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THE LAW

SHAR ESPEARSE,

BY

CUSHMAN K. DAVIS.

Affectio tun nomen imponit operi two.—Bracton.

Why uuey not thud be the skull of w lawyer?—HamMiert,

SECOND EDITION.

8T. PAUL:
WEST PUBLISHING COMPANY.
1884,

DE
CoPrryricHt, 1883,
BY

C. K. Davis.

eit UN TY;
co e 2 "Sip,

 
INTRODUCTION.

*

HAKESPEARE’S persistent and correct use of
law terms was long ago noticed and caused the
conjecture that he must have studied in an attor-
ney’s office. What is the truth in this respect will
probably never be certainly known; but that he was
more addicted to the employment of legal nomen-
clature than any English writer (excepting, of course,
the jurists) is incontestable.

The work of winter evenings, commenced long
ago, as an incident to habitual study of the works of
him “who converted the elements which awaited at
his command into entertainments,” is submitted
with little speculation upon questions concerning
which there have been many words and few demon-
strations. Itis not pretended that every legal phrase
which he used is here presented. The aim has been
not to extend the task beyond the necessity of proof
into a wearisome repetition of expressions which
often recur in scores. To the lawyer many of the

(3)
4 _ THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

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 tri-
fling 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 com-
manding. Over and over again, where such knowl-
edge 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 de-
scents, its entails, its fines and recoveries, and their
vouchers and double vouchers tgga 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 LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 5

 

the principles of evidence, both technical and phil-
osophical; in the distinction between the temporal
and the spiritual tribunals; in the law of attainder
and forfeiture; in the requisites of a valid mar-
riage; in the presumption of legitimacy; in the
learning of the law of prerogative; in the inaliena-
ble character of the crown,—this mastership ap-
pears with surprising authority.

It is not necessary in accounting for this to as-
sault 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 intel-
lects of after times have vainly essayed to admeas-
ure them.

Coleridge has remarked “that a young author’s
first work almost ajypys bespeaks his recent pur-
suits.” 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-
6 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

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 sim-
plicity, grandeur, civilization, and solidity to trop-
ical 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 sports-
man. Sir 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 ex-
amination 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, (1572-
1631,) who had been a student at Lincoln’s Inn,
satirized a barrister’s wooing in law phrase:
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 7

 

“he throws,

Like nets or lime twigs, whcresoe’r he goes,
His title of barrister on every wench,

And woos in language of the pleas and bench.
A motion, lady! Speak, Coscus. I have been
In love e’er since tricesimo the queen.
Continual claims I’ve made, injunctions got
To stay my rival’s suit, that he should not
Proceed; spare me, in Hilary term I went;
You said if I returned next ’size in Lent,

I should be in remitter of your grace.

In th’ interim my letters should take place

Of affidavits.”

 

The argument on the present question rests
mainly, of course, upon the general and constant
employment by Shakespeare of the terms of a sci-
ence 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. Com-
pared with the final version which appeared in the
folio of 1623, it is a magnificent imperfection, but
8 THE LAW IN SITAKESPEARE.

 

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
isdemonstrated. Here are the blotted lines Jonson
wished for. We see the growth of immortal’ blos-
soms 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 ap-
pear 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

And heraldrie, did forfeit with his life all those

Ilis lands which he stood seazed of to the conqueror,
Against the which a moiety competent

Was gaged by our king (Quarto.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 9

 

To this Shakespeare added:

which had returned

To the inheritance of Fortinbras,

Had he been vanquisher ; as by the same covenant
And carriage of the article designed,

His fell to Hamlet.

 

He hath, my lord, wrung from me a forced graunt.
(Quarto.)
He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave,
By laborsome petition, and at last
Upon his will I sealed my hard consent.
(Standard Version.)

Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d
His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! (Not in Quarto.)

Oph. My lord, he hath made many tenders of his love to me.
Cor. Tenders. I, I, tenders you may call them.
Oph. And withall such earnest vowes.
Cor. Springes to catch woodcocks.
What, do [ not know when the blood doth burne
How prodigall the tongue lends the heart vowes.
In brief, be more scanter of your maiden presence,
Or tendering thus you’l tender mee a foole. (Quarto.)

Oph. He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders
Of his affection to me.

Pol, Affection! Pooh! ‘You speak like a green girl
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?

Oph. I do not know, my lord, what I should think.

Pot. Marry, Pll teach you: think yourself a baby:
That you have ta’en these tenders for true pay
Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly:
Or—not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,
Running it thus—you’ll tender me a fool,

(Standard Version.)
10 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE,

 

‘‘Do not believe his vows, for they are brokers,
Not of that dye which their investments show,
But mere implorators of unholy suits,
Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds,

The better to beguile.”’ (Not in Quarto.)
I did repel his letters, deny his gifts,

As you did charge me. (Quarto.)
I did repel his letters, and denied

His access to me. (Standard Version.)

For in that dreame of death, when we awake,
And borne before our everlasting judge,
From whence no passenger euer returned,
The undiscovered country, at whose sight

The happy smile and the accursed damn’d. (Quario.)
The undiscovered country from whose bourne
No traveller returns, (Standard Version.)

Yet you cannot
Play upon me, besides to be demanded by a spunge.
(Quarto.)

Besides, to be demanded of a spunge: what replication
Should be made by theson of aking? (Standard Version.)

King. Now must your conscience my acquittance seal.
* ¥ ¥ * * * *
Laer. It will appear: but tell me
Why you proceeded not against these feats
So crimeful and so capital in nature. (Not in Quarto.)

First Clo. I say no, she ought not to be buried
In Christian burial.

Sec. Clo. Why, sir?

First Clo. Marry, because shee’s drown’d.

Sec. Clo. But she did not drowne her selfe.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 11

 

First Olo. No, that’s certaine, the water drown’d her.

Sec. Clo. Yea, but it was against her will.

First Clo. No, { deny that; for looke you, sir; I stand here;
If the water come to me I drowne not my selfe;

But if 1 goe to the water, and am then drown’d,
Ergo, lam guiltie of my owne death.
Y’are gone; goe, y’are gone, sir.

Sec. Clo. 1; but see, she hath Christian burial
Because she is a great woman. (Quarto.)

First Clo. Is she to be buried in Christian burial that wil-
fully seeks her own salvation ?

Sec. Clo. I tell thee she is: and therefore make her grave
straight: the crowner hath sat on her, and finds it Christian
burial.

First Clo. How can that be, unless she drowned herself in
her own defence?

Sec. Clo. Why, ’tis found so.

First Clo. It must be ‘se offendendo;’ it cannot be else.
For here lies the point: if Idrown myself wittingly, it argues
an act: and an act hath three branches: it is, to act, to do, to
perform: argal, she drowned herself wittingly.

Sec. Clo. Nay, but hear you, goodman delver,—

First Clo. Give me leave. Here lies the water; good: here
stands the man; good: ifthe man go to this water, and drown
himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes,—mark you that; but
if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not him-
self; argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens
not his own life.

Sec. Glo. But is this law?

First Clo. Ay, marry, is’t; crowner’s quest law.

Sec. Clo. Will you ha’ the truth on’t? If this had not been
a gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o’ Christian
burial. (Standard Version.)

Ham. Looke you, there’s another, Horatio.
Why mai’t not be the scull of some Lawyer?
12 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

Me thinkes he should indite that fellow
Of an action of Batterie, for knocking
Him about the pate with’s shovel: now where is your
Quirkes and quillets now, your vouchers and
Double vouchers, your leases and free-holde
And tenements? Why that same box will scarce
Hold the conveiance of his land, and must
The honor lie there? O pittifull transformance!
I prithee tell me, Horatio,
Is parchment made of sheep-skinnes?
Hor. I, my lorde, and of calves-skinnes too.
Ham. I’ faith they proove themselves shecpe and calves
That deale with them or put their trustin them. (Quarto.)

Ham. There’s another: why may not that be the skull of a
lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets, his cases,
his tenures, and his tricks? why does he suffer this rude
knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel,
and will not tell him of his action of battery? Hum! This
fellow might be in’s time a great buyer of land, with his stat-
utes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his re-
coveries: is this the fine of his fines, and the recovery of his
recoveries, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt ? will his
vouchers vouch him no more of his purchases, and double
ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair of indentures ?
The very conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in this box ;
and must the inheritor himself have no more, haf

Hor. Not a jot more, my lord.

Ham. Is not parchment made of sheep-skins?

Hor. Ay, my lord, and of calf-skins too.

Ham. They are sheep and calves which seek out assurance
in that. ; (Standard Version.)

Ham. An earnest conjuration from the king,
As England was his faithful tributary,
As love between them like the palm might flourish,
As peace should still her wheaten garland wear
#
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 13

 

And stand a comma ’tween their amities,

And many such-like ’As’es of great charge,

That, on the view and knowing of these contents,

Without debatement further, more or less,

He should the bearers put to sudden death,

Not shriving-time allow’d.
Hor. How was this scal’d?
Ham. Why, even in that was heaven ordinant.

I had my father’s signet in my purse,

Which was the model of that Danish seal;

Folded the writ up in form of the other,

Subscribed it, gave’t the impression, placed it safely,

The changeling never known. (Not in Quarto.)

Hor. No, 1am more an antike Roman
Thana Dane; here is some poison left.
Ham. Upon my love | charge thee let it goe.
O fic, Horatio, and if thou shoulds’t die’
What a scandale woulds’t thou leave behind;
What tonguc should tell the story of our deaths,
If not from thee. (Quarto.)
Ham. Had I but time—as this fell sergeant, Death,
Is strict in his arrest—O, I could tell you—
But let it be. Horatio, I «m dead;
Thou livest; report me and my cause aright
To the unsatisfied.
Hor. 7 Never believe it;
Iam more an antique Roman than a Dane;
Here is yet some liquor left.
Ham. As thou’rt a man,
Give me the cup: let go; by heaven, I'll have’t.
O good Horatio, what a wounded name, ‘
Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent. thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story. (Standard Version.)
14 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

It thus appears that Shakespeare amplified the
statement of the compact with Fortinbras; changed
Polonius’ term, “a forced graunt,” to a more formal
and elaborate legal expression; inserted the word
“canon” to express a divine law; forced the word
“tender” to an ampler use; called lover’s oaths “bro-
kers;” caught the idem sonans of the word “borne”
and changed it to “bourne” as the boundary of that
undiscovered country; took the suggestion of the
word “demanded” and asked what “replication” shall
be made; added the request for a “sealed acquit-
ance,” and the demand why “capital” crimes had
not been “proceeded against;” rewrote the dialogue
between the clowns solely to enlarge it and make
it more accurate in its legal meaning, and more
relevant to the case in Plowden; reconstructed
Hamlet’s meditations on the lawyer’s skull; cor-
rected the inaccurate suggestion of an indictment
for an action of battery; struck out the words
“leases and free-holde and tenements;” added to
the enumeration of the devices of money-lenders
the words “buyer of land,” “statutes,” “recognizan-
ces,” “fines,” “recoveries,”—all with the greatest
pains-taking to be full and accurate; added to the
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 15

 

purport of the king’s letter to England and, where
Hamlet, in the quarto, merely resists Horatio’s at-
tempt to drink the cup by expressing a desire that.
he should live to tell the story, changed this to an
injunction to his friend to live to

 

report me and my cause aright
To the unsatisfied.

By an unlearned writer such a task of correction
and amplification would never have been attempted.
By one who was learned in the subject, and who
either delighted in it or had the tendency of prac-
tice in its employment, it was inevitable that this
should be done.

In the scene between Hamlet and his father’s
ghost the effect of the “juice of cursed hebenon” is
stated with much detail. This passage was also
retouched, but no material change was made. No
symptom or effect was added. The legal state-
ments were changed throughout. But the former
needed correction, for it is very inaccurate. The
introduction of poison into the circulation through
the porches of the ear, so that the effect will be an
instantaneous incrustation of the skin, was a con-
ception of Shakespeare and has no foundation in
medical science.
16 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

It is especially to be noticed that this legal learn-
ing is accurately sustained in many passages with
cumulative and progressive application. The word
employed becomes suggestive of other words, or of
a legal principle, and these are at once used so fully
that their powers are exhausted. In one scene the
lover, wishing a kiss, prays for a grant of pasture
oft his mistress’ lips. This suggests the law of
common of pasture, and she replies that her lips
are no common. This suggests the distinction be-
tween tenancy in common and tenancy in severalty,
the lips being several, and she adds, “though sev-
eral they be.” Miranda and Ferdinand simply
betroth themselves; sanctimonious ceremonies are
intended to follow. In the case of Florizel and
Perdita the contract before witnesses is proposed,
but the disguised father interrupts the proceed-
ings and prevents a marriage. In the case of
Mariana there is a contract of marriage, followed
by consummation in the legal and physical sense,
and it is not even suggested that this is not a
valid marriage. In describing the wager of battle
everything is correctly and orderly set forth. The
appeal is made; gloves are thrown down and taken
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 17

 

up; the lists are set upon the green; proclamation
is made; the judges take their places; the king
stops the combat by throwing down his warder.
The regularity of the process in Shylock vy. Anto-
nio is fully pointed out elsewhere. The trial of
Queen Catherine opens with a proposition to read
the commissions of the judges, citation is made, her
appearance is demanded, and she refuses it, be-
cause to appear will be a submission to the juris-
diction of the court. This is precisely the ground
upon which Mary Stuart stood at her trial, and so
insurmountable did her prosecutors deem it to be,
that she was cajoled into doing that which Catherine
refused. The barbarous penalty of Shylock’s bond
is a reminiscence of the Twelve Tables, by which
the creditors of a delinquent debtor were allowed
to cut him into pieces. The Italian novel upon
which the play is founded attributes the same
penalty to the bond. So does the old ballad of
Gernutus. It has been contended that the ballad
is the offspring of the play, but incorrectly, because
the former contains nothing concerning any woman
as a judge,—a circumstance too effective to have
been li by any ballad maker who drew his in-
18 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

spiration from the play. When Hamlet surmises
that the skull may be that of a lawyer, a lender of
money, he enumerates at once the methods by
which loans were secured. The words “factor” and
“broker” are used with perfect understanding of the
technical differences in their meaning. Tamora
claims her Roman citizenship through her incorpo-
ration into a Roman family under the principle of
adoption by marriage. Lear partitions his king-
dom, and delivers it by livery of seizin. He entails
the crown by apt words. Hermione is accused of
adultery, and therefore of treason, according to the
statute of Edward III. The validity of the acts of
a king de facto and the duty of obedience to him are
stated with the most precise understanding of the
distinction between officers de facto and those de
jure. Helena isa feudal ward. Cade makes a bes-
tial pun, suggested by tenancy in capite, and by an
infernal privilege of stupration, which is one of the
recondite curiosities of the law. Dromio asserts
that there is no time for a bald man to recover
his hair. This having been written, the law phrase
suggested itself, and he was asked whether he
might not do it by fine and recovery, and this sug-
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 19

 

gested the efficiency of that proceeding to bar heirs;
and this started the conceit that thus the lost hair
of another man would be recovered. A "quest of
thoughts all tenants to the heart is impaneled to
decide the question of title to the visage of the
beloved one between the heart and the eye, where
the defendant denies the plea, and the verdict is a
moiety to each. The remembrance of things past
is summoned up to the sessions of sweet, silent
thought.

These illustrations have been given as they oc-
cur to the memory from hundreds of passages to
enforce the argument of the probative force of ac-
cumulated circumstances from diverse sources,
when there can be no doubt of the circumstances
themselves. There is no question here of fabri-
cated evidence. While the simulation of evidence
by perverting or inventing circumstances is a de-
vice of all fabricators from the time of the exhibi-
tion of Joseph’s coat to Jacob, the noting the mole
on Imogen’s snow-pure breast, the smearing by
Lady Macbeth of the grooms’ faces with blood, and
the use of the handkerchief by Iago, are done with
legal craft, and form Shakespeare’s judgment upon
20 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

what is called circumstantial evidence, which after
all the judicial cant upon the subject, such as the
assertion that circumstances cannot lie, can be
made the most illusory of all testimony ; for while
circumstances cannot lie, they can be feigned, in-
vented, distorted, half-stated, misapplied, mistaken,
or lied about with most infernal skill. It is upon
circumstantial evidence so misunderstood that the
claims of all impostors have been maintained from
the falsi Neronis ludibrio which moved the hosts
of Parthia to the pretensions of the claimant in
the Tichborne case. The least mistake makes all
the difference in the world. Suppose, for instance,
that in the perspective of ages events should be
80 foreshortened that the years which cover Shake-
speare’s life-time and that of Milton should blend,
it might be argued from the extracts from Comus,
which are hereinafter set out, from an assump-
tion that Shakespeare was an obscure and illit-
erate man, and from Milton’s commanding intel-
lectual force and erudition, that the latter wrote
the plays in that heyday of his youth when, ac-
cording to his own statement, he delighted in the
sinuost pompa theatri; or it might be maintained
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 21

 

with nearly equal force that Shakespeare wrote
Areopagitica or Paradise Lost in his later years,
after he had forsaken the vanities of his youth,
had become devout, and had thrown all the forces
of his mighty intellect into the polemics incident
to a great political and religious revolution. These
considerations are also relevant to what it is in-
tended to submit relative to the theory that Francis
Bacon was Shakespeare.

We can apply here the tests which decide our
ordinary actions, and which in courts are found
sufficient to adjudicate the most momentous ques-
tions. In the daily conduct of our lives we act
upon the results of a calculation of probabilities.
We frequently make it for ourselves, but as to our
habitual actions it was made for us, perhaps thou-
sands of years ago, and its results constitute what
we call experience. In any such case, it is found
from observation that a certain series of events is
followed by certain consequences, so that an agere-
gate of circumstances being given we assume that
but one result can follow. So unvarying are such
results that, for all practical purposes, they are cer-
22 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

tainties. These experiences form the path in which
we traverse life. They guide our business conduct.
They map the course of storms upon the sea. They
know where planets will shine, what eclipses will
occur, what comets will return, for all time to come.
It is thus that order is introduced into what is ap-
parently inextricable confusion, and relationship is
established between subjects separated by vast
intervals of time and space. This is the great
triumph of comparative philology which demon-
strated the affinity of languages, traced diverse
peoples to a common origin, and went far to mark
the stages of their progress from the table lands of
Asia through all the centuries from the morning of
time. From this the unity of many nations was
deduced, and a substantial identity of their religious
conceptions, primal laws and domestic habits be-
came established facts. All this is the result of
what Whewell calls the “consilience of inductions.”

