PART
FOUR
LITIGATION AND LEGALISM
IN ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND
How Mr. Greenwood, in the face of all this
matter, can say that Mr. Devecmon’s assertion "is an astounding
perversion of the fact," I cannot understand. He must have written
in total oblivion, or ignorance, of the matter upon which Lord Campbell
founded his amazing dicta. If there is "no law at all in
Webster’s play," Lord Campbell has cited none from Shakespeare;
and Mr. Greenwood’s handling of the matter, in view of the use he has
made of Lord Campbell’s egregious treatise, calls for somewhat serious
reprehension. Evidently he had no idea of the nature of the grounds
on which Campbell proceeds. He speaks of "a few legal terms thrown
in here and there." What did Campbell produce from Shakespeare?
If the trial in Webster is an "absurd travesty of a trial, where
each and everybody-judge, counsel, witness, or spectator-seems to put
in a word or two just as it pleases him," what, in the name of
honest controversy, is the trial in The Merchant of Venice, which
Lord Campbell alleged to be "conducted according to the strict
forms of legal procedure"? Upon Lord Campbell’s scandalous deliverances
Mr. Greenwood founds his main case. Will he venture to discriminate
between Shakespeare’s law case and Webster’s? And if Lord Campbell is
entitled to ascribe to Shakespeare a full knowledge of the procedure
of trial by battle on the sole ground of his use of the word "craven,"
and to make this unspeakable absurdity part of his case for Shakespeare’s
"profound and accurate knowledge of law," upon what critical
principle does Mr. Greenwood sweep aside the actual trial by battle
in Webster, with all its technicalities?
I am not concerned to go into the question
of the accuracy of Webster’s or Massinger’s phraseology: that [162]
is neither here nor there. Even Campbell, in flat contradiction
of his own claims, admitted inaccuracies in Shakespeare; and Mr. Greenwood,
in turn, fatally pressed by Mr. Devecmon, makes further admissions,
forgetting that they absolutely destroy his own case, which rested not
upon mere citation of legal matter in Shakespeare, but upon the repeated
claim that Shakespeare’s law was impeccable, never open to demurrer
or writ of error, and therefore possible only to one within the freemasonry
of the profession. It may be left to either lawyers or laymen to judge
for themselves whether there is not much more show of legal knowledge
and recourse to legal phraseology in Webster than in Shakespeare. From
twenty-three of Shakespeare’s plays, Lord Campbell can cite on the average
only two or three legal allusions apiece: Webster’s one play yields
over thirty. I do not for a moment pretend that they exhibit "deep"
or "accurate" knowledge: I leave these follies to the other
side, who profess to certify a playwright’s lawyership on grounds that
would move a policeman to derision. The question is whether Webster’s
multitude of "legalisms" do not, by every principle on which
Lord Campbell proceeded in his extracts and his comments, exhibit tenfold
more preoccupation with legal matters than do Shakespeare’s, and, by
mere variety of allusion, far more "knowledge."
I have dealt thus far only with one of Webster’s
plays—apart from the incidental citations I have made from him in common
with other playwrights in dealing with Lord Campbell’s proofs. But an
almost equal abundance of legal allusion is found in Appius and Virginia,
as the following citations show:
Were you now
In prison, or arraign’d before the senate
For some suspect of treason; (i, 1)
Virginius, we would have you thus possess’d,
We sit not here to be prescrib’d and taught, [163]
Nor to have any suitor give us limit
Whose power admits no curb. (i, 3)
Is my love mispriz’d? (ii, 3)
Hadst thou a judge’s place above all judges
That judge all souls, having power to sentence me. (Ib.)
Your rashness we remit. (Ib.)
Blind misprision. (Ib.)
I’ll produce
Firm proofs, notes probable, sound witnesses,
Then, having with your lictors summon’d her,
I’ll bring the cause before your judgment seat,
Where upon my infallid evidence
You may pronounce the sentence on my side. (Ib.)
The cause is mine; you but the sentencer
Upon that evidence which I shall bring.
