from Robertson's The Baconian Heresy

Lord Campbell's Case – Part 8

43. Concerning Romeo and Juliet, we are assured that the first scene may "be studied by a student of the Inns of Court to acquire a knowledge of the law of assault and battery." Without bringing a microscope to bear on the few minutiæ put forward in support of this characteristic assertion, we may note that so much knowledge of the law of assault and battery could probably be picked up by any inhabitant of Stratford, to say nothing of those who attended the inferior courts of London. Lord Campbell himself evidently feels the triviality of the detail that the elder Montagu and Capulet are bound over, in the English fashion, "to keep the peace," as is Bobadill in Every man In His Humour. But he strives to make a good finish by citing Mercutio’s phrase, "buy the fee simple of my life for an hour and a quarter" (iii, 1) and adding in a footnote that Parolles in All’s Well (iv, 3) "is made to talk like a conveyancer of Lincoln’s Inn" [86] when he says: "He will sell the fee-simple of his salvation . . . and cut the entail from all remainders."

As we have already seen, the phrase "fee simple" is shown by other men’s plays to have been a household word; but it may be well to conclude with further analogies and parallels:

You helped me to three manors in fee-farm.*
Heywood, Edward IV, Pt. II., Pearson’s ed. of Works, i, 150.

There is only in the amity of women an estate for will, and every person knows that is no certain inheritance.
Webster and Dekker, Westward Ho, i, 2.

Runs it [the warrant]
Both without bail and mainprize?**
Heywood, The English Traveller, iv, 1.

I’ll hire thee for a year by the Statute of Winchester.
Id. The Wise Woman of Hogsdon, ii, 1.

Now thou art mine
For one and twenty years, or for three lives
Choose which thou wilt, I’ll make thee a copyholder,
And thy first bill unquestioned.
Jonson, The Staple of News, i, 1.

They stand committed without bail or mainprize.
Id. ib. v, 2.

I told you such a passage would disperse them
Although the house were their fee-simple in law.
Id. The Magnetic Lady, ii, 1, near end.

This concludes Lord Campbell’s case as regards the plays. It remains to note his citations from the poems. They are nearly all instances of metaphor such as we have already dealt with:

1. But when the heart’s attorney once is mute,
The client breaks as desperate in the suit.
      Venus and Adonis, 1. 335.

2. Which purchase if thou make for fear of slips,
Set thy seal-manual on my wax-red lips.
      Id. 515-16.

3. Her pleading hath deserved a greater fee.
      Id. 609.

4. Dim register and notary of shame.
      Rape of Lucrece, 765.

5. Since that my case is past the help of law.
      Id. 1022.

6. No rightful plea might plead for justice here.
      Id. 1649.

7. Hath served a dumb arrest upon his tongue.
      Id. 1780.

8. When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past.
      Sonnet 30.

9. So should that beauty which you hold in lease.
      Sonnet 13.

10. And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
      Sonnet 18.

11. And ‘gainst thyself a lawful plea commence.
      Sonnet 35.

12. When that fell arrest
Without all bail shall carry me away.
      Sonnet 74.

13. Of faults concealed, wherein I am attainted.
      Sonnet 88.

14. Which works on leases of short numbered hours.
      Sonnet 124.

15. Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage.
      Sonnet 26.

16. And I myself am mortgag’d to thy will.
      Sonnet 134.

17. Why so large cost, having so short a lease?
      Sonnet 46.

18. So should that beauty which you hold in lease
Find no determination.
      Sonnet 13.

Finally, Sonnet 46 is quoted entire, with the claim that it "smells as potently of the attorney’s office as any of the stanzas penned by Lord Kenyon while an attorney’s clerk in Wales."

Hitherto, the legalist case has proceeded on the implicit assumption that Shakespeare chronically vitiates his art by putting in the mouths of lay characters phraseology which only lawyers could understand. Now the implication is that he similarly flavours his sonnets and poems in a way that only a lawyer would have done. Again, all that is necessary is to cast a glance over that contemporary poetry which Lord Campbell never takes into account, This has already been duly done by Sir [88] Sidney Lee; and it will here suffice to quote a few of the sonnets to which he points as the patterns and precedents*** of those in which Shakespeare plays the lawyer:

Then to Parthenophe, with all post haste
(As full assured of the pawn fore-pledged),
I made; and with these words disordered placed
Smooth (though with fury’s sharp outrages edged).
Quoth I, "Fair Mistress! did I set mine Heart
At liberty, and for that, made him free;
That you should win him for another start,
Whose certain bail you promised to be!"
"Tush!" quoth Parthenophe, "before he go,
I’ll be his bail at last, and doubt it not!"
"Why then," said I, "that Mortgage must I show
Of your true love, which at your hands I got."
Ay me! She was and is his bail, I wot,
   But when the Mortgage should have cured the sore
   She passed it off, by Deed of Gift before.
        Barnabe Barnes, Parthenophil and Patthenophe, Sonnets, &c.,
        1593. Sonnet 8. (In rep. of Arber’s Elizabethan Sonnets, 1904, i, 173.)

. . . . Why then, inhuman, and my secret foe,
Didst thou betray me? yet would be a woman!
From my chief wealth, outweaving me this woe,
Leaving thy love in pawn, till time did come on
When that thy trustless bonds were to be tried!
And when, through thy default, I thee did summon
Into the Court of Steadfast Love, then cried,
"As it was promised, here stands his Heart’s bail!
And if in bonds to thee my love -be tied,
Then by those bonds take Forfeit of the Sale!"
Id. ib. Sonnet 11, as cited, p. 174.

Those Eyes (thy Beauty’s Tenants!) pay due tears
For occupation of mine Heart, thy Freehold,
In tenure of Love’s service! If thou behold [89]
With what exaction it is held through fears
And yet thy Rents, extorted daily, bears.
Thou wouldst not thus consume my quiet’s gold!
And yet, though covetous thou be, to make
Thy beauty rich, with renting me so roughly
And at such sums, thou never thought dost take
But still consumes me! Then, thou dost misguide all!
Spending in sport, for which I wrought so toughly!
When I had felt all torture, and had tried all;
And spent my stock through ‘strain of thy extortion;
On that, I had but good hopes for my portion.
Id. ib. Sonnet 20, p. 181.

Shall we be told, in the absence of all biographical evidence, that Barnes must have been a lawyer? There is simply no legal trace of him. But what is quite clear is that Shakespeare had read his poems, published in 1593. It is not merely that he writes "legal" sonnets in Barnes’s fashion, and distinctly echoes him at various points:

A quest of thoughts all tenants to the Heart.
      Sonnet 46.

That fell arrest without all bail.
      Sonnet 73 (Cp. 133).

Your charter is so strong
That you yourself may privilege your time.
      Sonnet 58 (Cp. 87).

—the two last recalling Barnes’s

that charter,
Scaled with the wax of stedfast continence
Sonnet 10,

and

Thy love’s large Charter,
Sonnet 15;

but that there are so many echoes of tune and theme that in readin Barnes one seems half the time to be hearing undertones of the more powerful song of Shakespeare. And as Lord Southampton was one of Barnes’s as well as one of Shakespeare’s proclaimed patrons, the two men are very likely to have been acquaintances.† Shakespeare’s [90] sonnets are in any case notably in the manner of Barnes’s, and he was following him in legalism as in other fashions. And the same holds of his relation to the anonymous sonneteer who in 1594 published the volume entitled Zepheria. Here we have the same trick of legal phraseology:

Mine eyes (quick pursuivants!) the sight attached
Of Thee . . .
Mine heart, Zepheria! then became thy fee.
Canzon 3. Vol. II of Eliz. Sonnets, as cited, p. 158,

Care’s Usher! Tenant to his own Oppression.
Canzon 5, p. 159,

Wherein have I on love committed trespass?
O, if in justice thou must needs acquit me,
Reward me with thy love.
Canzon 16, p. 165,

and so forth. Two complete "canzons" show how far the fashion went:

How often hath my pen (mine heart’s Solicitor!)
Instructed thee in Breviat of my case!
While Fancy-pleading eyes (thy beauty’s Visitor!)
Have patterned to my quill, an angel’s face.
How have my Sonnets (faithful Counsellors!)
Thee, without ceasing, moved for Day of Hearing!
While they, my plaintive Cause (my faith’s Revealers!)
Thy long delay, my patience, in thine ear ring.
How have I stood at bar of thine own conscience;
When in Requesting Court my suit I brought!
How have thy long adjournments slowed the sentence,
Which I (through much expense of tears) besought!
Through many difficulties have I run;
Ah, sooner wert thou lost, I wis, than won!