One fact seldom proves much beyond itself, but
two facts may prove a third, and when among a hun-
dred or a thousand separate facts, each shows a re-
lation, net dependent on another but independent
of it, to all the rest, and also a relation to some
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 23

 

other fact not susceptible of actual observation,
but which is the object to be demonstrated; when
each fact points to one cause or result, and to no
other; when an analysis of the elements of each
fact shows the same unvarying convergence to
one point; when any one fact may be removed from
any function in the process and the result remain
the same; when research and addition to the mass
of circumstances, instead of displacing its probative
direction only renders it more steady,—the certainty
that the object which they indicate is the solution
of the question becomes so great that the most stu-
pendous figures are inadequate to express the in-
fallibility of the result. Every one remembers the
problem of the blacksmith who engaged to shoe a
horse for one cent for the first nail, two cents for
the next, four cents for the next, and so on, doub-
ling the preceding number for each nail until all
the nails should be computed for. The result is an
illustration of the high power of proof to which the
accumulated and progressive force of many circum-
stances can beraised. It is true that one positively
established fact, out of many, which points con-
clusively to another result, may entirely invalidate
24 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

the demonstration, and this is the fallacy of circum-
stantial evidence as it is commonly understood to
be. The witness may be false, he may be mis-
taken, he may not be clear, he may unintentionally
pervert or suppress something. But in matters of
textual criticism, such as are now under considera-
tion, there is no possibility of such perturbations.

I regard Paley’s Horae Paulinae as one of the
most helpful books that a law student can read.
It trains him for the most strenuous dialectics of
his profession. Paley’s thesis is that all the epistles
which the canon attributes to St. Paul were written
by one man, and with a power of analysis and ap-
plication of proofs which has never been surpassed,
he proves it by citing examples from each epistle
of undesigned coincidences, minute, obscure, latent,
and oblique, which abound throughout the Pauline
writings. He says “they form no continued story;
they compose no regular correspondence; they com-
prise not the transactions of any particular period;
they carry on no connection of argument; they de-
pend not upon one another; no study or care has
been employed to preserve the appearance of con-
sistency amongst them; they were not intended by
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE, 25

 

_ the person, whoever he was, that wrote them to
come forth or be read together; they appeared at
first separately and have been collected since.” If
these tests are applied to the books of the Evangel-
ists, it will appear, upon the most cursory examina-
tion, that they were each written by a different man.

Some of the most interesting discoveries in astro-
nomical science have been predicted by the applica-
tion of the calculus of probabilities. For instance,
Michell, in 1767, noticed that many fixed stars had
companions close to them. Such a conjunction as
to one or two stars would have no probative force, for
they might beat a great distance from each otherand
lie on the same line of sight. But this optical union
was so apparent in many stars that he asserted the
existence of a bond between most of the double
stars. Struve computed the odds to be 9,570 to 1
that any two stars of not less than the seventh mag-
nitude could fall within the apparent distance of
four minutes of each other by chance, and yet
ninety-one of such cases had been observed when
his computation was made, and many more have
been since discovered. There were also four known

triple stars, and the odds against the casual con-
2a
26 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE,

 

junction of these were 173,524 to 1. Michell’s
conjecture was verified nearly a century after it was
made by the discovery that many of the double stars
are directly connected with each other under the
law of gravitation.

Nearly all of the planetary movements have sim-
ilarity of direction. In the time of Laplace eleven
planets were known, and the directions were known
for the sun, six planets, the satellites of Jupiter,
Saturn’s ring, and one of his satellites. There were
thus known forty-three concurring motions; that
is, the orbital motions of eleven planets and eight-
een satellites and fourteen axial rotations. The
probability that this number of independent mo-
tions should coincide by chance is as an odds of
about 4,400,000,000,000 to 1.

The application of the doctrine of probabilities to
the argument that Shakespeare was learned in the
law is manifest. The nature of the subject, of
course, makes the odds inexpressible by numerical
notation. But the principle of increment of proba-
tive force is the same here as in the case of the vis-
ible and ponderable bodies, concerning which Struve
and Laplace made their computations.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 27

 

Suppose that within the last year all of these
writings had been collected from scattered sources;
some from libraries and family archives in England;
some from old repositories in Massachusetts and
Virginia. The authorship by one person or by many
persons being the question, what testimony could be
more convincing that they were written by one man
than these undesigned, unstudied, obscure, oblique,
latent, and cumulative legal expressions which occur
in each play?

This being settled, the next question would be
_ what manner of man was he who produced this in-
comparable body of thought and imagination?
Was he merely a man of letters, or was he also a
physician, or a lawyer, or a soldier? The same pro-
cess of induction can be employed. It is found that
the test of the use of technical phrases is applicable.
It is found that they abound. Their use is accurate,
unstudied, cumulative, incidental, undesigned for
any purpose except their special employment in the
places where they occur; is so subtle in illustra-
tive function, as often to require special research
to apply it; that the productions in which they oc-
cur form no continued story; that they were orig-
28 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE,

 

inally separate productions; that many of them were
not published at all in the life-time of the author,
but were handed out to actors to be learnt; that they
cover the term of a long literary life; that they do
not comprise the transactions of any one period;
that they carry on no connection of argument, nor
do they depend upon one another; that they ex-
hibit no such familiarity with other arts, sciences,
or vocations, but that as to them they are full of
errors and carelessness. All this makes out a
case by demonstration so absolute that no hypoth-
esis is left except that the writer was learned in the
law. The most persuasive argument concerning the
authorship of the letters of Junius is the familiarity
which they display with the routine of the war office,
in which Francis wasemployed. Chatterton hoaxed
profound scholars by his wonderful simulation
of coincidences and archaisms, apparently unde-
signed, and was detected by the inaccuracies which
cannot be avoided in any such attempt. Sir John
Coleridge broke down the Tichborne claimant by
a cross-examination which proved his ignorance of
facts, or the details of events, which must have been
known to him had he been what he pretended to be.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 29

 

The dyer’s hand is always subdued to what it
works in. Professor Greenleaf examined the tes-
timony of the Evangelists bythe rules of evidence
administered in courts of justice. That St. Mat-
thew was a native Jew, familiar with the opinions,
ceremonies, and customs of his countrymen, con-
versant with their sacred writings, and of little
learning except what he derived from them, he holds
to be established by the internal evidence of his gos-
pel. That St. Mark wrote at Rome for the use of the
Gentile converts, he argues from the numerous Lat-
inisms which he employs and from the explanations
he gives, which would be uselesstoaJew. That St.
Luke was a physician, he maintains, is apparent
from his gospel, which shows that he was an acute
observer, who had given particular and even profes-
sional attention to all of our Savior’s miracles of
healing; that where Matthew and Mark describe a
man simply as a leper, he writes that he was full of
leprosy; that he whom they mention as having a
withered hand is described by him as having his
right hand withered; that he alone, with a physi-
cian’s accuracy, says that the virtue went out of
Jesus and healed the sick; that he alone relates
30 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

the fact that the sleep of the disciples in Gethse-
mane was induced by excessive sorrow, and attrib-
utes the blood-like sweat of our Redeemer to the
intensity of His agony, and that he alone relates
the miraculous healing of Malchus’ ear.

It has been maintained that the company of play-
ers to which Shakespeare belonged visited Scotland
in the autumn of 1601, and that they were at Aber-
deen in October of that year. It has been argued
that Shakespeare in Macbeth displays a knowledge
of the topography of the country around Forres
and of the local superstitions and traditions, so
much beyond any information given in Holinshed’s
Chronicle, that he must have accompanied the play-
ers, and it must be admitted that a most plausible
showing is made.

This branch of the argument can best be en-
forced by the words of an eminent text-writer on
the law of evidence:

“In estimating the force of a number of circum-
stances tending to the proof of the disputed fact, it
is of essential importance to consider whether they
be dependent or independent. If the facts A, B,
C, D, be so essential to the particular inference to
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 31

 

be derived from them, when established, that the
failure of the proof in any one would destroy the
inference altogether, they are dependent facts. If,
on the other hand, notwithstanding the failure in
proof of one or more of those facts, the rest would
still afford the same inference or probability as to
the contested fact which they did before, they would
be properly termed independent facts. The force
of a particular inference drawn from a number of
dependent facts is not augmented, neither is it
diminished, in respect of the number of such de-
pendent facts, provided they be established; but
the probability that the inference itself rests upon
sure grounds, is, in general, weakened by the mul-
tiplication of the number of circumstances essential
to the proof; for the greater the number of circum-
stances essential to the proof is, the greater lati-
tude is there for mistake or deception. On the
other hand, where each of a number of independ-
ent circumstances, or combination of circumstances,
tends to the same conclusion, the probability of the
truth of the fact is necessarily greatly increased in
proportion to the number of those independent cir-

cumstances.”
32 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

“The probability derived from the concurrence
of a number of independent probabilities increases
not in a merely cumulative, but in a compound
and multiplied, proportion. This is a consequence
derived from pure abstract arithmetical principles. .
For although no definite arithmetical ratio can be
assigned to each independent probability, yet the
principle of increase must obtain wherever inde-
pendent probabilities in favor of an event occur,
although they cannot be precisely measured by
space or numbers; and even although every dis-
tinct probability which is of a conclusive tendency
exceeds every merely definite numerical ratio.”

“The nature of such coincidences is most impor-
tant. Are they natural ones, which bear not the
marks of artifice and premeditation? Do they oc-
cur in points obviously material, or in minute and
remote points which were not likely to be material,
or in matters the importance of which could not
have been foreseen? The number of such coinci-
dences is also worthy of the most attentive consid-
eration. Human cunning, to a certain extent, may
fabricate coincidences, even with regard to minute
points, the more effectually to deceive; but the co-
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE, 33

 

incidences of art and invention are necessarily cir-
cumscribed and limited; while those of truth are
indefinite and unlimited. The witnesses of art will
be copious in their detail of circumstances as far
as their prevision extends. Beyond this, they will
be sparing and reserved for fear of detection, and
thus their testimony will not be even and consist-
ent throughout; but the witnesses of truth will be
equally ready and equally copious upon all points.”

Paley also remarks that “the undesignedness of
coincidences is to be gathered from their latency,
their minuteness, their obliquity; the suitable-
ness of the circumstances in which they consist
to the places in which those circumstances occur,
and the circuitous references by which they are
traced out, demonstrate that they have not been
produced by meditation or by any fraudulent con-
trivance; but coincidences from which these causes
are excluded, and which are too close and numer-
ous to be accounted for by accidental concurrence
of fiction, must necessarily have truth for their
foundation.”

3
84 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE,

 

Shakespeare had a lawyer’s conservatism. He
respected the established order of things. He chis-
els the republican Brutus in cold and marble beauty,
but paints with beams of sunlight the greatness,
bravery, and generosity of imperial Cesar. Corio-
lanus is the impersonation of patrician contempt
for popular rights. Shakespeare passes unnoticed
the causes which led to Cade’s insurrection because
he cares not for them,—causes so just that hon-
orable terms were exacted by the insurgents. His
portrait of Joan of Arc, the virgin mother of French
nationality, who raised it to glory because the peo-
ple believed in her, is a great offence. There is
nowhere a hint of sympathy with personal rights as
against the sovereign, nor with parliament, then first
assuming its protective attitude towards the Eng-
lish people, nor with the few judges who, like Coke,
showed a glorious obstinacy in their resistance to
the prerogative. In all his works there is not one
direct word for liberty of speech, thought, religion,
—those rights which in his age were the very seeds
of time, into which his eye, of all men’s, could best
look to see which grain would grow and which would
not. In all ages great men and great women have
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 35

 

died for humanity, but none of these have been com-
memorated by him. The fire of no martyr gleams
in his pages.

That the stage was under censorship cannot ex-
plain or excuse all this. Such was the disposition
of the man. He had noble conceptions of national
grandeur, but they were of great kings and their
conquests. Macbeth, Richard, and Claudius en-
throne themselves through assassination, and there
is not a word for the popular distress which such
crimes always inflict. Every revolt is to him a
riot. The leaders are contemptible miscreants.
There is no pity for common suffering, no lash for
the great man’s contumely towards the lowly; only
a languid murmur against the insolence of office,
contemptuous pity for the whipped and carted
strumpet, and nothing which would have hindered
his promotion had he entered the debasing scram-
ble of favoritism which disgraced his time. He
pleased Elizabeth, he pleased James, he would have
pleased Napoleon.

The plea cannot be made for him that he was
not superior to his age. His greatest cotempora-
36 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

ries were contained within it, but he, the man of
whom Jonson wrote that—
He was not for a day, but for all time;

who has set his serene firmament, with all its suns
and stars, over all men and all ages, who stands in
his works like the angel Uriel in the sun, is as un-
sympathetic as the planets themselves with those
plebeian calamities which constitute the sorrows of
common life.

Tt has been lamented that we do not know the
man. It is true that we do not know him as Bos-
well has made us to know Johnson, and often to re-
spect him less than he deserves. But, as Emerson
has shown, we doknow him. “What trait of his pri-
vate mind has he hidden in his dramas? One can
discern in his ample pictures of the gentleman and
the king what forms and humanities pleased him:
his delight in troops of friends, in large hospitality,
in cheerful giving.” ‘So far from Shakespeare be-
ing the least known, he is the one person in all
modern history known to us. What point of mor-
als, of manners, of ceremony, of philosophy, of re-
ligion, of taste, of the conduct of life, has he not
settled? What mystery has he not signified his
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 37

 

knowledge of? What office or function or district
of man’s work has he not remembered? What king
has he not taught state as Talma taught Napoleon ?
What maiden has not found him finer than her
delicacy? What lover has he not outloved? What
sage has he not outseen? What gentleman has he
not instructed in the rudeness of his behavior?”
All this is true, but it is not the whole truth.
We see a man who revered womanhood, who has
given us the finest types of manhood, who was
generous, gentle, blameless, who saw through shams
clearer than Montaigne, who scourged lust, glut-
tony, lying, slander, cowardice, pedantry, and all
personal meanness with more than the wit of Rabe-
lais, and yet who was silent concerning those great
agitations for personal right and liberty which so
shortly after he died subverted the monarchy, put
aside the peerage, overthrew the church, and for
ever established that the state is made for man
and not man for the state.

And now comes some one and says that here is
more proof that Shakespeare is a mere alias for
Francis Bacon. Ii is difficult to touch or let alone
88 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

this vagary with any patience. One is inclined
simply to protest in the words of Shakespeare’s ep-
itaph—
Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare,

and pass on, deeming all secure against a desecra-
tion worse than that which the poet cursed. But
the identity has been the subject of so much asser-
tion that it may be well to pause before the unreal
mockery and exorcise a few of its fantastic shapes.

It is not true that Shakespeare was an unlearned
man. He was learned, but was not a man of fin-
ished learning. Bacon was a perfected scholar.
Compare Shakespeare’s classical allusions with the
Wisdom of the Ancients and the difference is man-
ifest. The one is the learning of a “marvelous
boy,” the other that of the completed scholar. Nor
is it true that he was an obscure man. He is the
first English author who made a fortune with his
pen. Inhis last years he wrote himself, gentleman.

In 1592 he received from Greene one of those ma-
levolent attacks which are made upon none but au-
thors of established renown. Spenser praised him,
and he praised Spenser. In 1598, Meres classed
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 39

 

him with Plautus and Seneca. Davies in 1607
addressed him as the English Terence. Fuller’s
account of him is known to every one. His works
were gathered with pious care and published by his
friends within seven years after he died. Ben Jon-
son was one of the most learned men of his time.
He so much resembles Samuel Johnson in personal
and mental traits that it is Ben whom we seem
to see with Garrick and his friends at the theater.
He was a fierce critic, a good hater, learned in the
classics “as any man in England,” a despot in con-
versation, gross, gluttonous, and scrofulous, his face
was seamed with scars, he was passionate, was ab-
ject in repentance, feared no man, and loved but
few, yet he loved Shakespeare, and claiming him
as a child of eternity, has pictured him to us in
lines which nothing but great love working upon
great sorrow could have produced from such a man.
Jonson, we know, was the friend of Francis Ba-
con, and to him these men were different beings.
Milton, who was a child when Shakespeare died,
who lived in London, and enjoyed its theatrical
pleasures, and must have talked with many of
Shakespeare’s cotemporaries, installs him into an
40 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

inheritance of everlasting fame more durable than
pyramids or any tombs of kings.

It is certain that the influence of Shakespeare
on the youthful Milton was very impressive, and that
it lasted until it was removed by those great events
which made the laureate of Paradise an ascetic
patriot. The associations of his early days seem
to have revived in that magnificent lamentation of

Samson Agonistes,
Eyeless,—in Gaza,—at the mill,—with slaves,

(as Landor finely read the lines,) over a common-
wealth destroyed, himself proscribed, and the time
forever gone when the bold Ascalonite of prelacy
and the divine right of kings,

 

fled from his lion ramp.

Milton’s epitaph upon Shakespeare stands in the
folio of 1632. In 1637 we find him writing from
London the first elegy ad Carolum Deodatum, in
which he informs his friend how his time is spent,
and attests his habitual attendance at the theater:

Excipit hinc fessum sinuosi pompa theatri,
Et vocat ad plausus garrula scena suos.