The business is, to have warrants by arrest
To answer such things at the judgment bar
As can be laid against her: ere her friends
Can be assembled, ere himself can study
Her answer, or scarce know her cause of summons,
To descant on the matter, Appius may
Examine, try, and doom Virginia. (Ib.)
The most austere and upright censurer
That ever sat upon the awful bench. (iii, 1)
If you will needs wage eminence and state
Choose out a weaker opposite. (Ib.)
First, the charge of her husband’s funeral,
next debts and legacies, and lastly the reversion. (iii, 2)
The term-time is the mutton-monger in the
whole calendar.
Do your lawyers eat any salads with their mutton?
(iii, 2)
Deny me justice absolutely, rather
Than feed me with delays. (Ib.) [164]
My purse is too scant to wage law with thee:
I am enforc’d be mine own advocate. (Ib.)
to let you know,
Ere you proceed in this your subtlement,
What penalty and danger you accrue
If you be found to double. (Ib.)
Having compounded with his creditors
For the third moiety. (Ib.)
Your reverence to the judge, good brother. (iv, 1)
May it please your reverend lordships.
(Ib.)
Now the question
(With favour of the bench) I will make plain
In two words only without circumstance. (Ib.)
Here’s her deposition on her death-bed. (Ib.)
If that your claim be just, how happens it
That you have discontinu’d it the space
Of fourteen year? (Ib.)
I shall resolve your lordship. (Ib.)
Where are your proofs of that? (Ib.)
Here, my good lord,
With depositions likewise.
For your question
Of discontinuance: put case. . . . (Ib.)
I bend low to thy gown, but not to thee. (Ib.)
Let us proceed to sentence. (Ib.)
Over and above all this resort to forms of
trial, the habit of legal phraseology and legal allusion, as we have
seen, pervades the Elizabethan drama to an extent which implies a general
proclivity in the people. Even the many parallels above presented to
the citations of Lord [165] Campbell from
Shakespeare give but an inadequate idea of the extent of the practice;
and at the risk of wearying the reader will transcribe for him a string
of the legalisms and references to law and litigation in a single play
of Ben Jonson’s The Magnetic Lady.
Compass. He is
the prelate of the parish here....
Makes all the matches and the marriage feasts
Within the ward; draws all the parish wills,
Designs the legacies. . . .
For of the wardmote quest he better can
The mystery, than the Levitic law.
Lady Loadstone. He keeps
off all her suitors, keeps the portion
Still in his hands, and will not part withal
On any terms.
[Many references to this]
Compass. Master
Practice here, my lady’s lawyer
Or man of law (for that is the true writing),
A man so dedicate to his profession
And the preferments go along with it. . . .
So much he loves that night-cap! the bench-gown
With the broad gard on the back! these shew a
man
Betroth’d unto the study of our laws. . . .
He has brought your niece’s portion with him,
madam,
At least, the man that must receive it, here
They come negociating the affair
You may perceive the contract in their faces,
And read the indenture.
Sir Diaphanous. I have
seen him wait at court there, with his maniples
Of papers and petitions.
Practice. He is one
That over-rules though, by his authority
Of living there; and cares for no man else
Neglects the sacred letter of the law;
And holds it all to be but a dead heap
Of civil institutions: the rest only
Of common men, and their causes, a farrago
Or a made dish in court; a thing of nothing.
Compass. And that’s your
quarrel with him! a just plea.
Lady Loadstone. Will
Master Practice be of counsel against us?
Compass. He is a lawyer
and must speak for his fee,
Against his father and mother, all his kindred,
[166]
His brothers or his sisters; no exception
Lies at the common law. He must not alter
Nature for form, but go on in his path;
It may be, he’ll be for us. . . .
He shall at last accompt-for the utmost farthing
If you can keep your hand from a discharge.
Sir Moth. The portion
left was sixteen thousand pound
I do confess it as a just man should. . . .
Now for the profits every way arising.
Well sir, the contract
Is with this gentleman, ten thousand pound.
An ample portion for a younger brother . . .
He expects no more than that sum to be tender’d
And he receive it: these are the conditions.
Practice. A direct bargain,
and sale in open market.
