II.
HOW SHAKESPEARE
HAS BEEN MADE A LAWYER.

IT was the custom in Shakespeare’s time for youth to leave school at fourteen or fifteen years of age; and it cannot be supposed that William attended school after reaching that age, in 1579. To account for what he did from then until 1586 has been a fruitful source of speculation for his biographers. There are traditions that he was apprenticed to a butcher, a glover, and nearly all the trades followed at Stratford, but none that he was an attorney or an attorney’s clerk. But his enthusiastic biographers felt under the necessity of accounting for these years when no scrap has been found to throw any light upon his life except the memoranda relative to the publication of the banns for his marriage and the birth of his children, and as each new biographer felt that he must add some new suggestion in order to distinguish himself from his predecessors, it was finally, in 1790, by Malone, supposed that he might have been a clerk in an attorney’s office, thus killing two birds with one stone, and accounting not only for the barren seven years, but for the legal expressions to be found in his works. This new idea was eagerly taken up, and in 1858, Mr. T. Payne Collier sought the opinion, of Lord [14] Campbell, the eminent author of The Lives of the Chief Justices and of The Lives of the Lord Chancellors, who replied, in part, as follows: "Were an issue tried before me as Chief Justice at the Warwick assizes whether William Shakespeare, late of Stratford-upon-Avon, gentleman, ever was a clerk in an attorney’s office in Stratford-upon-Avon aforesaid, I should hold that there is evidence to go to the jury in support of the affirmative, but I should add that the evidence is very far from being conclusive, and I should tell the twelve gentlemen in the box that it is a case entirely for their decision—without venturing even to hint to them, for their guidance, any opinion of my own. Should they unanimously agree in a verdict either in the affirmative or negative, I do not think that the court, sitting in banco, could properly set it aside and grant a new trial."

The learned Lord Chancellor then proceeds to give his views in detail, and though he says that if the issue were tried before him he would not venture even to hint to the jury an opinion of his own, he has no such scruples when addressing Mr. Collier or the readers of his published book; he scorns the idea that the "gentle Shakespeare" could have been engaged in killing calves or working in leather, and thinks it highly improbable that he could have followed any meaner occupation than that of an attorney’s clerk, and adds "perhaps his employer sent him up to the metropolis to conduct suits before the Lord Chancellor or the superior courts of common law at Westminster, according [15] to the ancient practice of country attorneys who would not employ an agent to divide their fees."

The reasons given by Lord Campbell for the faith that was in him, besides the legalisms in the plays, are as follows:

and rivals whom he surpassed, not only envied Shakespeare, but grossly libeled him. Of this we have an example in ‘An Epistle to the Gentlemen Students of the Two Universities, by Thomas Nash,’ prefixed to the first edition of Robert Greene’s Menaphon (which was subsequently called Greene’s Arcadia), according to the title page, published in 1589. The alleged libel on Shakespeare is in the words following, viz.:

"‘I will turn back to my first studies of delight, and talk a little in friendship with a few of our trivial translators. It is a common practice nowadays, amongst a sort of shifting companions that run through every art and thrive by none, to leave the trade of Noverint whereto they were born, land busy themselves with the endeavors of art, that could scarce Latinize their neck-verse if they should have need; yet English Seneca, read by candle light, yields many good sentences, as blood is a beggar, and so forth; and if you entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets; I should say whole handfuls of tragical speeches. But, O grief! Tempus edax rerum—what is it that will last always? The sea exhaled by drops will in continuance be dry; and Seneca, let blood, line by [16] line and page by page, at length must needs die to our stage.’"

The term "Noverint "was applied to lawyer’s because in Elizabeth’s time most legal documents were in Latin, and began "Noverint universi per presentes."

Lord Campbell continues: "In 1592 Greene followed up the attack in his Groat’s Worth of Wit, in the following language: ‘There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tyger’s heart wrapped in a player’s hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes Fac-totum, is in his own conceit the only Shakes-scene in a country.’"