Seu catus auditur senior, seu prodigus heres,
Secu procus, aut posita casside miles adest,
Sive decennali feecundus lite patronus
Detonat inculto barbara verba foro!
JHE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 41

 

Sepe vafer gnato succurrit servus amanti,

Et nasum rigidi fallit ubique patris;

Seepe novos illic virgo mirata calores,

Quid sit amor nescit, dum quoque nescit, amat.
Sive cruentatum furiosa Trageedia sceptrum
Quassat, et effusis crinibus ora rotat,

Et dolet et specto, juvat et spectasse dolendo.
Interdum et lacrymis dulcis amaror inest :

Seu puer infelix indelibata reliquit

Gaudia, et abrupto flendus amore cadit:

Seu ferus e tenebris iterat Styga criminis ultor
Conscia funereo pectora torre movens.

The last four lines have been thought to refer to
Romeo, and to Banquo’s ghost or to the one in
Hamlet.

Comus is filled with undisguised borrowings from

Shakespeare.

Ere the blabbing eastern scout
The nice morn.

is Shakespeare’s

Gaudy, biabbing, and remorseful day.

The possessor of chastity is “clad in complete
steel;” so is the ghost in Hamlet.
With Milton philosophy is

musical as is Apollo’s lute.

 

With Shakespeare love is

 

as sweet and musical
As bright Apollo’s lute strung with his hair.

8a
42 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

Comus’ dissertation on virginity is a manifest
adaptation of Parolles’ discourse upon that subject.
Sabrina sets her

 

printless feet
O’er the cowslips’ velvet head.

And Prospero’s elves

 

on the sands with printless feet
Do chase the ebbing Neptune.

The spirit is another Ariel who

can soar as soon
To the corners of the moon,

like Hecate, who says that

 

Great business must be wrought ere noon
Upon the corner of the moon.

These extracts have been adduced to show that
Shakespeare was clearly seen by the greatest man
of the next generation.

Charles I. was sixteen years of age when Shakes-
peare died. Bacon dedicated to him his history of
Henry VII. Shakespeare, in Macbeth, nobly mag-
nified the house of Stuart by a prophecy of its
perpetuity. The works of Shakespeare were the
closet companion of Charles, who was reproached
for this by Milton at a time when the fierce zealots
of rebellion had come to took upon the drama as
sinful, Falkland was Charles’ councillor, and it is
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 43

 

from him that we have respecting Caliban the first
critical estimate extant of any character in Shakes-
peare. And yet from prince, king, courtier, poet,
or scholar, we hear no hint which can give this
modern theory the slightest support.

Bacon was actively engaged in the court of chan-
cery for many years before he became lord chan-
cellor. It was then that the memorable war of ju-
risdiction was waged between Ellesmere and Coke,
and yet there is not in the works of Shakespeare,
to the best of my belief, a single phrase or word,
much less any application of any principle, peculiar
to the chancery.

Shakespeare dedicated Venus and Adonis, and
the Rape of Lucrece, to the Earl of Southampton,
with strong expressions of affection, and it is a
tradition that he was munificently treated by that
nobleman. No one has ever denied that the author
of these poems is also the author of the plays.
But if Bacon was Shakespeare, it is incredible that
within a few years the former should have appeared
as volunteer counsel against Essex and Southamp-
ton in that trial which has so stained’ Bacon’s
name, or that he should have undertaken after-
44 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

wards, in his Declaration of the Treason of Robert,
Earl of Essex, the task of proving the complicity
of his friend and patron in that conspiracy.

It is also remarkable that in this same produc-
tion, in order to fasten guilt upon the conspirators,
Bacon lays especial stress upon the fact “that the
afternoon before the rebellion, Merick, with a great
company of others, that afterwards were all in
the action, had procured to be played before them
the play of deposing King Richard the Second.
Neither was it casual, but a play bespoken by
Merick; but when it was told him by one of the
players that the play was old, and that they should
have loss in playing it, because few would come to
it, there were forty shillings extraordinary given
to play it, and so thereupon played it was. So
earnest was he to entirely satisfy his eyes with the
sight of that tragedy, which he thought soon after
his lordship should bring from the stage to the
state, but that God turned it upon their own
heads.” ;

If Francis Bacon wrote Richard II. it was a
piece of matchless effrontery for him to maintain
that his own production had been displayed as a
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 45

 

counterfeit presentment in aid of a treason in
which his friend was engaged.

And in the face of all this and much more we -
are asked to believe that Bacon, coliuding with
Shakespeare, practiced this stupendous imposture
for nearly twenty-five years, and that it was unde-
tected and unsuspected until after more than two
centuries had passed away.

If we look to the intrinsic evidence wrenched
and misapplied by conjecture from the treasures
which these men left to us, we find nothing “but
a foolish and extravagant spirit, full of forms, fig-
ures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, mo-
tions, revolutions, begot in the ventricle of memory,
nourished in the womb of pia mater, and delivered
upon the mellowing of occasion.”

Bacon’s prose has less rhythmus than Hooker’s
or Raleigh’s. We have specimens of his versifica-
tion. He translated seven of the psalms into Eng-
lish verse, and here is his first verse:

Who never gave to wicked reed
A yielding and attentive ear;
Who never sinner’s path did tread

Nor sat him down in scorner’s chair,
But maketh it his whole delight
46 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

On law of God to meditate,
And therein spendeth day and night,
That man is in a happy state.

Sternhold could not make this worse. Compare
it with the crudest lines Shakespeare ever wrote.

The differences between these most august of in-
tellectual beings are manifest. Both were sages;
one was a poet, the other a philosopher. It is the
difference between Homer and Plato. Both had
great imaginations, but Bacon’s was a reasoning
imagination, which disclosed its logical processes.
That of Shakespeare was intuitive, and left little
trace of its trackless paths of development. It is
the difference between two continents of vast area,
watered by great and fertilizing rivers, full through-
out of nature’s wonders; but one is temperate, or-
derly, subject to little variation, while the other is
tropical, ravaged by storms, the home of the greatest
beauties sleeping in the very dens of the greatest ter-
rors, and both beneficent and enduring. Each was
a discoverer. But Bacon made his quest in the ma-
terial world, while Shakespeare voyaged through the
mind and soul of man and reached their destinies.
One is the Columbus and the other the Dante of
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 47

 

thought. The results have been different. The in-
trepid experimental investigation of causes upon
which Bacon insisted as the only force which could
break down the prison walls of knowledge, placed
thought upon a line of logical consequences leading
directly to much that we now enjoy so completely of
social, political, and religious rights. This is the
greatest boon ever bestowed upon humanity by one
man. Bacon’s genius triumphed in his closet over
the servility of his disposition, and, so triumphing,
impelled the race to results to which he, living,
never could have led it.

The consequences which have flowed from Shakes-
peare have been even more diffused. They are not
mere results. The man and his effects live and
touch persons. His works are known to all men.
Bacon’s are known to few. Bacon is to us imper-
sonal precisely where his influence is greatest, and
is real where he has ceased to act. We know the
supple courtier, the false friend, the pliant lawyer,
and the corrupt judge. But the philosopher, in the
midst of whose system we stand to-day, is nearly
an ideal conception. Shakespeare, colorless as he
is in all that regards material knowledge or politi-
48 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

cal and religious rights, is with us always; speaks
to us every day; interprets us to ourselves; is im-
manent in our literature as its presiding spirit.

“Bacon little knew or suspected that there was
then existing (the only one that ever did exist) his
superior in intellectual, power. Position gives mag-
nitude. While the world was rolling above Shakes-
peare, he was seen imperfectly. When he rose
above the world, it was discovered that he was
greater than the world. The most honest of his
contemporaries would scarcely have admitted this,
even had they known it. But vast objects of re-
mote altitude must be looked at a long while before
they are ascertained. Ages are the telescope-tubes
that must be lengthened out for Shakespeare, and
generations of men serve but as single witnesses to
his claims.” (Landor.)

The strongest proof that Shakespeare’s legal
knowledge was very great consists in the confident
and cumulative use of these terms, not only in the
general fact that they so recur in every play, in all
the poems, and even in the dedications, but also in
their exhaustive use in many passages where to ex-
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE, 49

 

_ plain some principle, to carry out some comparison
or -analogy to its likeness to the finest lines and
features of the thought, to push some conceit to
the remotest extravagance, so that it is necessary
for a well-read lawyer to make special investigation
into the law and statutes of that time before he
can follow it, Shakespeare exhausts the capacity of
the terms he employs.

We turn from these exhibitions of thorough tech-
nical skill to see whether he displays anything like
such familiarity in other departments of knowledge.
We find little that tends to show proficiency in
medicine, and this is everybody’s science. In ge-
ography he is as perfectly without location as his
“still vex’d Bermoothes,” which no research has
been able to map. No dogma stains his plain be-

lief in Him who was
nailed
For our advantage to the bitter cross.

 

With time and place his tricks are more magical
than thet by which Puck girdled the earth in forty
minutes. He is utterly indifferent to the devil and
hell-fire, excepting in Henry VI. in Hamlet, and in

that terrific use of the witches in Macbeth, who seem
4
50 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE,

 

to have received from him a power beyond their own
to call up from futurity the coroneted baby-brows,
the two-fold balls, and treble scepters. In music he
discloses little technical learning, although he could
make the concourse of sweet sounds quire with the
young-ey’d cherubim, so divinely was his soul at-
tuned who expressed the whole compass of our lan-
guage in harmonies which we hear from him only.
We find little knowledge of tactics or maneuvers and
less of nautical terms, although it was an age of
wars by land and sea, and his works are filled with
soldiery. There is next to nothing of the ancient
philosophies; not one of Plato’s glorious and cloudy
dreams was ever smitten by the light of this glori-
fying sun.

The wonder at this use of legal expressions is not
so much that Shakespeare understood them s0 well,
as it is that the man who commanded the most co-
pious vocabulary that any English writer has ever
been able to wield, should have used them with
such persistence. Surely he did not need them as
instruments of expression. His resources in the
treasuries of words were too vast for that. These
law terms were present in his mind as standards
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 51

 

of comparison with things which nothing but his
own despotic imagination could have brought into
relevancy. .

I know of no writer who has so impressed into
his service the terms of any science or art. They
come from the mouth of every personage: from the
queen; from the child; from the Merry Wives of
Windsor; from the Egyptian fervor of Cleopatra;
from the love-sick Paphian goddess; from viola-
ted Lucrece; from Lear, Hamlet, and Othello; from
Shakespeare himself, soliloquizing in his sonnets;
from Dogberry and Prospero; from riotous Fal-
staff and melancholy Jacques. He utters them at
all times as standard coin, no matter when or in
what mint stamped. These emblems of his indus-
try are woven into his style like the bees into the
imperial purple of Napoleon’s coronation robes.

It may be suggested that this figure, so frequently
woven into Shakespeare’s diction, may test whether
certain plays, which have been attributed to him,
come from other hands than his. Thus, I have
little doubt that Sir John Oldcastle, if not wholly
written by him, bears the imprint of his golden
hand. The passage concerning the royal buck, the
52 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

scene where Harpool forces the sumner to eat the
citation he has come to serve, and the other legal
phrases, taken together, seem to indicate this. If
he did not compose the entire play, he mingled in
its composition, like a skillful teacher who corrects
the awkward execution of a pupil, by letting his
hand fall for a moment upon the keys to strike
chords of recognized harmony.

The soundest English and German critics agree
that he wrote the first act of the Two Noble Kins-
men, and that the rest of the play is by Fletcher,
who took the organ from the master after the pre-
lude had filled the arches of the imagination with
its melody. If the first act is tested by compari-
son with all that follows it, we have the results we
should expect in such familiar expressions, as “the

4

tenor of thy speech,” “prorogue,” “fee,” “moiety,”

9 e

“canon,” “seal the promise.”

Legal learning and language are essentially un-
poetical, and the other dramatists of that time were
sparing in their use. Ben Jonson was a scholar.
He delighted in the exhibition of accurate knowl-
edge, but he does not approach the precision or

ease of his great cotemporary in his representa-
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 53

 

tions of legal proceedings, or in his use of legal
terms. An examination of the court scene in the
Fox will establish the truth of this remark.

Fletcher had been a student at Cambridge, and
Beaumont at Oxford. The latter was the son of a
judge of the court of common pleas, and was him-
self bred tothe law. But we can find in their works
no such disposition or facility in the use of law
terms, or the procedure of the courts. In the
Little French Lawyer, La Wit, who turns duelist
and challenges everybody, including the venerable
judge who has ruled against him, uses little of the
vocabulary of his vocation. In the Spanish Curate,
the lawyer Bartolus is a very important character,
and considerable legal knowledge appears in his
sayings and doings, particularly in the scene where
his debtors sit down to the feast he has made for
them, and are arrested for debt by the waiters, who
are disguised officers, under warrants which appear
as the only repast upon the plates when they are
uncovered, but the performance is broad, and has
not the incidental accuracy which appears again
and again in Shakespeare.

So Massinger in the Old Law, brings to trial
bt THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE,

 

the unfilial son and the profligate wife, but tho
scene, as a forensic representation, is crude, lacks
detail, and displays none of that pomp of justice
which all courts of any dignity oxhibit.

The affiliation between tho disviples of Themis
and Thespis was a marked feature of those timos.
Many students of law forsook it and became dram-
atists. So common was this transition that Greene,
in his Groat’s Worth of Wit, published before
1598, in a passage which has beon thought to re-
flect directly upon Shakespeare, spoaks of these
re-onforcements to tho play-writors as those “who
have left the trado of Noverint,” (know all mon,
ete.) Sir Christophor Hatton wrote a play ontitled
Tancrod and Gismund, and afterwards became
lord chancellor. So noteworthy were those aceos-
sions from the law students that Beu Jonson be-
gins the Pootastor, in which he lampoons a rival
dramatist and the lawyers, with a scene betwoon
Ovid and his father, who dotovts the young law
student writing plays and pooms.

Thore is so much similarity betwoen the opening
lines of the Poetaster—
cr
a

TUK LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

Thon when this body falls in funcral flr,
My name shall live and my best part.aspiro,

and Shakespeare’s assertion of undying fame in the

sonnot—

Not marble nor tho gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,

that one is tempted to conjecture that Jonson in-
tonded to impersonate Shakespeare in Ovid; but
tho alluring supposition is too fanciful, for we know
from Ovid himself that— '

Spo pator dixit, studium quid inutilo tendes,
Mvonides nullas ipse reliquit opes.

* * * * * * *
Non me verbosas loges discere, non mo

Ingrato voces prostituisse foro,

John Shakespeare, coming to London, and de-
tocting his son in the composition of plays, would
havo been a far better themo for an imaginary con-
versation than Landor chose when he gave us the
examination of William Shakespeare before Sir
Thomas Lucy for deer-stealing.

Henry Wriothesly, to whom Shakespeare dodi-
cated “tho first heir of his invention,” was the
grandson of a common-law lawyer, who was lord
chancollor from 1544 to 1547.

The relations of the most dramatic profession of
56 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

real life to that which mimics life was then much
like the construction of the amphitheater of Curio,
which was elliptical, but built in equal sections,
which could be revolved so that each became a
theater, displaying a different spectacle, but could
be turned in a moment into the unity of the original
shape, and confuse two representations and two au-
diences. The inns of court were the scenes of spec-
tacular dramas of great magnificence, the expenses
of which were borne by the lawyers. These revels,
as they were called, laid the best dramatic genius
under contribution, and, though they have long
since ended, the ancient sympathy has survived the
insubstantial pageants and the actors, which have
melted into thin air.

It is not difficult to account for this intimacy.
The dramatists of that time were unquestionably
the most brilliant men who ever lived together in
one city. Intellectual society was limited. The
physicians have left no memorials. The stage was
abhorred by the clergy. The editor was yet to come.
But there was the bar, whose members knew life
and human nature as they are, and who played
their parts in all their real comedies and trage-
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 57

 

dies; university men, ripe and sweet with all clas-
sical learning, cynical and humorous, tainted with
no cant. The taverns were the clubs. And thus
it was that the most cultivated scholarship and the
most brilliant imaginations of England met in en-
counters, which kindled into conflagrations of wit,
humor, learning, ribaldry, and wisdom.

There was everything in that romantic age to
stir the imagination. There was a spirit of chiv-
alry abroad which marched in quest of something
more substantial than mouldy relics, and fulfilled
vows sworn to something grander than the achieve-
ment of pious absurdities. Frobisher had sailed
northward into the silence of the eternal seas of
ice. El Dorado lifted against the western skies its
shafts and domes of gold. The Armada had van-
ished like a portentous phantom, smitten by the
valor of Englishmen, and chased far off into the Heb-
ridean fogs by the waves of the exasperated sea,
which fought for its island nursling. Hawkins, pi-
rate and admiral, had thrown his fortune into the pit
which threatened to swallow up his country, and had

died under the displeasure of his stingy yet mag-
4a
58 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE,

 

nificent queen. Raleigh, having seen his dreams
of the new world die out, lay in the Tower, writing
his history, doubtless smoking the consoling weed,
while awaiting the end of so much bravery, so
much rashness, and so many cares, in the summons
of “eloquent, just, and mighty Death.” Drake
had spoiled the seas and the cities thereof. Cap-
tain John Smith had told of great empires in the
west, and their swarthy emperors. Mary, Queen
of Scots, that changeful enchantress, as we see her
now,—at one time the French lily, all sweet, and
pure, and fragrant; and again the Scottish thistle,
spinous and cruel to all who touched her,—had
woven the cords of love into the chains of empire,
and had pressed the cup of her sorceries to the lips
of many men, until her own glorious head bowed to

the long divorce of steel.

 

History, among all the women who have been
crowned with the thorns of sorrow, presents no
figure of which Shakespeare could have made so
much. But what could any dramatist do for her
in the life-time of Elizabeth, or in that of the pu-
sillanimous and unfilial Sawney who succeeded her ?

A reverend church had been subverted through-
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 59

 

out the land, and beliefs and ceremonies, which its
believers asserted to be as old as the apostles, were
forbidden as crimes.