When last mine eyes dislodged from thy beauty,
Though served with process of a parent’s Writ:
A Supersedeas countermanding duty,
Even then, I saw upon thy smiles to sit!
Those smiles which we invited to a Party,
Disperpling clouds of faint respecting fear,
Against the Summons which was served on me
A larger privilege of dispense did bear. [91]
Thine eyes’ edict, the statute of Repeal,
Doth other duties wholly abrogate,
Save such as thee endear in hearty zeal,
Then be it far from me, that I should derogate
From Nature’s Law, enregistered in thee!
So might my love incur a Praemunire.

It will hardly be disputed that either Shakespeare had read in manuscript, or heard some one quote, Zepheria, or the sonneteer had read Venus and Adonis. That one poet should write of his "heart’s solicitor," and another of the "heart’s attorney," by sheer coincidence, is not plausibly to be argued. And even if it could be proved; which it cannot, that the more lawyerlike poet was a lawyer, it would be sufficiently idle to contend that the other must also have been so, in view of what we have seen of the habit of legalism among all the dramatists of the day. We are witnessing a fashion of the time, comparable with the vogue of Euphuism. The many echoes and parallels of earlier sonnets in those of Shakespeare are weighty hints of the slightness of our ground for taking his as direct records of his heart’s experience. Even when he youthfully imitated other men’s modes, he could not but give to his echoes the deeper vibration of his larger spirit, even as he avoided his models’ grosser crudities. In Zepheria, the canzon last above cited is followed by two in which we have the barbarisms "irrotulate" and "foyalty," "excordiate" and "exordiate"—outrages Possible to a pedant, but not to our poet. But however his finer taste and deeper feeling might preserve him from such offences, he is none the less mannered by the "form and pressure" of the time, which in this matter of legalist vocabulary and imagery is nearly universal. The Elizabethan sonneteers, like the old troubadours, have their tunes and themes in common, and each man’s collection is visibly suggested by or suggestive of others. Their very titles, Phillis, Licia, Delia, Diana, Coelia , IDEA, Zepheria, fidessa, Chloris, Laura, tell of a reigning mode, setting in with Sidney’s Astrophel and [92] Stella, and drawing much on French originals. It was in full force in 1593, and culminated about 1597—the years between which we know Shakespeare to have written many of his "sugred sonnets." That he should copy a particular fashion as he copied the general was entirely natural. Drayton, who was no lawyer, but was a poet, could not so far resist the legalist craze as to abstain from working out in one Sonnet†† the fancy that his mistress may be tried for murdering his heart"

The verdict on the view
Do quit the dead, and me not accessory.
Well, well! I fear it will be proved of you
The Evidence so great a proof doth carry.

Shakespeare had thus the example, in these matters, of a poet whom he could not but esteem, and whom in one of his later sonnets he has so closely imitated that there can be no question of the influence. In this case the parallel is so striking that once more we are led to doubt the primary character of the experience suggested in Shakespeare’s sonnet:

DRAYTON

An Evil Spirit (your Beauty) haunts me still,
Wherewith, alas, I have been long possest
Which ceaseth not to attempt me to each ill,
Nor gives me once, but one poor minute’s rest.
In me it speaks, whether I sleep or wake;
And when by means to drive it out I try,
With greater torments then it me doth take,
And tortures me in most extremity.
Before my face, it lays down my despairs,
And hastes me on unto a sudden death
Now tempting me to drown myself in tears
And then in sighing to give up my breath.
   Thus am I still provoked to every evil,
   By this good-wicked Spirit, sweet Angel-Devil.
       No. 22 in 1599 ed. of Idea;
       No. 20 in ed. cited, p. 191. [93]

SHAKESPEARE

Two loves I have, of comfort and despair
Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman, colour’d ill,
To win me soon to hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
And whether that my angel be turned fiend,
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;
But being both from me, both to each friend,
I guess one angel in another’s hell:
   Yet this shall I ne’er know, but live in doubt,
   Till my bad angel fire my good one out.
       Sonnet 144.

Drayton has told in another sonnet (21) how:

A witless Gallant, a young wench that wooed. . . .
Intreated me, as e’er I wished his good,
To write him but one Sonnet to his Love

and how he did so, with the success desired. It is not easy to believe that these sombre lines of Shakespeare’s were but such an exercise. Yet they may have been. In any case, there is no excuse now left for imputing to an overmastering devotion to law, the result of a deep legal training, the legalisms in which he outwent Drayton.