Upon these slender threads Lord Campbell hangs these conclusions: "Therefore, my dear Mr. Payne Collier, in support of your opinion that Shakespeare had been bred to the profession of the law in an attorney’s office, I think you will be justified in saying that the fact was asserted publicly in Shakespeare’s lifetime by two contemporaries of Shakespeare, who were engaged in the same pursuits with himself, who must have known him well, and who were probably acquainted with the whole of his career."

It seems to me impossible for a logical mind to draw such a conclusion. There is no, legitimate connection between the two extracts by which it can be asserted that they both refer to the same person. Standing by itself, the quotation from Nash cannot be made to refer to Shakespeare unless the [17] reference to Hamlet has this effect; while Greene does not refer to him as connected with the Law!

Nash was notorious for an envious and quarrelsome disposition, and it is idle, and indeed against the known facts, to suppose that Shakespeare was the only dramatist who could excite his animosity. His paper war with Dr. Harvey is one of the bitterest of which we have any record. Referring to this controversy, Sir John Harrington, a contemporary poet, addressed the following verses to Dr. Harvey:

Thomas Freeman’s Epigrams, 1614, contains the following:

OF THOMAS NASH.

A MS. Epitaph runs thus:

In Dekker’s A Knight’s Conjuring, Done in Earnest, Discovered in Jest, alluded to above, the [18] associate poets represented as consorting in the Elysian fields are Peele, Greene, and Marlowe.

To this company—when it is proposed to enlarge it by the addition of Nash, that poet is brought in thus. "Whil’st Marlowe, Greene, and Peele had gotten under the shades of a large vyne, laughing to see Nash (that was but newly come to their colledge) still haunted with the sharpe and satyricall spirit that followed him here upon earth; for Nash inveyed bitterly, as he was wont to do," etc. Such evidences of Nash’s bad temper, and the general dislike in which he was held, might be multiplied. (See Dodsley’s Old Plays, vol. ix. p. 7.)

Now it is certain that Shakespeare was not "born to the trade of Noverint"; but the number of contemporary dramatists who are known to, have been connected with the legal profession by birth or education is large as above shown, and any of them might have excited Nash’s envy. Indeed, his hand seems to have been against every man, and every man’s hand against him.

Nor is the reference to "whole Hamlets" proof of a reference to Shakespeare. The story of Hamlet appears to have greatly interested the Elizabethan age. Why, it is not so clear. Belleforest’s "translation" of Saxo Grammaticus’ Amleth was practically a new work. It was, as anybody can see from comparing the two versions, about six times as long.* And it added and padded and involved the original story to an extraordinary state of confusion. It was this Belleforest production [19] (called Hamlet and not Amleth, because as Dr. Morgan has pointed out,† Frenchmen as well as Englishmen transposed their h’s), written and published about 1570, and translated into English, which, if any, Shakespeare saw. Capell (in the Introduction to the first volume of his edition of Shakespeare, p. 52) says, "There can be no doubt made by persons who are acquainted with these things, that the translation is not much younger than the French original."

Shakespeare’s son Hamnet (in the Stratford documents published by Halliwell-Phillipps, spelt Amblet, Hamlet, and Hamnet) is by many supposed to have been named for Hamlet; he was born in 1585, certainly some years before the father could have written a play on the subject.

Malone (Variorum, 1821, vol. ii. p. 372), after quoting the passage from Nash above referred to, continues: "Not having seen the first edition of this tract till a few years ago I formerly doubted whether the foregoing passage referred to the tragedy of Hamlet; but the word Hamlets being printed in the original copy in a different character from the rest, I have no longer any doubt on the subject. It is manifest from this passage that some play on the story of Hamlet had been exhibited before the year 1589; but I am inclined to think that it was not Shakespeare’s drama ‘ but an elder performance, on which with the aid of the old prose Historie of Hamblet, his tragedy was formed. The great number [20] of pieces which we know he formed on the performance of preceding writers, renders it highly probable that some others also of his dramas were constructed on plays that are now lost. . . Nash seems to point at some dramatic writer of that time who had originally been a scrivener or attorney, and instead of transcribing deeds and pleadings, had chosen to imitate Seneca’s plays, of which a translation had been: published many years before. Shakespeare, however freely he may have borrowed from Plutarch or Holinshed, does not appear to be at all indebted to Seneca; and I therefore do not believe he was the person in Nash’s contemplation."