Hooker, anticipating Locke, had declared that
all governments exist by the consent of the gov-
erned, “without which consent there were no rea-
son that one should take on him to be lord or judge
over another.” Bacon, thinking that “the knowl-
edge whereof the world is now possessed, especially
that of nature, extendeth not to the magnitude
of works,” had declared that there should be “one
method of cultivating the sciences and another of
discovering them,” and by this fiat liberated exper-
imental philosophy into the limitless fields in which
it has since worked. There never was a time when
so many causes confederated to stimulate the hu-
man mind to the exhibition of its greatest powers
in all departments, and the result was that the sol-
dier became a historian, the divine a statesman,
the statesman a philosopher, and the lawyer the
first of poets.
THE LAW

IN

SHAKEHSPHARHE.

No.1.
Now the condition.

This king of Naples, being an enemy

To me inveterate, hearkens my brother’s suit ;
Which was, that he, in lieu 0’ the premises,
Of homage, and I know not how much tribute,
Should presently extirpate me and mine

Out of the dukedom; and confer fair Milan,

With all the honours, on my brother.
The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2.

Premises. That part in the beginning of a
deed in which are set forth the names of the parties,
and in which are recited such deeds, agreements, or
matters of fact as are necessary to explain the rea-
sons upon which the contract then entered into is
founded. (Bouv. Law Dict.)

(See No. 178.)

The words seem to be used here with legal exact-
ness, and the meaning is that in lieu of the prem-

(61)
62 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

ises, which are agreements for homage and tribute
which the king was bound to render to Prospero, he
should extirpate the latter from his dukedom and
confer Milan upon the brother.

Homage. (See Nos. 124, 273.)

No. 2.
Ay, ay; and she hath offer’d to the doom
Which, unreversed, stands in effectual force,
A sea of melting pearl, which some call tears,
Those at her father’s churlish feet she tender’d.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 3, Scene 1.

Doom. Judgment, judicial sentence. (John-
son; Webster.)
(See Nos. 22, 249.)

This is the primary meaning. (See “doomster,”
Heart of Mid-Lothian, c. 24.) The word “unre-
versed” is, in its connection with the word “doom,”
used in a strictly judicial sense.

Tendered. (See No. 289.)

No. 3.
Besides, her intercession chafed him so,

When she for thy repeal was suppliant.
The Two Gentlemen of Verana, Aet 3, Scene 1.

Repeal. Recall from exile. (Johnson.)
(See Nos. 130, 205.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 63

 

Valentine had been banished and the supplica-
tions of Sylvia were for his “repeal.” Byron has

used the word in the same sense:

«__.. that deep gulf without repeal.”
The Prophecy of Dante, Canto 1.
No. 4.

Shal. Sir Hugh, persuade me not; I will make a Star-Cham-
ber matter of it; if he were twenty Sir John Falstaffs, he
shall not abuse Robert Shallow, Esquire.

Slen. In the county of Gloster, justice of peace, and Coram.

Shal. Ay, cousin Slender, and Custalorum.

Slon. Ay, and Rato-lorum too; and a gentleman born, mas-
ter parson; who writes himself Armigero,; in any bill, war-

rant, quittance, or obligation, Armigero.
The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 1, Scene 1.

Justice Shallow threatens to have Falstaff pun-
ished for contempt, and this was, as in the chancery,
a mode of procedure in the Star Chamber. (8 Bl.
Comm. marg. p. 444.) It punished any disrespect
to any acts of state, or to the person of statesmen.
(Clarendon.) Also for scandalous reports of persons
in power. (1 Hallam’s Const. Hist. 67.)

‘Coram. In presence of; before. (Bouv. Law
Dict.)

Shakespeare here shows his exact knowledge by
playing upon a technical word, for Slender un-
doubtedly means that Shallow is a justice of the
quorum, another legal word applicable to justices of
64 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

the peace. The justices of the peace were appointed
in each county by special commission under the
great seal, the form of which was settled by all the
judges in the year 1590. The commission required
them all jointly and severally to keep the peace;
and any two or more of them to inquire of and deter-
mine felonies and misdemeanors, in which number
some particular justices, or one of them, were di-
rected to be always included, (were of the quorwm,)
and no business could be done without their pres-
ence; the commission running thus: Quorum ali-
quem vestrum—unum esse volumus.

There is the same perversion in the word Cust-
alorum. Custos rotulorum is the word which Shallow
attempts, and which Slender fails to give correctly.
The custos rotulorum was the principal justice of the
peace in the county, and keeper of the records of
the county. The idea of the interlocutors is to ex-
alt Shallow’s official dignity, so that Falstaff’s con-
tempi of it may authorize them, in their simplicity,
to think it a Star-Chamber matter,

Armigero. Esquire.

Bill. A common engagement for money given
to another. A single bond without a condition.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 65

 

Formerly it was all one with an obligation, save
only its being called a bill when in English, and
an obligation when in Latin.

Warrant. A precept under hand and seal to
some officer.
(See Nos. 110, 114.)

Acquittance. A discharge in writing of a
sum of money or a debt due.
(See Nos. 45, 274.)

Obligation. A bond containing a penalty with
a condition annexed. It differs from a bill, which
is generally without a penalty or condition, although
a bill may be obligatory. (Tomlin’s Law Dict.)
(See No. 158.)

No. 5.

Why, I'll exhibit a bill in the parliament for the putting

down of men.
The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 2, Scene 1.

Exhibit. To offer or propose in a formal or
public manner. (Johnson.)

Bill. (See No. 142.)

He suffered his attorney general to exhibit a
charge of high treason against this earl. (Claren-
don.)

Formerly all bills were drawn in the form of peti-

tions, which were entered on the parliament rolls
5
66 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

with the king’s answer subjoined. (Tomlin’s Law
Dict., Parliament.)

Where the phrase “introduce a bill” would now
be used, it was then correct to say, “exhibit a bill
or petition.”

No. 6.
The spirit of wantonness is, sure, scared out of him; if the
devil have him not in fee-simple, with fine and recovery, he

will never, I think, in the way of waste, attempt us again.
The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 4, Scene 2

Fee-simple. Tenant in fee-simple is he who
has land and tenements to hold to him, and his
heirs and assigns, forever. (Littleton.)

(See Nos. 63, 159, 247, 312.)

Fine and recovery. Fine—An instrument
of record of an agreement concerning lands, tene-
ments, and hereditaments, duly made by the king’s
license, and acknowledged by the parties to the
same, upon a writ of covenant, writ of right, or
such like, before the justices of the common pleas,
or others thereunto authorized, and engrossed of
record in the same court; to end all controversies
thereof, both between themselves, which be parties
and privies to the same, and all strangers not su-
ing orclaiming in due time. (Shep. Touchst. ¢. 3.)

The recovery was a judgment in a fictitious suit.
A conveyance by fine and recovery barred all the
world,
TILE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 67

 

The meaning of the merry wife is that the devil
shas acquired an absolute title to Falstaff by a pro-
ceeding barring everybody, in remainder, rever-
sion, or entail, which was the operation of a fine
and recovery.

(See Nos. 63, 85, 276.)

Waste. A spoil or destruction in houses, gar-
dens, trees, or other aorporeal hereditaments, to
the disherison of him that hath the remainder or
reversion in fee-simple or fee-tail. (2 Bl. Comm.
marg. p. 281.)

No. 7.
You orphan heirs of fixed destiny,
Attend your office, and your quality.
Crier Hobgoblin, make the fairy o-yes:
Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 5, Scene 5.

O-yes. Hear ye! Immediately before he makes
proclamation the crier of the court cries, Oyez, oyez,
which is generally corruptly pronounced o-yes.
(Bow. Law Dict.)

(See No. 194.)

No. 8.

Go thou and seek the coroner, and let him sit 0’ my coz;
for he’s in the third degree of drink, he’s drowned; go, look

after him:
Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene §.
68 THE LAW IN SIIAKESPEARE.

 

No. 9.

Has been told so: and he says, he’ll stand at your door like
a sheriff’s post, and be the supporter of a bench, but he’ll
speak with you.

(See No. 239.)

Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 5,

No. 10.

Fab. I will prove it legitimate, sir, upon the oaths of judg-
ment and reason.

Sir To, And they have been grand jury-men since before

Noah was a sailor.
Twelfth Night, Act 3, Scene 2.

No. 11.
First Off. This is the man; do thy office.
Sec. Of. Antonio, 1 arrest thee at the suit
Of count Orsino.
Twelfth Night, Act 3, Scene 4.
Arrest. (See Nos. 17,86, 87, 137, 138, 277a,
295, 300.)

No. 12.
_ Nay, let him alone, I’ll go another way to work with him;
Ill have an action of battery against him, if there be any law
in Illyria: though I struck him first, yet it’s no matter for
that.

Twelfth Night, Act 4, Scene 1.

Action of battery. (See Nos. 12, 20, 276.)

No. 138.
Thou shalt be both the plaintiff and the judge of thine own

cause.
Twelfth Night, Act 5, Scene 1.

Plaintiff. (See No. 39.)
Cause. (See Nos. 60, 149, 184, 200, 277a.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 69

 

No. 14.
A contract of eternal bond of love,

Confirm’d by mutual joinder of your hands,
Attested by the holy close of lips,
Strengthen’d by interchangement of your rings;
And all the ceremony of this compact
Seal’d in my function, by my testimony.
Twelfth Night, Act 5, Scene 1.

Confirmed. (See Nos. 185, 238.)

No. 15.
Claud. Thus stands it with me: upon a true contract,
1 got possession of Julictta’s bed ;
You know the lady; she is fast my wife,
Save that we do the denunciation lack
Of outward order: this we came not to,
Only for propagation of a dower
Remaining in the coffer of her friends ;
From whom we thought it meet to hide our love,

Till time had made them for us.
Measure for Measure, Act 1, Scene 2.

The common law considered marriage solely as a
civil contract, requiring no ecclesiastical ceremony
or sanction. It was valid in all cases where the
parties were willing and able to and actually did
contract. Any such contract made per verba de
presenti, or in words in the present tense, and, in
case cohabitation followed, per verba de futuro, was
a valid marriage. (Bl. Comm. marg. pp. 435, 439.)

The word dower is used for the word dowry, which
70 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

was that which the wife brings her husband in
marriage, otherwise called maritagium or marriage
goods. The word is often confounded with dower,
though it has a different meaning. (Tomlin’s Law
Dict.)

In the Collier folio of 1632 the word is “procura-
tion,” instead of “propagation.” It is evident that
this marriage was per verba de futuro. Upon such
a contract Claudio got possession of Isabella’s bed.
Such a marriage to be valid must be followed by
consummation of this character. Nothing is want-
’ ing in Claudio’s statement of the facts to make out
a case of valid marriage.

The words “true contract” are doubtless a cor-
ruption in the text. Pre-contract should be substi-
tuted, and this is the word employed in Measure
for Measure. (See No. 29.) The employment of
this phrase of antecedence shows that the distinc-
tion between marriage per verba de presenti and
that per verba de futuro was plainly drawn in

Shakespeare's mind.
(See No. 82.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 71

 

No. 16.
We have strict statutes, and most biting laws,
The needful bits and curbs to headstrong steeds,
Which for these fourteen years we have let sleep,
Even like an o’ergrown lion in a cave,
That goes not out to prey. Now, as fond fathers
Having bound up the threatening twigs of birch,
Only to stick it in their children’s sight,
For terror, not to use, in time the rod
Becomes more mock’d than fear’d: so our decrees,
Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead;
And liberty plucks justice by the nose ;
The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart

Goes all decorum.
Measure for Measure, Act 1, Scene 3.

No. 17.
He (to give fear to use and liberty,
Which have, for long, run by the hideous law,
As mice by lions,) hath pick’d out an act,
Under whose heavy sense your brother’s life
Falls into forfeit: he arrests him on it;
And follows close the rigour of the statute,
To make him an example: all hope is gone,
Unless you have the grace by your fair prayer
To soften Angelo.

Measure for Measure, Act 1, Scene 4.

Arrest. (See Nos. 11, 86, 87, 187, 138, 277a,
295, 300.

Forfeit. (See Nos. 25, 52, 56, 259, 306.)

No. 18.
Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus,
Another thing to fall. I not deny,
72 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

The jury, passing on the prisoner’s life,

May, in the sworn twelve, have a thief or two

Guiltier than him they try. What’s open made to justice,
That justice seizes: what know the laws,

That thieves do pass on thieves?
Measure for Measure, Act 2, Scene 1.

The phraseology here is legal. An “act” has
been picked out under which a life has “fallen into
forfeit ;” an “arrest” is made on it. The rigour of
the “statute” is followed. The jury, in “passing
on the prisoner's life,” is a “sworn twelve,” and
“thieves may pass on thieves.”

No. 19.

Els. Come, bring them away: if these be good pcople ina
commonweal, that do nothing but use their abuses in com-
mon houses. 1 know no law; bring them away.

Ang. How now, sir! what’s your name? and what’s the
matter?

Elb. If it please your honour, I am the poor duke’s consta-
ble, and my name is Elbow; I do lean upon justice, sir, and
do bring in here before your good honour two notorious ben-
efactors.

Ang. Benefactors? Well; what benefactors are they? are
they not malefactors ?

Hib. If it please your honour, I know not well what they
are: but precise villains they are, that I am sure of; and void
of all profanation in the world, that good Christians ought to
have.

Zscal. This comes off well; here’s a wise officer.

Measure for Measure, Act 2, Scene 1.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 73

 

Elbow brings before “his honour” two notorious
“benefactors,” as he calls them; “malefactors,”
according to the correction of Angelo. Such per-
version of terms occurs often, and is noticed in

more striking instances.

Malefactors. (See No. 88.)

No. 20.

Elb. First, an’ it like you, the house is a respected house;
next, this is a respected fellow; and his mistress is a respected
woman.

Clo. By this hand, sir, his wife is a more respected person
than any of us all.

Elb. Varlet, thou liest; thou liest, wicked varlet : the time

_ is yet to come that she was ever respected with man, woman,
or child.

Clo. Sir, she was respected with him before he married with
her.

Escal. Which is the wiser here? Justice or Iniquity? Is
this true?

Hib. O thou caitiff! O thou varlet! O thou wicked Han-
nibal! I respected with her, before I was married to her?
If ever I was respected with her, or she with me, let not your
worship think me the poor duke’s officer. Prove this, thou
wicked Hannibal, or [’]] have mine action of battery on thee.

Escal. 1f he took you a box o’ the ear, you might have your
action of slander too.

El. Marry, 1 thank your good worship for it. What is’t
your worship’s pleasure I shall do with this wicked caitiff?

Escal. Truly, officer, because he hath some offences in him,
that thou wouldst discover if thou couldst, let him continue

in his courses, till thou knowest what they are.
5 Measure for Measure, Act 2, Scene 1.
a
74 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

There is here in the use of the word “respected”
for “suspected,” the same kind of perversion noted
in No. 19 and elsewhere. ,

Elbow threatens an “action of battery” for a
slander, and Hscalus suggests in pleasantry that
he may e converso have an action of slander for a

battery.
(See Nos. 12, 276.)

No. 21.

Serv. He’s hearing of a cause; he will come straight.

Dll tell him of you.
Measure for Measure, Act 2, Scene 2.

Cause. A contested question before a court of
justice. (Bouv. Law Dict.)

“Hearing a cause” is the precise phrase to be
used here.

No. 22.

Under your good correction, I have seen,
When, after execution, judgment hath
Repented o’er his doom.
Measure for Measure, Act 2, Scene 2.

Execution. (See Nos. 231, 91.)
Doom. (See Nos. 2, 249.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 75

 

No. 23.
Condemn the fault and not the actor of it!
Why, every fault’s condemn’d ere it be done:
Mine were the very cipher of a function,
To fine the faults whose fine stands in record,

But let go by the actor.
Measure for Measure, Act 2, Scene 2.

This is a very exact application of a legal con-
ception. The meaning is that the criminal has
been convicted, and the judgment record against
him made up, and that mere abstract condemna-
tion of the fault, while pardoning the convicted
offender, makes the power of the ruler a cipher.

Fine. (See Nos. 56, 248.)

No. 24.
Well, believe this,
No ceremony that to great ones ‘longs,
Not the king’s crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal’s truncheon, nor the judge’s robe,
Become them with one half so good a grace

As mercy does.
Measure for Measure, Act 2, Scene 2,

Mercy. (See Nos. 25, 48, 56.)
76 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

No. 25.

Ang. Your brother is a forfeit of the law,
And you but waste your words.
Lsub. Alas, alas!
Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once;
And He that might the vantage best have took,
Found out the remedy. How would you be,
If He, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are? O, think on that;
And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
Like man new made.
Ang. Be you content, fair maid;
It is the law, not 1, condemns your brother;
Were he my kinsman, brother, or my son,
It should be thus with him: he must die to-morrow.
Isab. To-morrow! O, that’s sudden! Spare him, spare him!
He’s not prepared for death! Even for our kitchens
We kill the fowl of season; shall we serve heaven
With less respect than we do minister
To our gross selves? Good, good my lord, bethink you:
Who is it that hath died for this offence?
There’s many have committed it.
Lucio. Ay, well said.
Ang. The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept :
Those many had not dared to do that evil,
If the first man that did the edict infringe,
Had answer’d for his deed; now, ’tis awake;
Takes note of what is done; and like a prophet,
Looks in a glass that shows what future evils
Either new, or by remissness new-conceived,
And so in progress to be hatch’d and born,
Are now to have no successive degrees,
But, ere they live, to end.
Lsab. Yet show some pity.
Ang. I show it most of all, when I show justice ;
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 77

 

For then I pity those I do not know,
Which a dismiss’d offence would after gall;
And do him right, that, answering one foul wrong,
Lives not to act another. Be satisfied ;
Your brother dies to-morrow; be content.
Isab. So you must be the first that gives this sentence;
And he, that suffers: O, it is excellent
To have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannous

To use it like a giant.
Measure for Measure, Act 2, Scene 2.