Sir Moth. And what I
have furnish’d him withal o’the by
To appear or so, a matter of four hundred
To be deduced upon the payment. . . .
Draw up this
Good Master Practice, for us, and be speedy
Practice. But here’s
a mighty gain, sir, you have made
Of this one stock: the principal first doubled,
In the first seven year, and that redoubled
In the next seven, beside six thousand pound,
There’s threescore thousand got in fourteen year,
After the usual rate of ten in the hundred,
And the ten thousand paid . . .
Sir Moth. . . . ‘Tis
certain that a man may leave,
His wealth or to his children or his friends
His wit he cannot so dispose by legacy . . .
Compass. He may entail
a jest upon his house,
Or leave a tale to his posterity,
To be told after him.
Practice. . . . The reverend
law lies open to repair
Your reputation . That will give you damages!
Five thousand pound for a finger, I have known
Given in court; and let me pack your jury.
. . . Sir, you forget
There is a court above, of the Star Chamber
To punish routs and riots.
Compass. . . There’s no London
jury but are led,
In evidence, as far by common fame
As they are by present disposition [167]
. . . a man
Mark’d out for a chief justice in his cradle.
Practice. . . . I am
a bencher, and now double reader
Compass. But run the
words of matrimony over
My head and Mistress Pleasance’s in my chamber
There’s Captain Ironside to be a witness,
And here’s a license to secure thee.—Parson
What do you stick at?
Palate. It is afternoon,
sir,
Directly against the canon of the church.
Sir Diaphanous. I saw
the contract and can witness it.
Compass. Varlet, do your
office.
Serjeant. I do arrest
your body, Sir Moth Interest,
In the King’s name, at suit of Master Compass,
And dame Plancentia his wife. The action’s enter’d,
Five hundred thousand pound. . . .
Lady Loadstone. I
cannot stop
The laws, or hinder justice: I can be
Your bail, if it may be taken.
Compass. With the
captain’s,
I ask no better.
Rut. Here are better
meWill give their bail.
Compass. But yours will not be taken.
Serjeant. You must to
prison, sir,
Unless you can find bail the creditor likes.
Compass. Bring forth
your child, or I appeal you of murder.
Prac. The law is plain:
if it were heard to cry,
And you produce it not, he may indict
All that conceal it, of felony and murder.
Polish. . . . Here your true
niece stands, fine Mistress Compass,
To whom you are by bond engag’d to pay
The sixteen thousand pound, which is her portion
Due to her husband, on her marriage-day.
I speak the truth, and nothing but the truth. . . .
Ironside. You’ll pay it now, Sir Moth,
with interest...
Sir Moth. Into what nets of cozenage am I
cast
On every side? . . . What will you bate? [168]
Compass.
No penny the law gives.
Sir Moth. Yes, Bias’s money.
Compass. What, your friend in court!
I will not rob you of him, nor the purchase.
Lady Loadstone. . . . There
rests yet a gratuity from me
To be conferr’d upon this gentleman,
Who, as my nephew Compass says, was cause
First of the offence, but since of all amends.
The quarrel caused the affright, the fright brought
on
The travail, which made peace; the peace drew
on
This new discovery, which endeth all
In reconcilement.
Compass. When the portion
Is tender’d, and received.
Sir Moth. Well, you must
have it
As good at first as last.
The whole play, in fine, is the working out,
without resort to courts, of a dispute in law. Plays in a similar taste
will be found in Chapman, Heywood, Dekker, and Massinger, who were not
lawyers, and in Middleton, who was. But, as it happens, no such play
of pervading legal intrigue is to be found in Shakespeare. In no Shakesperean
play, indeed, apart from the Merchant of Venice, is there to
be found nearly so much reliance upon and reference to a legal interest
as is to be seen in Chapman’s first play, The Blind Beggar of Alexandria,
where a question about a mortgage alleged to be forfeited recurs half
a dozen times, with long discussions about "statutes" and
"assurances" such as Shakespeare nowhere indulges in. Where
Shakespeare merely uses legal phrases, as often as not metaphorically,
the other dramatists introduce actual matters of litigation.
|