Finally, Shakespeare himself said that Venus and Adonis, which appeared in 1593, was the "first heir of [his] invention," and it would seem therefore that strong proof ought to be required before assigning an earlier date to any of his plays.

Knight, referring to the same passage in Nash, says: "Does this description apply to him [Shakespeare] ? Was he thriving by no art? In 1589 he was established in life as a sharer in the Blackfriars’ theater. Does the term ‘whole Hamlets’ fix the allusion on him? It appears to us only to show that some tragedy called Hamlet, it may be Shakespeare’s, was then in existence; and that it was a play also at which Nash might sneer as abounding in tragical speeches. But it does not seem that there is any absolute connection between the noverint and the Hamlet. Suppose, for example, that the Hamlet alluded to was written by Marlowe, who was educated at Cambridge, and [21] was certainly not a lawyer’s clerk. The sentence will read as well; the sarcasm upon the tragical speeches of the Hamlet will be as pointed; the shifting companion who, has thriven by no art, and has left the calling to which he was born, may study English Seneca till he produces ‘whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls of tragical speeches.’ In the same way Nash might have said whole Tamburlaines of tragical speeches, without attempting to infer that the author of Tamburlaine had left the trade of Noverint. We believe that the allusion was to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but that the first part of the sentence had no allusion to Shakespeare’s occupation. The context of the passage renders the matter even clearer. Nash begins, ‘ I will turn back to my first text of studies of delight, and talk a little in friendship with a few of our trivial translators.’ Nash aspired to the reputation of a scholar; and he directs his satire against those who attempted the labors of scholarship without the requisite qualifications. The trivial translators could scarcely latinize their neck-verse—they could scarcely repeat a verse of Scripture, which was the ancient form of praying the benefit of clergy. Seneca, however, might be read in English. We have then to ask, Was Hamlet a translation or an adaptation from Seneca? Did Shakespeare ever attempt to found a play upon the model of Seneca; to be a trivial translator of him; to transfuse his sentences into dramatic composition? If this imputation does not hold good against Shakespeare, the mention of Hamlet has no connection [22] with the shifting companion who is thus talked of as a trivial translator. Nash does not impute these qualities to Hamlet, but to those who busy themselves, with the endeavors of art in adapting sentences from, Seneca which should rival whole ‘Hamlets’ in tragical speeches. ‘And then he immediately says, ‘But, O grief! Tempus edax rerum—what is it that will last always? The sea exhaled by drops will in continuance be dry; and Seneca, let blood line by line and page by page, at length must needs die to, our stage.’"

Lord Campbell himself seems to realize that his readers will not agree with him in his belief that the extract from Nash has any tendency to prove that Shakespeare was ever connected with the law, for, at the end of his book (p. 138), he protests, "I am quite serious in what I have written about Nash and Robert Greene having asserted the fact; but I by no means think that on this ground alone it must necessarily be taken for truth. Their statement that he belonged to the profession of the law may be as false as that he was a plagiarist from Seneca."

Lord Campbell, after giving the quotations above referred to, proceeds to analyze the plays, and finds legal expressions in all but fourteen of the thirty-seven plays usually attributed to Shakespeare.

From the appearance of Lord Campbell’s book down to the present time, the work of collecting these legalisms and writing ingenious essays to prove that they exhibit a profound knowledge of the law, has gone on with unremitting zeal, until the conclusion has been reached that Shakespeare was [23] not a mere clerk, but was himself a profound lawyer; and the laborious and learned German Shakespearian, Karl Elze, thinks his hero must certainly have been a practicing attorney, because he has found two suits instituted for the recovery of small sums of money, wherein Shakespeare was the plaintiff, and in which no attorney’s appearance is entered, and that accordingly, Shakespeare must have conducted them himself; while other scholars have gone so far as to assert that no less a lawyer than Francis Bacon could have written the plays. [24]

________

* See The Bankside Edition of Hamlet-Appendix A. back

† See A Study in the Warwickshire Dialect, by Appleton Morgan, etc. (the third edition), p. 41. back