Edict. (See Nos. 135, 170, 232.)
Forfeit. (See Nos. 17, 52, 56, 259, 306.)
Mercy. (See Nos. 24, 48, 56.)

No. 26.
Thieves for their robbery have authority,

When judges steal themselves.
Measure for Measure, Act 2, Scene 2.

No. 27.
I'll teach you how you shall arraign you conscience,
And try your penitence, if it be sound,
* Or holluwly put on.
Measure for Measure, Act 2, Scene 3.
Arraign. To call a man to answer in form of
law. A prisoner is arraigned when he is indicted
and brought to trial. (Yomlin’s Law Dict.)
(See Nos. 78, 79, 239, 286.)

No. 28.
Must die to-morrow! O, injurious love,
That respites me a life, whose very comfort

Is still a dying horror!
Measure for Measure, Act 2, Scene 3.
78 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

Respite. Reprieve; suspension of a capital
sentence.
(See No. 232.)

No. 29.
Nor, gentle daughter, fear you not at all.
He is your husband on a pre-contract:
To bring you thus together, ’tis no sin,
Sith that the justice of your title to him

Doth flourish the deceit.
Measure for Measure, Act 4, Scene 1.

As noted in No. 15, the use here of the word
pre-contract in relation to this marriage per verba
de futuro, followed by consummation, shows accu-
rate legal knowledge by Shakespeare of the requi-
sites of marriage, which at common law were by
mere civil forms of contract, and, in case of mar-
riages per verba de futuro, performance of the con-
tract by consummation, (subsequente copula.)

The duke correctly advises Mariana that the
proposed consummation will be no sin.

(See Nos. 15, 82.)

No. 30.
I hope it is some pardon or reprieve,
For the most gentle Claudio.
Measure for Measure, Act 4, Scene 2.

Pardon. The remitting or forgiving of an of-

fense committed against the king. (Tomlin’s Law
Dict.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 79

 

4s 06

The words “respite,” “reprieve,” “countermand,”
and “pardon” are used in this play in the most ac-

curate technical sense.
Reprieve. (See Nos. 32, 242.)

No. 31.

Have you no countermand for Claudio yet,

But he must die to-morrow ?
Measure for Measure, Act 4, Scene 2.

Countermand. Is where a thing formerly
executed is afterwards, by some act or ceremony,
made void by the party that first did it. (Tomlin’s
Law. Dict.)

The word signifies a change of orders which have
been given. (Bouv. Law Dict.) ,

Shakespeare has here, and in Nos. 28, 30, and
82, exhausted the powers of legal terms on the sub-
ject of the hope of criminals whose only hope is in

the exercise of the prerogative of mercy.

No. 32.

His friends still wrought reprieves for him.
Measure for Measure, Act 4, Scene 2.

Reprieves. (See Nos. 30, 242.)
80 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

No. 33.
My business in this state
Made mea looker-on here in Vienna,
Where I have seen corruption boil and bubble,
Till it o’er-run the stew: laws, for all faults;
But faults so countenanc’d that the strong statutes
Stand like the forfeits in a barber’s shop,

As much in mock as mark.
Measure for Measure, Act 5, Scene 1.

No. 34.

Dogb. Are you good men and true?

Verg. Yea, or else it were pity but they should suffer sal-
vation, body and soul. ;

Dogb. Nay, that were a punishment too good for them, if
they should have any allegiance in them, being chosen for the
prince’s watch.

Verg. Well, give them their charge, neighbor Dogberry.

Dogb. First, who think you the most desartless man to be
constable.

1 Watch. Hugh Oatcake, sir, or George Seacole; for they
can write and read.

Dogb. Come hither, neighbor Seacole. God hath blessed
you with a good name; to be a well-favoured man is the gift
of fortune; but to write and read comes by nature.

2 Watch. Both which, master constable, —

Dogb. You have; I knew it would be your answer. Well,
for your favor, sir, why, give God thanks, and make no boast
of it; and for your writing and reading, let that appear when
there is no need of such vanity. You are thought here to be
the most senseless and fit man for the constable of the watch;
‘therefore bear you the lantern: this is your charge; you shall
comprehend all vagrom men: you are to bid any man stand,
in the prince’s name.

2 Watch. How if a’ will not stand ?

Dogo. Why then, take no note of him, but let him go; and
TIE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 81

 

presently call the rest of the watch together, and thank God
you are rid of a knave.

Verg. If he will not stand when he is bidden, he is none of
the prince’s subjects.

Dogb. True, and they are to meddle with none but the
prince’s subjects :—you shall also make no noise in the streets ;
for, for the watch to babble and talk, is most tolerable, and
not to be endured.

2 Watch. We will rather sleep than talk; we know what
belongs to a watch.

Dogb. Why, you speak like an ancient and most quiet
watchman; for I cannot see how sleeping should offend: only,
have a care that your bills be not stolen:—Well, you are to
call at all the ale-houses, and bid those that are drunk get
them to bed.

2 Watch. How if they will not?

Dogo. Why then, let them alone till they are sober; if they
make you not then the better answer, you may say, they are
not the men you took them for.

2 Watch. Well, sir.

Dogb. 1f you meet a thief, you may suspect him, by virtue
of your office, to be no true man: and, for such kind of men,
the less you meddle or make with them, why, the more is for
your honesty.

2 Watch. If we know him to be a thief, shall we not lay
hands on him?

Dogb. Truly, by your office, you may; but I think, they that
touch pitch will be defiled: the most peaceable way for you
if you do take a thief, is, to let him show himself what he is,
and steal out of your company.

Verg. You have been always called a merciful man, partner.

Dogd. Truly, I would not hang a dog by my will; much
more a man who hath any honesty in him.

Verg. If you hear a child cry in the night, you must call to
the nurse, and bid her still it.

6
82 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

2 Watch. How if the nurse be asleep, and will not hear us?

Dogb. Why, then, depart in peace, and let the child wake
her with crying: for the ewe that will not hear her lamb
when it baes, will never answer a calf when he Dleats.

Verg. ’Tis very true.

Dogb. This isthe end of the charge. You, constable, are
to present the prince’s own person; if you meet the prince in
the night you may stay him.

Verg. Nay, by’r lady, that I think a’ cannot.

Dogb. Five shillings to one on’t, with any man that knows
the statues, he may stay him: marry, not without the prince
be willing : for, indeed, the watch ought to offend no man;
and it isan offence to stay a man against his will.

Verg. By’r lady, I think, it be so.

Dogb. Ha, ha, ha! Well, masters, good night: an there be
any matter of weight chances, call up me: keep your fellows’
counsels and your own, and good night.—Come, neighbour.

2 Watch. Well, masters, we hear our charge: let us go sit
here upon the church-bench till two, and then all to bed.

Dogb. One word more, honest neighbours: I pray you,
watch about signior Leonato’s door; for the wedding being
there to-morrow, there isa great coil to-night: adieu, be vig-

ilant, I beseech you.
Much Ado About Nothing, Act 3, Scene 3.

No. 35.
We are like to prove a goodly commodity, being taken up
of these men’s bills.
Much Ado About Nothing, Act 3, Scene 3.

No. 36.

-Dogb. One word, sir; our watch, sir, have, indeed, com-
prehended two aspicious persons, and we would have them
this morning examined before your worship.

Leon. Take their examination yourself, and bring it me;
I am now in great haste, as it may appear unto you.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 83

 

Dogd. It shall be suffigance.
Leon. Drink some wine ere you go; fare you well.

Enter a Messenger.

Mess. My lord, they stay for you to give your daughter to
her husband.

Leon. I will wait upon them; I am ready.

[Zaeunt Leonato and Messenger.

Dogb. Go, good partner, go; get you to Francis Seacole,
bid him bring his pen and inkhorn to the gaol; we are now
to examination these men.

Verg. And we must do it wisely.

Dogb. We will spare for no wit, I warrant you; here’s that
shall drive some of them to a non com. only get the learned
writer to set down our excommunication, and meet me at the

gaol,
Much Ado About Nothing, Act 3, Scene 5.

Examine. (See Nos. 38, 61.)

No. 37.

Trust not my reading, nor my observations,
Which with experimental sea] doth warrant
The tenor of my book; trust not my age,
My reverence, calling, nor divinity,
If this sweet lady lie not guiltless here
Under some biting error.
Much Ado About Nothing, Act 4, Scene 1.

Seal. (See Nos. 52, 56, 108, 126, 158, 204,
207, 256, 274, 288.)

Tenor. (See Nos. 56, 189, 223, 232.)
84 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

No. 38.

Dogb. Is our whole dissembly appeared ?

Verg. O, a stool and a cushion for the sexton!

Sex. Which be the malefactors ?

Dogb. Marry, that am I and my partner.

Verg. Nay, that’s certain; we have the exhibition to ex-
amine.

Sex. But which are the offenders that are to be examined ?
Let them come before master constable.

Dogo. Yea, marry, let them come before me.— What is your
name, friend ?

Bora. Borachio.

Dogb. Pray write down—Borachio.—Y ours, sirrah ?

Con. I am a gentleman, sir, and my name is Conrade.

Dogb. Write down—master gentleman Conrade.—Masters,
do you serve God?

Con. Bora. Yea, sir, we hope.

Dog. Write down—that they hope they serve God :—and
write God first; for God defend but God should go before such
villains !—Masters, it is proved already that you are little bet-
ter than false knaves; and it will go near to be thought so
shortly. How answer you for yoursclves ?

Con. Marry, sir, we say we are none.

Dogb, A marvellous witty fellow, I assure you; but I will
go about with him.—Come you hither, sirrah; a word in your
ear, sir; I say to you, it is thought you are false knaves.

Bora. Sir, I say to you, we are none.

Dogb. Well, stand aside.—’Fore God, they are both in a
tale: have you writ down—that they are none?

Sex. Master constable, you go not the way to examine; you
must call forth the watch that are their accusers.

Dog. Yea, marry, that’s the eftest way :—Let the watch
come forth :—Masters, I charge you, in the prince’s name, ac-
cuse these men.

1 Watch. This man said, sir, that Don John, the prince’s
brother, was a villain.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 85

 

Dogb. Write down—prince John a villian:—Why this is
flat perjury, to call a prince’s brother—villain.

Bora. Master constable,—

Dogo. Pray thee, fellow, peace; Ido not like thy look, I
promise thee.

Sex. What heard you him say else?

2 Watch. Marry, that he had received a thousand ducats of
Don John, for accusing the lady Hero wrongfully.

Dogd. Flat burglary, as ever was committed.

Verg. Yea, by the mass, that it is.

Sex. What else, fellow?

1 Watch. And that count Claudio did mean, upon his words,
to disgrace Hero before the whole assembly, and not marry
her.

Dogb. O villian! thou wilt be condemned into everlasting
redemption for this.

Sex. What else ?

2 Watch. This is all.

Sev. And this is more, masters, than youcandeny. Prince
Jolin is this morning secretly stolen away: Hero was in this
manner accused, in this very manner refused, and upon the
grief of this, suddenly died.—Master constable, let these men
be bound, and brought to Leonato’s; 1 will go before, and
show lim their examination. [ Lait.

Dogb. Come, let them be opinioned.

Verg. Let them be in band!

Con. Off, coxcomb!

Dog. God’s my life! where’s the sexton? let him write
down—the prince’s officer, coxcomb.—Come, bind them :—
Thou naughty varlct !

Con. Away! you are an ass, you are an ass!

Dogb. Dost thou not suspect my place? Dost thou not sus-
pect my ycars?—O that he were here to write me down—an
ass !—but, masters, remember that I am an ass; though it be
not writlen down, yet forget not that I am an ass :—No, then
86 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

villain, thou art full of piety, as shall be proved upon thee by
good witness. I am a wise fellow, and, which is more, an
officer ; and, which is more, a householder ; and, which is more,
as pretty a piece of flesh as any is in Messina; and one that
knows the law, go to; and a rich fellow enough, go to; and
a fellow that hath had losses; and one that hath two gowns,
and everything handsome about him :—Bring him away. O,

that I had been writ down—an ass.
Much Ado About Nothing, Act 4, Scene 2.

Examine. (See Nos. 36, 61.)
Malefactors. (See No. 19.)
Perjury. (See No. 149.)

No. 39.

Dogb. Come, you sir; if justice cannot tame you, she shall
ne’er weigh more reasons in her balance; nay, an you bea
cursing hypocrite once, you must be looked to.

D. Pedro. How now, two of my brother’s men bound!
Borachio, one!

Claud. Hearken after their offence, my lord !

D. Pedro. Officers, what offence have these men done ?

Dogd. Marry, sir, they have committed false report ; more-
over, they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slan-
ders; sixth and lastly, they have helied a lady; thirdly, they
have verified unjust things; and, to conclude, they are lying
knaves.

D. Pedro. First, lask thee what they have done; thirdly,
I ask thee what’s their offence; sixth and lastly, why they
are committed; and, to conclude, what you lay to their
charge?

Claud. Rightly reasoned, and in his own division; and, by
my troth, there’s one meaning well suited.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 87

 

D. Pedro. Whom have you offended, masters, that you are
thus bound to your answer? This learned constable is too
cunning to be understood: What’s your offence ?

% * * * * * *

Dogb. Come, bring away the plaintilfs; by this time our
sexton hath reformed signior Leonato of the matter; and
masters, do not forget to specify, when time and place shall
serve, that I am an ass.

* ¥ * * * * ¥

Dogb. Moreover, sir, (which, indeed, is not under white and
black,) this plaintiff here, the offender, did call me ass: I
beseech you, let it be remembered in his punishment: and
also, the watch heard them talk of one Deformed: they say,
he wears a key in his ear, and a lock hanging by it, and bor-
rows money in God’s name; the which he hath used so long,
and never paid, that now men grow hard-hearted, and will
Jend nothing for God’s sake: pray you, examine him upon
that point.

Leon. I thank thee for thy care and honest pains.

Dogb. Your worship speaks like a most thankful and rever-
end youth ; and I praise God for you.

Leon. There’s for thy pains.

Dogb. God save the foundation !

Leon. Go, I discharge thee of thy prisoner, and I thank
thee.

Dogo. I leave an arrant knave with your worship ; which,
I beseech your worship, to correct yourself, for the example
of others. God keep your worship; I wish your worship
well; God restore you to health: 1 humbly give you leave to
depart ; and if a merry meeting may be wished, God prohibit

it.—Come, neighbour.
Much Ado About Nothing, Act 5, Scene 1.

Plaintiff. (See No. 13.)
88 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

No. 40.

The. But, oh, methinks, how slow
‘This old moon wanes! she lingers iny desires,
Like to a step-dame, or a dowager,

Long withering out a young man’s revenue.
* * * * * *
Either to die the death, or to abjure
Forever the society of men.
* * * * * *

Her. So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord,
Ere I will yield my virgin patent up
Unto his lordship, whose unwished yoke
My soul consents not to give sovereignty.

The. The sealing-day betwixt my love and me,
For everlasting bond of fellowship.

* * * * * *
Dem. And, Lysander, yield
Thy crazed title to my certain right
* * * * * *

Zige. Scornful Lysander! true, he hath my love;
And what is mine my love shall render him:
And she is mine; and all my right of her
I do estate unto Demetrius.
Lys. lam my lord, as well deriv'd as he,
* * * * ¥ ¥
Why should not I then prosecute my right?
Demetrius, I’]l avouch it to his head,
Made love to Nedar’s daughter, Helena,
And won her soul.
* * * ¥ * *
ier, Tf then true lovers have been cross’d,
It stands as an edict in destiny.
A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, Act 1, Scene 1.

Abjure. (See No. 103.)
Bond. (See Nos. 51, 52, 56, 99, 131, 306.
THE LAW IN SITAKESPEARE, 89

 

Avouch. (See Nos. 106, 258.)

The first scene of A Midsummer-Night’s Dream
abounds in legal phraseology. The waning moon is
a “dowager” who is a “widow endowed.” (Tomlin’s
Law Dict.) She keeps the young long out of their
revenue. Hermia is condemned to “abjure” the
society of men. Her “virgin patent” is in question;
a “sealing day” is fixed for an everlasting “bond;”
the title of Lysander to Hermia is a “crazed one ;”
Egeus, the father, “estates unto” Demetrius “all
his right” of Hermia. Lysander asserts that he is
as well “derived” as Demetrius, and questions why
he shall not “prosecute” his “right,” and proposes
to “avouch” his charge against Demetrius.

The crossing of true lovers stands as “an edict”
in destiny. Here is not an instance of the occa-
sional use of a legal term mingled with untechnical
language, nor is there any use of untechnical equiva-
lents. Throughout the scene, which is in the form
of a trial, the parties are summoned to “stand
forth,” and they plead their cause in the language

of forensic discussion.
6a
90 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

No. 41.
What hast thou done? thou hast mistaken quite,
And laid the love-juice on some true-love’s sight,
Of thy misprision must perforce ensue

Some true-love turn’d and not a false turn’d true.
A Midsumner-Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 2.

Misprision. A neglect—oversight. (Tomlin’s
Law Dict.)

This is the primary legal meaning of this word,
though it is also a general word for all such high
offenses as are under the degree of capital, but
nearly bordering thereon. It is here used in its
primary sense. The love-juice has been laid on
true-love’s sight by mistake.

No. 42.

You three, Biron, Dumain, and Longaville,

Have sworn for three years’ term to live with me,

My fellow scholars, and to keep those statutes

That are recorded in this schedule here.

Your oaths are passed, and now subscribe your name.
Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act 1, Scene 1,

Term. A limitation of time—estate. (Tom-
lin’s Law Dict.) (See No. 43.)

In these four lines, “statutes” “recorded” in a
“schedule” are to be kept for a “term,” and “oaths”
which are “passed” so to do are to be “subscribed.”

