Part Four - Note to Shakespeare as a Lawyer

Mr. Sidney Lee, after telling us (p. 30, n. 3) that "legal terminology abounded in all plays and poems of the period" (the exaggeration of which statement I have already pointed out, and which, indeed, speaks for itself), refers to Barnabe Barnes’s Sonnets, 1593, and Zepheria, 1594, as instances. That many of the sonnets of Zepheria "labour at conceits drawn from legal technicalities" (see Lee, Appendix IX) is certainly undeniable. Take the following for example (Canzon 37):

Now this is so very absurd that we hesitate to believe that it was put forward as serious poetry. But, however this may be, [408] the example of Zepheria has no relevancy to our argument in Shakespeare’s case, because the author is anonymous. I should think it highly probable that he was a lawyer, and what we are in search of is instances of familiarity with legal learning, and a legal life, in the writings of a layman without legal training, such as may fairly be put forward as parallel to the Shakespearean instances.* Perhaps it was partly because the author was a lawyer that another lawyer poet—Sir John Davies—eminent both at the Bar and on the Bench, held him up to ridicule in his Gullinge Sonnets of 1595.

Let us, then, leave Zepheria as not to the point, and turn to Barnabe Barnes’s Sonnets. "In these," says Mr. Lee, "legal metaphors abound"; yet if the reader will turn to the hundred and four sonnets and twenty-six madrigals of Parthenophil and Parthenophe he will, I think, only find legal allusions in nine of the sonnets and one madrigal, which can hardly be said to justify Mr. Lee’s exuberant description.

Let us now examine these "legal metaphors." It seems (though the meaning is not always easy to follow) that the poet had been in bondage to a certain "light Laya," but seeing this nymph coquetting with "a youthful Squire," his heart flies back to Parthenophe and asks for pardon. Then follows Sonnet vi:

Thereupon "her love to me, she forthwith did impawn," and [409] sets his heart at liberty, but the heart meditates another flight to the lady.

The poet next complains that Parthenophe keeps his heart "like a slavish martyr" (Sonnet x).

He upbraids the lady for

(Sonnet xi)

In Sonnets xv and xvi we have allusions to "thy love’s large Charter and thy Bonds," and "that accursed Deed, before unsealed," and in Sonnet xx we find the following lines:

Here the poet takes leave of law, and soon afterwards plunges into astronomy. It is rather a stretch of language, therefore, to say that "legal metaphors abound" in these poems; neither can it be said that such as these exhibit so sound a knowledge of legal doctrines and technicalities as would make us imagine that the author must have had a legal training. What have we? The common notion of going bail for a prisoner; giving a pledge for his good behaviour; a Bond; a Mortgage; a charter; a Deed, signed and sealed; Freehold; Tenure ("of love’s service"); Rents;—surely the introduction of such well-known terms as these, jumbled together with nothing to suggest that the writer had any special knowledge of the subject from which they are borrowed, but rather the contrary, cannot be seriously put forward as a parallel to Shakespeare’s familiarity with law and lawyers, and the persistency and accuracy with which he makes use of legal phraseology!

Compare with these specimens from Barnabe Barnes Shakespeare’s Sonnets xlvi and cxxxiv.

A layman reads this sonnet, does not appreciate its meaning, [411] and thinks that it might perfectly well have been written by a man who had never had any legal training. What does the trained lawyer say? Lord Campbell’s comment is as follows: "I need not go further than this sonnet, which is so intensely legal in its language and imagery, that without a considerable knowledge of English forensic procedure it cannot be fully understood. A lover being supposed to have made a conquest of (i.e. to have gained by purchase) his mistress, his EYE and his HEART holding as joint tenants, have a contest as to how she is to be partitioned between them, each moiety then to be held in severalty. There are regular pleadings in the suit, the HEART being represented as Plaintiff and the EYE as Defendant. At last issue is joined on what the one affirms and the other denies. Now a jury (in the nature of an inquest) is to be empanelled to decide, and by their verdict to apportion between the litigating parties the subject-matter to be decided. The jury fortunately are unanimous, and after due deliberation, find for the EYE in respect of the lady’s outward form, and for the HEART in respect of her inward love. Surely Sonnet 46 smells as potently of the attorney’s office as any of the stanzas penned by Lord Kenyon while an attorney’s clerk in Wales."

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* On the supposition, of course, that Shakspere=Shakespeare. back