law was attractive to the poets, the stage seems to have had an equal fascination for the lawyers. Indeed, the ranks of the dramatists were largely recruited from the Inns of Court.

There were contemporary with Shakespeare perhaps [9] between seventy-five and a hundred writers of plays, and some of them were very prolific. Thomas Heywood said he "had either an entire hand or at least a main finger "in two hundred and twenty plays. Many were the authors of but one. A large percentage of the dramatic literature of the period has not survived to modern times, and of most of the authors also only their names remain. Of those who are known to have had any trade, professional training, or occupation, I believe it would be a conservative estimate a say that twenty percent were in some way connected with the study of law.

John Ford (1586-1640) came of a family of lawyers. His mother was a sister of Sir John Popham, next to Coke the most famous lawyer of his age. He became in turn Attorney-General and Lord Chief Justice. Ford himself was a student in the Middle Temple in 1602. While his cousin and namesake (to whom he dedicated The Lover’s Melancholy) was a member of Gray’s Inn.

John Marston (1575-1634) was a student of the law. His father, a lecturer at the Middle Temple in 1592, by his will, proved in 1599, bequeaths "to sd. son John my furniture &c. in my chambers in The Middle Temple; my law books &c. to my sd son whom I had hoped would have profited by them in the study of the law, but man proposeth and God disposeth." —Introduction to Bullen’s Marston, p. 13.

Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) was a student in the Inner Temple. His grandfather, John Beaumont, [10] had been Master of the Rolls; and his father, Francis Beaumont, one of the judges of the Court of Common Pleas.

William Warner (1558?-1600) was "by his profession an atturnye at the Common Plese." He was the author of Albion’s England, and of a play called Syrinx. In 1595 his translation of Plautus’ Menaechmi was published. Shakespeare is said to have taken his Comedy of Errors from this play, and if he wrote it before 1595 (which seems probable) it is possible he may have seen Warner’s translation in the manuscript. (See Dr. Morgan’s Introduction to vol. xxii. of The Bankside Shakespeare.)

Abraham Fraunce (15??-16??) was a lawyer; had been a student at Gray’s Inn; and was recommended by Henry, Earl of Pembroke, to Lord Treasurer Burleigh in 1590 as a suitable person to be Her Majesty’s Solicitor in that Court. He was the author of several dramatic pieces.

Thomas Middleton (1570?-1627) was a student at Gray’s Inn.

Thomas Lodge (1558-1625) was a student at Lincoln’s Inn. Afterwards he became a physician.

Thomas Kyd (15??-1596) was trained for his paternal profession of a law scrivener.

The above facts, as well as those given below of plays represented at the Inns of Court, may be easily verified by reference to Ward’s History of English Dramatic Literature, and to the well-known Biographia Dramatica.

Only those lawyer-dramatists have been mentioned [11] whose ages were such as to render it probable that they came in contact with Shakespeare at some of the well-known taverns which were the common places of resort. Doubtless a fuller investigation than I have made would discover others.

Plays and masques were frequently represented at the different Inns of Court, sometimes in Latin, and nearly always written expressly for the occasion. The earliest English tragedy, Ferrex and Porrex, said to be "the first dramatic piece of any consideration in the English Language," was acted on January 18, 1562, by gentlemen of the Inner Temple before the Queen. It was written by Thomas Sackville, afterwards Lord Buckhurst, and Thomas Norton, barristers. The latter subsequently became Counsel to the Stationers’ Company.

In 1566 two plays by George Gascoigne of Gray’s Inn, Jocasta and Supposes, were there represented. In the composition of the former he was assisted by Christopher Yelverton, who afterwards arose to judicial dignity.

Tancred and Gismonda, under its original title of Gismonda of Salerne, was represented before the Queen at the Inner Temple in 1568. It was written by Cristopher [sic] Hatton and five other gentlemen of the Inner Temple.

The Misfortunes of Arthur was acted before the Queen in 1588. Eight members of the Society of Gray’s Inn co-operated in its composition; and four other gentlemen of the Inn, one of whom was [12] Francis Bacon, devised the dumb shows introducing the several acts.

Francis Bacon also, contributed to, The Prince of Purpoole, which was represented at Gray’s Inn in 1594.

In 1594 Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors was represented at Gray’s Inn; and, in 1601, his Twelfth Night at the Inner Temple. (See Appleton Morgan’s Introduction to vol. xxii. of The Bankside Shakespeare.)

In 1612 a masque by George Chapman was produced by members of the Middle Temple and Lincoln’s Inn; and one by Francis Beaumont by the members of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn in 1613. (See Morley’s Introduction to, Jonson’s Masques, Carisbrooke Library, p. 23.)

The above, of course, is not a complete list of such representations. "In those days … the Inns of Court vied with each other in masques and pageants as much as in the record of Chancellors and Chief Justices" (Strachey’s Introduction to "Beaumont and Fletcher," Mermaid Series, p. 13). [13]