Statutes. (See No. 198.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 91

 

No. 43.
But there are other strict observances:
As not to see a woman in that term;
Which, I hope well, is not enrolled there:
And, one day in a week to touch no food;
And but one meal on every day beside;
The which, [ hope, is not enrolled there:
And then, to sleep but three hours in the night,
And not be seen to wink of all the day—
When I was wont to think no harm all night,
And make a dark night too of half the day—
Which, [ hope well, is not enrolled there.
Love's Labour’s Lost, Act 1, Scene 1:

The word “term” again occurs, and the word
“enrolled” is used three times in the sense of an
enrolled statute or record. It is peculiarly a term

of art. The untechnical words are “written,” “in-
scribed.”

Enrolled. (See No. 206.)
No. 43a.

Why all delights are vain; but that most vain,
Which with pain purchased doth inherit pain.
Love's Labour's Lost, Act 1, Scene 1.

As to the distinction between estates by inherit-
ance and those by purchase, see No. 213.

Wo. 44.
So to the laws at large I write my name,
And he that breaks them in the least degree
Stands in attainder of eternal shame.
Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act 1, Scene 1.
92 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

Attainder. A man is said to be attainted,
(attinctus,) for that by his attainder of treason or
felony his blood is so stained and corrupted, as,
first, his children cannot be heirs to him, nor any
ancestor through him. * * * If he were noble
or gentle before, he and all his children and pos-
terity are by this attainder made base and iguoble.
* * * This corruption of blood is so high
that it cannot be absolutely salved and taken away
but by authority of parliament. (Co. Litt. 891b.)
He is already dead in law. (8 Inst. 218.)

(See No. 130.)

No. 44a.

Cost. The matter 1s to me, sir, as concerning Jaquenetta,
The manner of it is, 1 was taken with the manner.

Biron. In what manner?

Cost. In manner and form following, sir: all those three:
I was scen with her in the manor-house, sitting with her upon
the form, and taken following her into the park: which put
together is in manner and form following. Now, sir, for the
manner,—it is the manner of a man to speak to a woman:
for the form,—in some form.

Biron. For the following, sir?

Cost. As it shall follow in my correction: and God defend
the right.

Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act 1, Scene 1.

Taken with the manner. (See No. 131a.)

No. 45.
Prin. You do the king my father too much wrong,
And wrong the reputation of your name,
In so unseeming to confess receipt
Of that which hath so faithfully been paid.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 93

 

King. I do protest, I never heard of it;
And, if you prove it, I’ll repay it back,
Or yield up Aquitaine.

Prin. We arrest your word:
Boyet, you can produce acquittances,
For such a sum, from special officers

Of Charles his father.
Love's Labour's Lost, Act 2, Scene 1.

Acquittances. (See Nos. 4, 274.)

No. 46.
Boyct. So please your grace, the packet is not come,
Where that and other specialties are bound,

To-morrow you shall have a sight of them.
Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act 2, Scene 1.

Specialties. A bond, bill, or such like instru-
ment; a writing or deed under the hand and seal
of the parties. (Zomlin’s Law Dict.)

(See No. 66.)

No, 47.
Boyet. So you grant pasture forme. [Offering to kiss her.
Mar. Not so, gentle beast ;

My lips are no common, though several they be.
Boyet. Belonging to whom?
Mar. To my fortunes and me.
Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act 2, Scene 1.

Grant is at common law a conveyance of in-
corporeal things, (Co. Litt. 9.)

Common of pasture is a right of feeding one’s
beasts on another’s lands. (2 Bl. Comm. marg. p.
82.)
94 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

Several. He that holds lands or tenements in
severalty, or is sole tenant thereof, is he that holds
them in his own right only, without any person be-
ing joined or connected with him in point of inter-
est during his estate therein. (2 Bl. Comm. marg.
p. 191.)

Without a thorough knowledge of the legal terms
employed, Maria’s repartee is absolutely meaning-
less.

No. 48.
Or for love’s sake, a word that loves all men;
Or for men’s sake, the authors of these women,
Or women’s sake, by whom we men are men,
Let us once lose our oaths, to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.
It is religion to be thus forsworn,
For charity itself fulfils the law,
And who can sever love from charity?
Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act 4, Scene 3.

Mercy. (See Nos. 24, 25, 56.)

No. 49.

My ventures are not in one bottom trusted.
The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 1.
(See No. 109.)

No. 50.

That he hath a neighborly charity in him, for he borrowed
a box of the ear of the Englishman, and swore he would pay
him again when he was able: I think the Frenchman became
his surety and sealed under for another.
The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 2.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 95

 

Surety. A person who binds himself for the
payment of a sum of money, or for the performance
of something else, for another who is already bound
for the same. (Bouv. Law Dict.)

(See No. 306.)

No. 51.

Shy. 1 think I may take his bond.

Bass. Be assured you may.

Shy. I will be assured I may; and, that I may be assured,
I will bethink me.

The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 3.

Bassanio gives Shylock his personal assurance
or opinion that he may take the bond. Shylock is
thinking of legal assurance, and so repeats the word

“assured.”
Assured. (See No. 301.)
Bond. (See Nos. 40, 52, 56, 99, 131, 306.)

No. 52.

Shy. This kindness will I show :—
Go with me to a notary, seal me there
Your single bond; and, in a merry sport,
If you repay me not on such a day,
In such a place, such sum, or sums, as are
Express’d in the condition, let the forfeit
Be nominated for an equal pound
Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken
In what part of your body pleascth me.

Ant. Content, i’ faith: I’ll seal to such a bond,
And say there is much kindness in the Jew.
96 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

Bass. You shall not seal to such a bond for me;
Dll rather dwell in my necessity,

Ant. Why, fear not, man; I will not forfeit it;
Within these two months, that’s a month before
This bond expires, I do expect return
Of thrice three times the value of this bond.

Shy. O father Abram, what these Christians are;
Whose own hard dealings teaches them suspect
The thoughts of others! Pray you, tell me this;

If he should break his day, what should I gain
By the exaction of the forfeiture ?
The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 3.

Notary. A person who takes notes or makes
a short draft of contracts, obligations, or other
writings or instruments. (27 Ed. III, st. 1, ¢. 1;
Tomlin’s Law Dict.)

Single bond. A bond without a condition.
(Tomlin’s Law Dict.)

Seal. A seal is necessary to constitute a bond.
Subscribing is not essential, sealing being sufficient.
(Tomlin’s Law Dict.)

(See Nos. 37, 52, 108, 126, 158, 204, 207, 256, 274, 288.)

Forfeit, forfeiture. On failure of perform-
ance of the condition the bond was, in legal phrase,
forfeited. (Co. Litt. 208, 210, 340.)

(See Nos. 17, 25, 56, 259, 306.)

No. 53.
The devil can cite scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness,
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek;
TILE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 97

 

A goodly apple rotten at the heart;
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 3.

In legal proceedings books of authority are “cited”
and witnesses are “produced.”

No. 54. °

In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt,
But, being season’d with a gracious voice,
Obscures the show of evil?

The Merchant of Venice, Act 3, Scene 2.

Plea. (See Nos. 294, 297, 298.)

No. 55.
see thou render this
Unto my cousin’s hand, Doctor Bellario.
The Merchant of Venice, Act 3, Scene 4.

 

Render. To yield; give again or return.
(Lomlin’s Law Dict.)

Render unto Cesar the things which are Cesar’s.
“Rendering and yielding as rent” is the phrase

in leases.

No. 56.

Venice. Acourtof Justice. Enter the Duke, the Magnificoes ;
Antonio, Bassanio, Gratiano, Salarino, Salanio, and others.
Duke. What, is Antonio here ?

Ant. Ready, so please your grace.
Duke. Lam sorry for thee; thou art come to answer

A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch

7
98 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE,

 

Uncapable of pity, void and empty
From any dram of mercy.
Ant. I have heard,
Your grace hath ta’en great pains to qualify
His rigorous course; but since he stands obdurate
And that no lawful means can carry me
Out of his envy’s reach, I do oppose
My patience to his fury; and am arm’d ‘
To suffer, with a quietness of spirit,
The very tyranny and rage of his.
Duke. Go one, and call the Jew into the court.
Salan. He’s ready at the door: he comes, my lord.
Enter Shylock.
Duke. Make room, and let him stand before our face.—
Shylock, the world thinks, and I think so too,
That thou but lead’st this fashion of thy malice
To the last hour of act ; and then, ’tis thought
Thou’lt show thy mercy, and remorse, more strange
Than is thy strange apparent cruelty:
And where thou now exact’st the penalty
(Which is a pound of this poor merchant’s flesh,)
Thou wilt not only lose the forfeiture,
But touch’d with human gentleness and love,
Forgive a moiety of the principal ;
Glancing an eye of pity on his losses,
That have of late so huddled on his back ;
Enough to press a royal merchant down,
And pluck commiseration or his state
From brassy bosoms, and rough hearts of flint,
From stubborn Turks, and Tarters, never train’d
To offices of tender courtesy.
We all expect a gentle answer, Jew.
Shy. I have possess’d your grace of what I purpose ;
And by our holy sabbath have I sworn,
To have the due and forfeit of my bond.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 99

 

If you deny it, let the danger light

Upon your charter, and your city’s freedom.

You'll ask me, why I rather choose to have

A weight of carrion flesh, than to receive

Three thousand ducats: I'll not answer that:

But, say, it is my humour; Is it answer’d?

What if my house be troubled with a rat,

And I be pleas’d to give ten thousand ducats

To have it baned? What, are you answer’d yet?

Some men there are, love not a gaping pig;

Some, that are mad, if the} behold a cat;

And others, when the bag-pipe sings i’ the nose,

Cannot contain their urine; For affection,

Mistress of passion, sways it to the mood

Of what it likes, or loaths: Now, for your answer:

As there is no firm reason to be render’d,

Why he cannot abide a gaping pig ;

Why he, a harmless necessary cat ;

Why he, a swollen bag-pipe; but of force

Must yield to such inevitable shame,

As to offend, himself being offended;

So can I give no reason, nor I will not,

More than a lodg’d hate, and a certain loathing

I bear Antonio, that I follow thus

A losing suit against him. Are you answer’d?
Bass. This is no answer, thou unfeeling man,

To excuse the current of thy cruelty.
Shy. I am not bound to please thee with my answer.
Bass. Do all men kill the things they do not love?
Shy. Hates any man the thing he would not kill?
Bass. Every offence is not a hate at first.
Shy. What, would’st thou have a serpent sting thee twice?
Ant. I pray you, think you question with the Jew:

You may as well go stand upon the beach,

And bid the main flood bate his usual height :
100 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

You may as well use question with the wolf,
Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb;
You may as well forbid the mountain pines

To wag their high tops, and to make no noise,

When they are fretted with the gusts of heaven ;

You may as well do anything most hard,

As seek to soften that (than which what’s harder ?)

His Jewish heart :—Therefore, I do beseech you,

Make no more offers, use no further means,

But, with all brief and plain conveniency,

Let me have judgment, and the Jew his will.

Bass. For thy three thousand ducats here is six.
Shy. If every ducat in six thousand ducats

Were in six parts, and every part a ducat,

I would not draw them, £ would have my bond.
Duke, How shalt thou hope for mercy, rendering none?
Shy. What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong?

You have among you many a purchas’d slave,

Which, like your asses, and your dogs and mules,

You use in abject and in slavish parts,

Because you bought them :—Shall I say to you,

Let them be free, marry them to your heirs?

Why sweat they under burdens? let their beds

Be made as soft as yours, and Ict their palates

Be season’d with such viands? You will answer,

The slaves are ours :—So do I answer you:

The pound of flesh, which 1 demand of him,

Is dearly bought, is mine, and I will have it:

If you deny me, fie upon your law!

There is no force in the decrees of Venice:

I stand for judgment: answer; shall I have it?
Duke. Upon my power, I may dismiss this court,

Unless Bellario, a learned doctor,

Whom I have sent for to determine this,

Come here to-day.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 101

 

Salar. My lord, here stays without
A messenger with letters from the doctor,
New come from Padua.
Duke, Bring us the letters; Call the messenger.
Bass. Good cheer, Antonio! What, man? courage yet!
The Jew shall have my flesh, blood, bones, and all,
Ere thou shalt loose for me one drop of blood.
Ant. [am a tainted wether of the flock,
Mecetest for death; the weakest kind of fruit
Drops earliest to the ground, and so let me:
You cannot better be employ’d, Bassanio,
Than to live still and write mine epitaph.

Enter Nerissa, dressed like a lawyer's clerk.
Duke. Came you from Padua, from Bellario ?
Ner. From both, my lord: Bellario greets your grace.
[Presents a letter.
Bass. Why dost thou whet thy knife so earnestly ?
Shy. To cut the forfeiture from that bankrupt there.
Gra. Not on thy sole, but on thy soul, harsh Jew,
Thou mak’st thy knife keen: but no metal can,
No, not the hangman’s axe, bear half the kecnness
Of thy sharp envy. Can no prayers pierce thee ?
Shy. No, none that thou hast wit enough to make.
Gra. O, be thou damn’d, inexorable dog!
And for thy life let justice be accused.
Thou almost mak’st me waver in my faith,
To hold opinion with Pythagoras,
That souls of animals infuse themselves
Into the trunks of men: thy currish spirit
Govern’d a wolf, who, hang’d for human slaughter,
Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,
And, whilst thou lay’st in thy unhallow’d dam,
Infus‘d itself in thee; for thy desires
Are wolfish, bloody, starv'd, and ravenous.
Shy. Till thou canst rail the seal from off my bond,
102 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

Thou but offend’st thy lungs to speak so loud;
Repair thy wit, good youth, or it will fall
To curceless ruin.—I stand here for law.

Duke. This letter from Bellario doth commend
A young and learned doctor to our court;—
Where is he?

Ner. He attendeth here hard by,
To know your answer, whether you’l] admit him.

Duke. With all my heart ;—some three or four of you,
Go give him courteous conduct to this place.—
Meantime, the court shall hear Bellario’s letter.

(Clerk reads.] Your grace shall understand, that, at the
receipt of your Jetter, I am very sick; but in the instant that
your messenger came, in loving visitation was with me a
young doctor of Rome, his name is Balthazer; I acquainted
him with the cause in controversy between the Jew and An-
‘tonio the merchant; we turned o’er many books together;
he is furnished with my opinion; which, better’d with his
own learning, (the greatness whereof I cannot enough com-
mend,) comes with him, at my importunity, to fill up your
grace’s request in my stead. I beseech you let his lack of
years be no impediment to Ict him lack a reverend estimation,
for I never knew so young a body with so olda head. I leave
him to your gracious acceptance, whose trial shall better
publish his commendation.

Duke. You hear the learn’d Bellario, what he writes;

And here, I take it, is the doctor come.—

Enter Portia, dressed like a doctor of laws.

Give me your hand: Came you from old Bellario?

Por. I did, my lord.

Duke. You are welcome: take your place.
Are you acquainted with the difference
That holds this present question in the cout?

Por. Iam informed thoroughly of the cause.
Which is the merchant here, and which the Jew?
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 103

 

Duke. Antonio and old Shylock, both stand forth.
Por. Is your name Shylock?
Shy. Shylock is my name.
Por. Of a strange nature is the suit you follow;
Yet in such rule, that the Venetian law
Cannot impugn you, as you do proceed. —
You stand within his danger, do younot? [7'o Antonio.
Ant. Ay, so he says.
Por. Do you confess the bond ?
Ant. I do.
Por. Then must the Jew be merciful.
Shy. On what compulsion must 1? tell me that.
Por. The quality of mercy is not strain’d;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath; it is twice bless’d;
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes;
*Tis mightiest in the mightest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this scepter’d sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself ;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s,
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,—
That in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation ; we do pray for mercy ;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much,
To mitigate the justice of thy plea ;
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence ’gainst the merchant there.
Shy. My deeds upon my head! I crave the law,
104 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

The penalty and forfeit of my bond.
Por. Is he not able to discharge the money?
Bass. Yes, here I tender it for him in the court,
Yea, twice the sum; if that will not suffice,
I will be bound to pay it ten times o’er,
On forfeit of my hands, my head, my heart;
If this will not suffice, it must appear
That malice bears down truth. And I beseech you,
Wrest once the law to your authority ;
To do a great right, do a little wrong;
And curb this cruel devil of his will.
Lor. It must not be; there is no power in Venice
Can alter a decree established ;
*T will be recorded fora precedent;
And many an error, by the same example,
Will rush into the state; it cannot be.
Shy. A Daniel come to judgment! yea, a Daniel !—
O wise young judge, how do I honour thee!
Por. I pray you, let me look upon the bond.
Shy. Here ’tis, most reverend doctor, here it is.
Por. Shylock, there’s thrice thy money offer’d thee.
Shy. An oath, an oath, I have an oath in heaven;
Shall I lay perjury upon my soul?
No, not for Venice.
Por. Why, this bond is forfeit ;
And lawfully by this the Jew may claim
A pound of flesh, to be by him cut off
Nearest the merchant’s heart :—Be merciful;
Take thrice thy money; bid me tear the bond.
Shy. When it is paid according to the tenor.—
It doth appear you are a worthy judge;
You know the law; your exposition
Hath been most sound; I charge you by the law,
Whercof you are a well deserving pillar,
Proceed to judgment; by my soul I swear,
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 105

 

There is no power in the tongue of man
To alter me; I stay here on my bond.

Ant. Most heartily I do beseech the court
To give the judgment.

Por. Why then, thus it is.
You must prepare your bosom for his knife.

Shy. O noble judge! O excellent young man

Por. For the intent and purpose of the law
Hath full relation to the penalty,

Which here appeareth due upon the bond.

Shy. ’Tis very true: O wise and upright judge!
How much more elder art thou than thy looks!

Por, Therefore, lay bare your bosom.

Shy. Ay, his breast ;
So says the bond;—Doth it not, noble judge ?—
Nearest his heart, those are the very words.

Por. It isso. Are there balance here to weigh
The flesh?

Shy. I have them ready

Por. Have by some surgeon, Shylock, on your charge,
To stop his wounds, lest he do bleed to death.

Shy. Is it so nominated in the bond?

Por. It is not so express’d: But what of that.
?Twere good you do so much for charity.