So far from being "lawyerlike" in the sense of striking the literary note natural to a trained lawyer, they struck such a lawyer, to wit Sir John Davies, as rather ridiculous. Davies, in one of his "gulling sonnets," avowedly parodies the legalist sonnets of the poet of Zepheria; and he seems to have had before him in manuscript Shakespeare’s Sonnet 26 when he penned his parody beginning:

To love my lord, I do Knight’s service owe.

"B. Griffin, Gent." who dedicated his Fidessa (1596) to the Gentlemen of the Inns of Court, and was presumably one of them, makes only one slight excursion into legal imagery in his sonnets. Yet the Baconians would have us believe that Bacon, who in his non-legal works so [94] rarely resorts to legal phraseology, touched the sonnets with it so abundantly by reason of a natural professional propensity.

In this connection however, it is hardly necessary to consider the theorem which, on the strength of the legalisms and of the fixed Baconian ideal would ascribe to Francis Bacon, as a real expression of experience, all the Sonnets. In no other aspect and over no other issue is that theorem more staggering to judgment. But we shall recur to it in a later chapter. For the present it is enough to have shown how entirely nugatory is the non-comparative process by which Lord Campbell has unwittingly fooled the Baconians to the top of their bent. Citing him, they have relieved themselves of the trouble of outgoing his research. The whole phenomenon is a warning instance of the heedless pretence, and the more heedless acceptance, of authority in criticism. "All law critics admit," says Dr. R. Theobald,††† that such language as that of the 46th Sonnet "is not the writing of an amateur but of an expert." Lord Campbell alone is cited for the "all": Mr. Devecmon’s counter-doctrine is unknown to the Baconian. We have seen the value of Lord Campbell’s pronouncement, and we shall similarly examine some others.

But critics like Dr. Theobald, themselves habitually dogmatising on a basis of literary ignorance, are willingly at the mercy of any false evidence that chimes with their predilection. "Lawyers say," writes Dr. Theobald, "that one of the most difficult things to acquire in their profession is the phraseology." Dr. Theobald need only have read in the Elizabethan drama a little further than he went for material to prove that Bacon wrote Shakespeare and Marlowe, in order to learn that the lawyers talked ignorantly. When, however, he proceeds to help them in their mystification by asserting that "the outsider is sure, sooner or later, to be found out. He will traverse what he approves (!)—or empanel a witness (!) instead of a jury—or in some way his legal chatter will degenerate into jargon." On this principle, Dr. Theobald’s assent to the lawyer’s claim is of no value; he being no lawyer. Unable to illustrate his proposition save by imaginary enormities of blundering, he must by his own account be unable to detect any slighter deviations from legal accuracy. Then his endorsement of their expertise is admittedly worthless to start with.

Lawyers of literary competence will be the first to admit, on a study of the case, that Lord Campbell’s handling of the literary problem before us partakes of the nature of literary charlatanism and that Lord Penzance’s professed "summing-up of the Bacon-Shakespeare problem, being a grossly ex parte statement, is entitled to neither lay nor professional respect. In this matter the sole authorities are critical reason and literary evidence. Unhappily we shall find some professed Shakespearean scholars as uncritical as the judges.

__________

* This term occurs only once in Shakespeare. back

** This term never occurs in Shakespeare. back

*** Before the fashion of sonnets broke out as it did in the 'nineties, George Gascoigne had produced his poem "The Arraign-ment of a Lover" (in Posies, 1575), wherein the lover is tried at "Beauty's Bar," accused by False Suspect, whereon "Craft, the Crier, called a Quest," and after sentence "Jealous, the Jailor, bound we fast, To hear the verdict of the Bill"; the procedure ending with "Faith and Truth my Sureties," than which there is "no better warrantise." See the poem in Arber's Spenser Anthology, p. 132; Gascoigne's Works, ed. Cunliffe, i, 38. back

† Dr. Creighton, in his Shakespeare's Story of his Life (1904), works out a wildly speculative tale of Shakespeare's use of Barnes as "devil" after lampooning him as Parolles. All this is idle myth-mongering; but the two men must have met. back

†† No. 51 of ed. 1599 of Idea; No. 2 in reprint in Elizabethan Sonnets, as cited, ii, 182. back

††† Shakespeare Studies in Baconian Light, 1904, p. 19. back