notes will be needless, though some of them will be found helpful. I have not hesitated to present the definitions of the commonest legal terms. To those unversed in law lore, they will present at a glance the argument intrinsic in the text. Some of the quotations, taken alone, are doubtless of trifling probative force. They are given because, in cumulative testimony, each independent fact is a multiplier. We seem to have here something more than a sciolist's temerity of indulgence in the terms of an unfamiliar art. No legal solecisms will be found. The abstrusest elements of the common law are impressed into a disciplined service with every evidence of the right and knowledge of commanding. Over and over again, where such knowledge is unexampled in writers unlearned in the law, Shakespeare appears in perfect possession of it. In the law of real property, its rules of tenure and descents, its entails, its fines and recoveries, and their vouchers and double vouchers; in the procedure of the courts, the methods of bringing suits and of arrests, the nature of actions, the rules of pleading, the law of escapes, and of contempt of court; in the principles of evidence, both technical and philosophical; in the distinction between the temporal and the spiritual tribunals; in the law of attainder and forfeiture; in the requisites of a valid marriage; in the presumption of legitimacy; in the learning of the law of prerogative; in the inalienable character of the crown,-this mastership appears with surprising authority. It is not necessary in accounting for this to assault truth with a paradox, or to put a mask upon the face of the first of men. The law books of that time were few. Shakespeare's French is nearly as bad as the law French in which many of them were written; and it is not to be forgotten that to learn must have been easy to this man, whose mental endowments were so universal that the best intellects of after times have vainly essayed to admeasure them. Coleridge has remarked "that a young author's first work almost always bespeaks his recent pursuits." He might have said with equal correctness that any author's works can never entirely hide his former pursuits. These may be betrayed by the style, or by prejudices, affections, antipathies, or af man. fectations. Gibbon thought that his experience as an officer in the Hampshire militia was of assistance to him in describing that vast nutation in history whereby the Roman world, by a process almost physical in appearance, shifted from temperate simplicity, grandeur, civilization, and solidity to tropical luxury, effeminacy, barbarism, and quick decay. Were every detail of Falconer's and Somerville's lives unknown, it would be certain from their works that the one was a sailor and the other a sportsSir Walter Scott had been called to the bar and his works attest his legal proficiency. We see Fielding's experience as a magistrate in the examination of Partridge, in the conspiracy between Lady Booby and Lawyer Scout against Fanny, and in that masterpiece of savage irony, the life of the late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great. We know from the details of mercantile routine in Robinson Crusoe and Colonel Jack that Defoe must have been a merchant. That Thackeray had been an artist is very apparent in his works. Donne, (15721631,) who had been a student at Lincoln's Inn, satirized a barrister's wooing in law phrase: "he throws, Like nets or lime twigs, wheresoe'r he goes, And woos in language of the pleas and bench. In th' interim my letters should take place The argument on the present question rests mainly, of course, upon the general and constant employment by Shakespeare of the terms of a science which, in his time, was crabbed and harsh, and which has at any time few points of contact with the graces of literature.. There is another special argument of great force, in presenting which my inadequate resources for comparison restrict me to the use of Hamlet, though I have no doubt that corroborative results will be yielded to any one who may make a more extended investigation. Hamlet was published in quarto in 1603. Compared with the final version which appeared in the folio of 1623, it is a magnificent imperfection, but invaluable because it shows how the hand of the master wrought upon his work. From the one to the other we see Shakespeare's mind in operation. Its creative processes are disclosed. Its industry is demonstrated. Here are the blotted lines Jonson wished for. We see the growth of immortal blossoms from barren common-places. It is as if some sculptor, with an enchanter's power, had wrought upon an unadorned Milan cathedral through one night, so that the morning showed thousands of carvings and statues where the day before were only walls of unadorned simplicity. If Shakespeare's use of legal learning were not that of a full man, with pride in his skill, we should not expect to see, in the changes by which he brought the play to perfection, any additions or elaborations in that respect. But that they do appear most remarkably, the following, in which the text of the quarto is given, together with that of the finished version, will show: Who by a seale compact, well ratified by law Was gaged by our king (Quarto.) |