Shy. I cannot find it; ’tis not in the bond.

Por. Come, merchant, have you anything to say?

Ant. But little; I am arm’d and well prepar’d.—
Give me your hand, Bassanio; fare you well!
Grieve not that I am fallen to this for you;

For herein fortune shows herself more kind

Than is her custom; it is still her use,

To let the wretched man out-live his wealth,

To view with holléw eye, and wrinkled brow,

An age of poverty; from which lingering penance
Of such a misery doth she cut me off.

Ta
106 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

Commend me to your honourable wife ;
Tell her the process of Antonio’s end,
Say, how I lov’d you, speak me fair in death ;
And, when the tale is told, bid her be judge,
Whether Bassanio had not once a love.
Repent not you that you shall lose your friend,
And he repents not that he pays your debt;
For if the Jew do cut but deep enough,
I'll pay it instantly with all my heart.
Bass. Antonio, I’m married to a wife,
Which is as dear to me as life itself;
But lite itself, my wife, and all the world,
Are not with me esteem’d above thy life;
I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all
Here to this devil, to deliver you.
Por. Your wife would give you little thanks for that,
If she were by, to hear you make the offer.
Gra. 1 have a wife, whom I protest I love;
1 would she were in heaven, so she could
Entreat some power to change this currish Jew.
Ner. ’Tis well you offer it behind her back ;
The wish would make else an unquiet house.
Shy. These be the Christian husbands: I have a daughter;
*Would any of the stock of Barabbas
Had been her husband, rather than a Christian! [ Aside.
We trifle time; I pray thee pursue sentence.
Por. A pound of that same merchant’s flesh is thine;
The court awards it, and the law doth give it.
Shy. Most rightful judge !
Por. And you must cut this flesh from off his breast;
The law allows it, and the court awards it.
Shy. Most learned judge !—A sentence; come, prepare.
Por. Tarry a little :—there is something else.—
This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood;
The words expressly are a pound of flesh;
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 107

 

Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh;
But, in the cutting it, if thou dost shed
One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods
Are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate
Unto the state of Venice.
Gra. O upright judge !—Mark, Jew ;—0 learned judge!
Shy. Is that the law?
Por. Thyself shall see the act;
For, as thou urgest justice, be assur’d
Thou shalt have justice more than thou desir’st.
Gra. O learned judge !—Mark, Jew ;—a learned judge!
Shy. I take this offer then ;—pay the bond thrice
And let the Christian go.
Bass. Here is the money.
Por. Soft;
The Jew shall have all justice ;—soft !—no haste ;—
He shall have nothing but the penalty.
Gra. O Jew! an upright judge, a learned judge!’
Por. Therefore, prepare thee to cut off the flesh.
Shed thou no blood; nor cut thou less nor more,
But just a pound of flesh; lf thou tak’st more,
Or less than a just pound,—be it but so much.
As makes it light, or heavy, in the substance,
Or the division of the twentieth part
Of one poor scruple; nay, if the scale do turn
But in the estimation of a hair,—
Thou diest, and all thy goods are confiscate.
Gra. A second Daniel, a Daniel, Jew!
Now, infidel, I have thee on the hip.
Por. Why doth the Jew pause? take thy forfeiture.
Shy. Give me my principal and let me go.
Bass. I have it ready for thee; here it is.
Por. He hath refused it in the open court ;
He shall have merely justice, and his bond.
Gra. A Daniel, still say I; a second Daniel !—
108 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word.

Shy. Shall I not have barely my principal ?

Por. Thou shalt have nothing but the forfeiture,
To be so taken at thy peril, Jew.

Shy. Why then the devil give him good of it ;
[ll stay no longer question.

Por. Tarry, Jew;

The law hath yet another hold on you.

It is enacted in the laws of Venice,—

If it be prov’d against an alien,

That by direct, or indirect attempts,

He seek the life of any citizen, ¢

The party ’gainst the which he doth contrive,
Shall seize one-half his goods; the other half
Comes to the privy coffer of the state;

And the offender’s life lies in the mercy

Of the Duke only, ’gainst all other voice.

In which predicament, 1 say thou stand’st :
For it appears by manifest proceeding,

That, indirectly, and directly too,

Thou hast contrived ’gainst the very life

Of the defendant; and thou hast incurr’d
The danger formerly by me rehears’d.

Down, therefore, and beg mercy of the duke.

Gra. Beg, that thou may’st have leave to hang thyself;
And yet, thy wealth being forfeit to the state,
Thou hast not left the value of a cord;

Therefore, thou must be hanged at the state’s charge.

Duke. That thou shalt see the difference of our spirit,
I pardon thee thy life before thou ask it;

For half thy wealth, it is Antonio’s;
The other half comes to the general state,
Which humbleness may drive unto a fine.
Por. Ay, for the state; not for Antonio.
Shy. Nay, take my life and all, pardon not that;
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 109

 

You take my house, when you do take the prop
That doth sustain my house; you take my life,
When you do take the means whereby I live.
Por. What mercy can you render him, Antonio?
Gra. A halter gratis; nothing else, for God’s sake.
Ant. So please my lord the duke, and all the court,
To quit the fine for one-half of his goods;
I am content, so he will let me have
The other half in use,—to render it,
Upon his death, unto the gentleman
That lately stole his daughter :
Two things provided more,—That for this favor
He presently become a Christian ;
The other, that he do record a gift,
Here in the court, of all he dies possess’d,
Unto his son Lorenzo, and his daughter.
Duke. Te shall do this; or else I do recant
Thepardon, that I late pronounced here.
Por. Art thou contented, Jew; what dost thou say?
Shy. I am content.
Por. 7 Clerk, draw a deed of gift.
Shy. 1 pray you, give me lcave to go from hence;
Iam not well; send the deed after me,
And I will sign it.
Duke. Get thee gone, but do it.
Gra. In christening thou shalt have two godfathers;
Had I been judge, thou should’st have had ten more,
To bring thee to the gallows, not the font.
[#zit Shylock.
Duke. Sir, I entreat you home with me to dinner.
Por. l humbly do desire your grace of pardon ;
I must away this night toward Padua,
And it is meet I presently set forth.
Duke. I am sorry that your leisure serves you not.
Antonio, gratify this gentleman ;
110 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

For, in my mind, you are much bound to him.
[Exeunt Duke, magnificoes, and train,

Bass. Most worthy gentleman, I and my friend
Have, by your wisdom, been this day acquitted
Of grevious penalties; in lieu whereof,

Three thousand ducats due unto the Jew,
We freely cope your courteous pains withal.

Ant. And stand indebted, over and above,
In love and scrvice to you evermore.

Por. He is well paid, that is well satisfied ;
And I, delivering you, am satisfied,

And therein do account myself well paid;
My mind was never yet more mercenary.

I pray you, know me when we meet again;
I wish you well, and so I take my leave.

Bass. Dear sir, of force I must attempt you further ;
Take some remembrance of us, as a tribute,

Not as a fee; grant me two things, I pray you,
Not to deny me, and to pardon me.

Por. You press me far, and therefore I will yield.
Give me your gloves, I’ll wear them for your sake;
And, for your love, I’ll take this ring from you ;—
Do not draw back your hand; [’ll take no more;
And you in love shall not deny me this.

Bass. This ring, good sir,—alas, it is a trifle;

I will not shame myself to give you this.

Por. I will have nothing else but only this;
And now, methinks, I have a mind to it.

Bass. There’s more depends on this than on the value.
The dearest ring in Venice will 1 give you,

And find it out by proclamation;
Only for this, I pray you, pardon me.

Por. Isee, sir, you are liberal in offers:

You taught me first to beg ; and now, methinks,
You teach me how a beggar should be answer’d.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 111

 

Bass. Good sir, this ring was given me by my wife;
And when she put it on she made me vow
That I should neither sell, nor give, nor lose it.
Por. That ’scuse serves many men to save their gifts.
An if your wife be not a mad woman,
And know how well I have deserv’d this ring,
She would not hold out enemy forever,
For giving’t to me. Well, peace be with you.
{Eaeunt Portia and Nerissa.
Ant. My lord Bassanio, let him have the ring;
Let his deservings, and my love withal,
Be valued ’gainst your wife’s commandment,
Bass. Go, Gratiano, run and overtake him,
Give him the ring; and bring him, if thou canst,
Unto Antonio’s house :—away, make haste. [Hzit Gratiano.
Come, you and I wiil thither presently ;
And in the morning early will we both
Fly toward Belmont. Come, Antonio. [Heeunt.

SCENE II.—The same. A street. Enter Portia and Nerissa.
Por. Inquire the Jew’s house out, give him this deed:
And let him sign it; we’ll away to-night,
And be a day before our husbands home:
This deed will be well welcome to Lorenzo.
Enter Gratiano.
Gra, Fair sir, you are well overtaken.
My lord, Bassanio, upon more advice,
Hath sent you here this ring; and doth entreat
Your company at dinner.
Por. That cannot be,
This ring I do accept most thankfully,
And so, I pray you, tell him. Furthermore,
I pray you, show my youth old Shylock’s house.
Gra. That willI do. —
Ner. Sir, I would speak with you—
I'll see if I can get my husband’s ring, | Zo Portia,
112 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

Which I did make him swear to keep forever.
Por. Thou may’st, I warrant. We shall have old swearing,
That they did give the rings away to men;
But we’ll outface them, and outswear them too.
Away, make haste; thou know’st where I will tarry.
Ner. Come, good sir, will you show me to this house f
The Merchant of Venice, Act 4, Scence 1, 2.

The trial scene in the Merchant of Venice has
that interest which in fiction and dramatic repre-
sentation is always awakened by a representation
of the proceedings of a court of justice. In any
case, the interest greatly depends upon fidelity of
representation, and this requires exact special
knowledge. In this respect this act is so complete
that it will not bear mutilation.

At the outset the duke notices that Antonio “is
here,” who says he is “ready.” This word is the
sole phrase to express that the party using it is
ready for trial, and such has been its use from the
time of the Year-Books down to the present day.

Berrewik. Auswer to this trespass.

Hunt. We did not come and we did not commit any tort,
ready, etc. It was answered by Mutford that B. was neither
a borough nor a vill. Lanfer—the place is knovn by that
name, ready, etc. (Y, B. Edward I., p.168, Horwood’s Ed.,
1863.)

The duke directs some one to “call into court the
Jew.” Calling the plaintiff was a proceeding in a
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 113

 

trial, and if he failed to appear he became nonsuited.
Shylock appears. In the remonstrance which the
duke addresses to him it is stated that the “pen-
alty” of the bond is the pound of flesh, and the
condition is the payment of three thousand ducats.
This appears, though less plainly, in Shylock’s
proposition to Antonio. (See No. 52.) The “pen-
alty” of a bond becomes due in case the obligor
fails to perform the condition. The duke hopes
that Shylock will forgive a “moiety” of the “prin-
cipal.” Shylock admits that he follows “a losing
suit” in claiming the “forfeit” of his bond, but
“stands for judgment.” He whets his knife to cut
the forfeiture from the “bankrupt.” He knows
the sanctity of a “seal,” and the incontrovertible
presumption which it imputes of a consideration,
and proposes to stand upon his security until “the
seal” is railed from off the bond. Bellario in his
letter calls the matter “a cause in controversy.”
Portia commands the “parties to stand forth.”
The only question for proof is the execution of the
bond by Antonio, who “confesses” it. This closes
the testimony, and Shylock’s case is proved. Por-
8
114 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE,

 

tia admits the “justice of the plea” of Shylock un-
der the strict law of Venice, but urges him to
“mitigate” it. But Shylock craves the law,

“The penalty and forfeit of my bond.”

Portia asks if Antonio is not able to “discharge”
the money, but the condition of payment not hav-
ing been performed at the day, the Jew is entitled
to his penalty, notwithstanding Bassanio makes
“tender” for him “here,” “in the court.” Shylock
demands payment “according to the tenor” of his
bond, and “tenor,” in legal definition, is exactness.
He declares that Portia’s “exposition” of the law
has been “most sound,” and she decides that the
intent and purpose of the law relate to the “pen-
alty.” Shylock refuses to have a surgeon by be-
cause it is not so “nominated in the bond.” Por-
tia, before giving judgment, asks Antonio if he has
“anything to say.” She “awards” judgment. She
tells Shylock that he shall see “the act” which
prohibits shedding blood in cutting the flesh, and
then declares that he shall have nothing but the
“penalty.” Sheasks Shylock why he does not take
his “forfeiture,” who then asks for his “principal.”
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 115

 

She then applies to him another rule “enacted in
the laws of Venice.” Antonio prays that Shylock’s
“fine” may be “quit” for one-half his goods, upon
condition of a gift by Shylock to his son and
daughter, and the “clerk” is directed to “draw a
deed of gift.” Bassanio then craves leave to give
the judge a present, “as a tribute, not as a fee,”
and Portia takes his gloves and a ring, in the man-
ner in which presents were made to judges in
Shakespeare’s time. (Bacon’s Works, Montague’s
Ed. vol. 1, p. 95.)

Shakespeare doubtless knew the story of the at-
tempt to recompense Sir Thomas More by Mrs.
Croker, in whose favor he had decided a case. She
gave him a pair of gloves, in which were forty
pounds. He told her that it were ill manners to
refuse a lady’s present, and therefore he would
keep the gloves, but he made her take back the
money. (Lives Lord Chan. vol. 2, p. 54.)

It is also to be noted that the duke appears first
as a judge, but afterwards delegates that function
to Portia. This, too, is based upon common law,
for in early times the English kings in person often
116 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

heard and determined causes, but had power to
and did delegate their judicial functions.

The whole of this exquisite act is forensic. The
author’s mind, in its employment of legal terms,
has, like the dyer’s hand, been subdued to what it
has worked in. There is not a trace of that af-
fected familiarity and unavoidable inaccuracy which
always appears when a writer is using a nomencla-
ture with which he has been obliged to cram for the
occasion. Had Shakespeare described in The Tem-
pest the incidents of a voyage,—the weighing an-
chor, the daily routine of ship-life, or the wreck,—
with the same accuracy and familiarity with which
he has here and elsewhere given the proceedings of a
court, it might well be suspected that he had sailed
with Drake, or had been one of those captains who
“shattered the Armada’s pride.” In The Tempest
he is constrained in his use of nautical terms, uses
them inaccurately and recklessly, and passes from
them as quickly as hecan. So, in his use of medi-
cal or anatomical and military terms, he betrays
considerable information, but little or no technical
knowledge. Sir Walter Scott, in regard to legal
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 117

 

matters, shows similar accuracy. If the memorials
of his life were as blank as those of Shakespeare,
we would know from the trials of Effie Deans and
Rebecca, and from the disquisitions of Mr. Barto-
line Saddletree, as certainly as we are in fact in-
formed by the abundant details of his biography
that he had studied law so thoroughly as to qualify
him for admission to the bar. We can infer from
Fielding’s use of legal terms that he was a magis-
trate. On the other hand, Dickens, who could
learn more from observation than any writer of our
time, in his attack upon the court of chancery does
not even attempt any display of technical knowl-
edge in his treatment of Jarndyce versus Jarndyce.
Besides all this, there is the noble definition of the
relations of mercy to justice which age cannot
wither nor custom stale. Here and elsewhere
Shakespeare speaks like a philosophical jurist. We
seem to hear mercy herself claiming her preroga-
tive by words from her own angel lips.

It may be observed here that the law language of
Shakespeare is that of the common law, and not of
the equity jurisprudence. The word subpana, or any
other word peculiar to the chancery, is not, so far as I
118 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

am aware, used byhim. Yet he wrote after the time
when Waltham had enjoined the Shylocks of his day
from exacting their penalties, and compelled them
to take their principal, after Wolsey had expanded
the jurisdiction of that court, and after More had
administered its benevolent justice in such cases.
He was cotemporary with Ellesmere, and with that
memorable contest between the courts of equity and
law in which the former insisted upon its power
to give relief, against the strict letter of the common
law, from penalties and forfeitures, even after judg-
ment. Had Shakespeare been a chancery lawyer
he might have caused an injunction to be served
on Shylock, and avoided the unsatisfactory and
quibbling process by which Portia rescued the mer-
chant from the knife of the Jew.

Act. (See Nos. 162, 198.)

Exposition of the Law. (See No. 232.)
Fine. (See Nos, 23, 248.)

Forfeit. (See Nos. 17, 25, 52, 259, 306.)
Mercy. (See Nos. 24, 25, 48.)

Moiety. (See Nos. 132, 259, 298.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 119

 

No. 57.

As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed
me, by will, but a poor thousand crowns, and, as thou say’st,
charged my brother, on his blessing, to breed me well; and
there begins my sadness.

As You Like It, Act 1, Scene 1.

A legacy is bequeathed; lands are devised.
(See No. 293.)

No. 58.

More villain thou.—Well, push him out of doors;

And let my officers of such a nature

Make an extent upon his house and lands:

Do this expediently, and turn him going.

As You Like It, Act 3, Scene 1.
Extent. A writ of execution against the body,

lands, or goods of the debtor. An extent in chief
was formerly a summary seizure by the sovereign
for the recovery of his own debt. (Tomlin’s Law
Dict.)

It was not final process after judgment or on
scire facias, but it was the first proceeding. It be-
came a grievous means of oppression. In this scene
the duke orders a summary extent in chief to be
made.

No. 59.
Orl. Who stays it still withal? S
Ros. With lawyers in the vacation; for they sleep between
term and term, and then they perceive not how time moves.
As You Like It, Act 3, Scene 2.

Term. (See No. 139.)
120 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

No. 60.

Orl. Then, in mine own person, I die.

Ros. No, faith, die by attorncy. The poor world is almost
six thousand years old, and in all this time there was not any
man died in his own person, videlicit, in a love-cause. .

As You Like It, Act 4, Scene 1.

Attorney. Is one appointed by another man
to act for him. (Tomlin’s Law Dict.)

In such case the principal is said to have acted
by his attorney. Where one acts for himself he is
said to do so in his own person.

Videlicit. To-wit. (omlin’s Law Dict.)
Cause. (See Nos. 18, 149, 60, 184, 200, 2772.)

No. 61.

Well, Time is the old justice that examines all such offend-

ers, and let Time try: Adieu!
As You Like It, Act 4, Scene 1.

Examine. Justices of the peace, before com-
mitting or bailing any person charged before them
with felony or misdemeanor, shall take down the
examination. (Tomlin’s Law Dict.)

(See Nos. 36, 38.)

There is no equivalent for the phrase “examine”
as applied to proceedings before justices against
persons charged with crime.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 121

 

No. 62.

And I, in going, madam, weep o’er my father’s death anew :
but I must attend his majesty’s command, to whom I am now
in ward, evermore in subjection.

All’s Well That Ends Well, Act 1, Scene 1.

In ward. Primer seisin was the right which
the king had upon the death of a tenant seized of
a knight’s fee to receive of the heir one year’s prof-
its of the lands, and to do this he had the right to
enter and possess the land. This, however, was
the case only when the heir was of full age. If
under the age of twenty-one, being a male, or of
fourteen, being a female, the lord was entitled to
the wardship of the heir, which consisted in having
the custody of the body and goods of the heir with-
out being accountable for profits until, in the case
of the female ward, she reached sixteen years of
age. (2 Bl. Comm. marg. p. 67.)

No. 63.
Sir, for a guart d’ecu he will sell the fee-simple of his sal-
vation, the inheritance of it; and cut the entail from all re-

mainders, and a perpetual succession for it perpetually.
All's Well That Ends Well, Act 4, Scene 3,

Fee-simple. (See Nos. 6, 159, 247, 312.)

Remainder. An estate limited in lands to be
enjoyed after the expiration of another particular
estate, and’ a remainder may be either for a certain
time or in fee. (Tomlin’s Law Dict.)

Entail. An estate tail is an estate of inherit-
ance to a man or woman, and his or her heirs of
8a
122 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

his or her body, or heirs of his or her body of a
particular description. (Bouv. Law Dict.)
(See Nos. 161, 237.)

If a man makes a feoffment to the use of him-
self for life, remainder to the heirs male of his
body, this is an estate tail executed in him. (1
Mod. 159.)

The effect of a fine and recovery was to bar the
issue in tail by a fiction of law adopted for the pur-
pose of destroying perpetuities of this character,
whereby all tenants in tail were enabled, by pursu-
ing the proper form, to bar the estates tail. (10
Rep. 37.)

Parolles wishes to express how completely Dumain
will sell his title to salvation, and he applies the
analogy of an estate so encumbered by limitations,
entails, and remainders that the most abstruse de-
vices of the English law were necessary to enable
the possessor to give a valid title in fee-simple.
Mistress Page (No. 6) describes the devil’s title to
Falstaff in similar law phrase. (See, also, No. 85.)

Inheritance. (See No. 127.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 123

 

No. 64.
Hor. Rise, Grumio, rise; we will compound this quarrel.
Gru. Nay, ’tis no matter, what he ’leges in Latin,—if this

be not a lawful cause for me to leave his service.
The Taming of the Shrew, Act 1, Scene 2.

*Leges in Latin. By the statute 36 Edw. III.,
and which remained in force until the time of Crom-
well, all allegations in pleading were in Latin. (3
Bl. Comm. marg. p. 818.)

Compound. (See No. 67.)

No. 65.

And do as adversaries do in law,—
Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.
The Taming of the Shrew, Act 1, Scene 2.

No. 66.
Pet. Then, tell me, if I get your daughter’s love,
What dowry shall I have with her to wife?
Bap. After my death, the one half of my lands
And, in possession, twenty thousand crowns.
Pet, And for that dowry, 1’1] assure her of
Her widowhood, be it that she survive me,
In all my lands and leases whatsoever :
Let specialties be therefore drawn between us,

That covenants may be kept on either hand.
The Taming of the Shrew, Act 2, Scene 1.

Dowry formerly meant that which a woman
brings her husband in marriage. (Bouv. Law
Dict.)

(See Nos. 15, 67, 165.)

Assure. (See No. 67.)
124 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE,

 

‘Specialties. (See No. 46.)

Covenants. The agreement or consent of two
or more by deed in writing, sealed and delivered.
(Tomlin’s Law Dict.)

(See Nos. 126, 217.)

The parties are considering a marriage settie-
ment, whereby Petruchio, in consideration of Kath-
erine’s dowry, proposes to “assure” her by “spe-
cialties,” containing “covenants” to that effect, an
equal amount in all his lands and leases, provided
she “survives” him.

Assure. (See No. 67.)

No. 67.

Content you, gentlemen; I will compound this strife:
*Tis deeds must win the prize; and he, of both,
That can assure my daughter greatest dower
Shall have Bianca’s love.
Say, signior Gremio, what can you assure her?
The Taming of the Shrew, Act 2, Scene 1.

Here isa pun on the word “deed” —deeds of land
instead of deeds of arms.

Assure. (See No. 66.)
Compound. (See No. 64.)
Dower. (See Nos. 15, 66, 69.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 125

 

No. 68.

But formy bonny Kate, she must with me.
Nay, look not big, nor stamp, nor stare, nor fret.
I will be master of what is mine own:
She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house,
My household-stuff, my field, my barn,
My horse, my ox, my ass, my any thing;
And here she stands, touch her whoever dare
I'll bring my action on the proudest he
That stops my way in Padua.
The Taming of the Shrew, Act 3, Scene 2.
No. 69.
Bap. And, therefore, if you say no more than this,
That like a father you will deal with him
And pass my daughter a sufficient dower,
The match is fully made, and all is done:
Your son shall have my daughter with consent.
Tra. I thank you, sir. Where then do you know best,
We be affied; and such assurance ta’en,
As shall with either part’s agreement stand?
The Taming of the Shrew, Act 4, Scene 4.

Affied. (See No. 226.)
Assurance. (See Nos. 99, 276.)
Dower. (See Nos. 15, 66, 67.)

No. 70.

Here packing with a witness to deceive us all.
The Taming of the Shrew, Act 5, Scene 1.
126 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE,

 

No. 71.
Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee.
And for thy maintenance: commits his body
To painful labour, both by sea and land,
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
While thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;
And craves no other tribute at thy hands,
But love, fair looks, and true obedience;
Too little payment for so great a debt.
Such duty as the subject owes the prince,
Even such, a woman oweth to her husband:
And, when she’s froward, peevish, sullen, sour,
And, not obedient to his honest will,
What is she, but a foul contending rebel,
And graceless traitor to her loving lord?
I am asham’d, that women are so simple
To offer war, where they should kneel for peace,
Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway,
When they are bound to serve, love, and obey.
Why are our bodies soft, and weak and smooth,
Unapt to toil and trouble in the world ;
But that our soft conditions, and our hearts,
Should well agree with our external parts?
Come, come, you froward and unable worms!
My mind hath been as big as one of yours,
My heart as great, my reason, haply, more,
To bandy word for word, and frown for frown;
But now, I see our lances are but straws ;
Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,
That seeming to be most, which we least are.
Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot;
And place your hands below your husband’s foot :
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready, may it do him ease.

The Taming of the Shrew, Act 5, Scene 2.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 127

 

The common-law status of a married woman, and
some of the reasons by which it vindicated the mer-
ger, in legal contemplation, of her existence into
that of her husband, are here fully exhibited.

No. 72.
Had we pursued that life,

And our weak spirits ne’er been higher rear’d
With stronger blood, we should have answered heaven
Boldly, Not Gudty: the imposition clear’d,

Hereditary ours.
The Winter's Tale, Act 1, Scene 2.

No. 73.
She’s an adulteress; I have said with whom:
More, she’s a traitor, and Camillo is
A federary with her.
The Winter's Tale, Act 2, Scene 1.

Traitor. (See No. 79.)

No. 74.
They are co-heirs;
And I had rather glib myself, than they
Should not produce a fair issue.
The Winter’s Tale, Act 2, Scene 1.
No. 75.

Our prerogative
Calls not your counsels, but our natural goodness
Imparts this.

The Winter's Tale, Act 2, Scene 1.
The Tudor and Stuart conception of the extent
of the prerogative is asserted here. It took more
than a century and a half to quell the exorbitant

pretensions of the English sovereigns in this re-
128 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

spect. The spirit of the people was unbroken by
the lordly brutality of Henry VIII., the sullen per-
versity of Mary, the dexterity of Elizabeth, the fa-
tuity of James I., the blinded obstinacy of Charles
I., the voluptuous shamelessness of Charles II., and
the ferocious bigotry of James II.

No. 76.

This child was prisoner to the womb, and is
By law and process of great nature thence
Freed and enfranchised, not a party to
The anger of the king, nor guilty of,
If any be, the trespass of the queen.
The Winter’s Tale, Act 2, Scene 2.
No. 77.

Unless he take the course that you have done,
Commit me for committing honor.
The Winter’s Tale, Act 2, Scene 3.

Commit. (See Nos. 136, 141, 146, 166.)

No. 78.
Summon a session, that we may arraign
Our most disloyal lady; for as she hath
Been publicly accused, so shall she have
A just and open trial.
The Winter’s Tale, Act 2, Scene 3.

Session. (See Nos. 79, 280, 283.)
Arraign. (See Nos. 27, 79, 239, 286.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE, 129

 

No. 79.

eon. This sessions, to our great grief, we pronounce,
Even pushes ’gainst our heart: the party tried,
The daughter of a king; our wife, and one
Of us too much belov’d. Let us be clear’d
Of being tyrannous, since we so openly
Proceed in justice, which shall have due course,
Even to the guilt, or the purgation
Produce the prisoner.
Offi. It is his highness’ pleasure that the queen
Appear in person here in court. Silence!

Enter Hermione, guarded; Paulina and Ladies, attending.

Leon. Read the indictment.

Offi. Hermione, queen to the worthy Leontes, king of Si-
cilia, thou art here accused and arraigned of high treason, in
committing adultery with Polixenes, king of Bohemia; and
conspiring with Camillo, to take away the life of our sover-
eign lord the king, thy royal husband; the pretence whereof
being by circumstances partly laid upon, thou Hermione, con-
trary to the faith and allegiance of a true subject, didst coun-
sel and aid them, for their better safety, to fly away by night.

Her. Since what I am to say, must be but that
Which contradicts my accusation, and
The testimony on my part, no other
But what comes from myself, it shall scarce boot me
To say, Not guilty: mine integrity,

Being counted falsehood, shall, as I express it,

Be so receiv’d.
The Winter’s Tale, Act 3, Scene 2.

Sessions. (See Nos. 78, 280, 283.)

Appear in person. (See No. 127.)

Arraigned. (See Nos. 27, 78, 79, 239, 286.)
9
130 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE,

 

The second species of treason is, if a man do
violate the king’s companion. * * * By the
king’s companion is meant his wife. * * * And
this is high treason in both parties, if both be con-
senting. (4 Bl. Comm. marg. p. 81.)

No. 80.
Now my liege
Tell me what blessings I have here alive,
That I should fear to die? Therefore proceed.
But yet hear this; mistake me not; no life,
I prize it not a straw, but for mine honour
Which I would free, if I shall be condemn’d
Upon surmises, all proofs sleeping else,
But what your jealousies awake, I tell you,
Tis rigour and not law.
The Winter's Tale, Act 3, Scene 3.
No. 81.

He hath ribbons of all the colors i? the rainbow; points
more than all the lawyers in Bohemia can learnedly handle.
The Winter's Tale, Act 4, Scene 4.

Points in dress were tagged lace, used to fasten
hose to the doublet.

Fal. Their points being broken—
Poins, Down fell their hose.

The legal meaning of this word is, of course,
known to every one. The play upon the word here
illustrates a habit in Shakespeare of yielding to the
suggestiveness of a common word, and turning a
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 131

 

phrase in order to present it again in its legal sig-
nification.

No. 82.

Flo. O, hear me breathe my life
Before this ancient sir, who, it should seem,

Hath sometime lov’d! I take thy hand, this hand,
As soft as dove’s down, and as white as it,

Or Ethiopian’s tooth, or the fann’d snow,

That’s bolted by the northern blasts twice o’er.

Pol. What follows this?

How prettily the young swain seems to wash
The hand, was fair before! I have put you out:
But to your protestation; let me hear

What you profess.

Flo. Do, and be witness to’t.

Pol. And this my neighbor toot ,

Flo. And he, and more
Than he, and men, the earth, the heavens, and all:
That, were I crown’d the most imperial monarch,
Thereof most worthy, were I the fairest youth
That ever made eye swerve, had force, and knowledge,
More than was ever man’s, I would not prize them
Without her love: for her employ them all:
Commend them, and condemn them, to her service,
Or to their own perdition.

Pol. Fairly offer’d.

Cam. This shows a sound affection.

Shep. - But, my daughter,
Say you the like to him?

Per. I cannot speak

So well, nothing so well; no, nor mean better:
By the pattern of mine own thoughts I cut out
The purity of his.

Shep. Take hands, a bargain;
132 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE,

 

And, friends unknown, you shall bear witness to’t:
I give my daughter to him, and will make
Her portion equal his.

Flo. O, that must be
I’ the virtue of your daughter: one being dead,
I shall have more than you can dream of yet;
Enough then for your wonder: But, come on,
Contract us ’fore these witnesses.

Shep. Come, your hand;

And, daughter, yours.
The Winter's Tale, Act 4, Scene 4.

I have heard lawyers say a contract in a chamber,
Per verba presenti, is absolute marriage.

Duchess of Mavi.
(See Nos. 14, 15.)
No. 83.
— we'll bar thee from succession.
The Winter's Tale, Act 4, Scene 3.
No. 84.

With her I liv’d in joy; our wealth increas’d,
By prosperous voyages I often made
To Epidamnun, till my factor’s death.
And the great care of goods at random left,
Drew me from kind embracement of my spouse.
The Comedy of Errors, Act 1, Scene 1.

Factor. An agent employed to sell goods con-
signed or delivered to him. (Bouv. Law Dict.)

There is no inaccuracy here, nor use of any but
the exact word. “Agent” would be too general,
and the “broker” has no possession of goods. See
the use of the word “brokers,” in No. 265, as “im-

plorators of unholy suits,” etc.
(See No. 171.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE, 133

 

Wo. 85.

Dro. 8. There’s no time for a man to recover his hair, that
grows bald by nature.

Ant. §. May he not do it by fine and recovery ?

Dro. 8. Yes, to pay a fine for a peruke, and recover the

lost hair of another man.
The Comedy of Errors, Act 2, Scene 2.

Fine and recovery. (See Nos. 6, 63, 276.)

This is a lawyer’s pun, and would never have
occurred to any one but a lawyer. There is also
here a very abstruse quibble in the use of the words
“recover the lost hair of another man,” for the ef-
fect of a fine and recovery was to bar not only the
heirs upon whom the lands were entailed, but all
the world.

No. 86.
Sec. Mer. Therefore make present satisfaction, or I'll
Attach you by this officer.

* * * * *
Well, officer, arrest him at my suit.
* * * * ¥

Ang. Either consent to pay the sum for me,
Or I attach you by this officer.
Here is thy fee; arrest him, officer.
The Comedy of Errors, Act 4, Scene 1.

“Present satisfaction” is demanded, or “attach-
ment by an officer” will follow; the officer is or-
dered to “arrest him” at “my suit,” and the offi-
cer’s “fee” is tendered.
134 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

Arrest. (See Nos. 11, 17, 87, 187, 188, 277a,
295, 300.

Attach. (See Nos. 254, 257, 280.)

No. 87.

Adr. Why, man, what is the matter?
Dro. 8. I do not know the matter: he is’rested on the case.
Adr. What, is he arrested? tell me at whose suit.
Dro. 8. I know not at whose suit he is arrested well;
But he’s in a suit of buff, which ’rested him, that can I tell:
Will you send him, mistress, redemption? the money in his

[desk?
The Comedy of Errors, Act 4, Scene 2.

The word “matter” has always meant in legal
proceedings the question in controversy.

“Arrested on the case” signifies that Antipholus
has been arrested in a peculiar form of action called
“case,” which was a universal remedy for all wrongs
or injuries unaccompanied by force. Where any
special or consequential damage arose which could
not be foreseen, the party injured was allowed, both
by common law and the statute of Westm. 2, c. 24,
to bring a special action on his own case by a writ
framed according to the peculiar circumstances of
his own particular grievance. (3 Bl. Comm. marg.
pp. 122-8.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 135

 

The declaration stated that Henry, Earl of De Loraine, was
summoned to answer William Hunter in a plea of trespass on
the case.

Demurrer, that it is alleged by the declaration that the said
earl hath been summoned, whereas he ought to have been at-
tached to answer, etc.

Lord Mansfield. The declaration is bad. In an action on
the case the first process is an attachment. (Hunter v. Earl
of De Loraine, 2 Chitty, (18 ng. Com. Law,) 825.)

Matter. (See Nos. 56, 158.)

Arrested. (See Nos. 11, 17, 86, 137, 138,
277a, 295, 300.)

No. 88.

Thou hast suborned the goldsmith to arrest me.
The Comedy of Errors, Act 4, Scene 4.

Suborned. (See Nos. 95, 286, 304.)

No. 89.
He is my prisoner; if I let him go,
The debt he owes will be requir’d of me.
The Comedy of Errors, Act 4, Scene 4.
This is the law of the sheriff’s liability in case
the prisoner whom he has arrested for debt escapes.

(3 Bl. Comm. marg. p. 290.)

No. 90.
Ross. And, for an earnest of a greater honour,
He bade me, from him, call thee thane of Cawdor:
In which addition, hail, most worthy thane!
For it is thine.
* * * * * * *
186 THE LAW IN SITAKESPEARE.

 

Mach. Why hath it given me earnest of success,

Commencing ina truth? [am thane of Cawdor.
Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 3.

Earnest. Money paid in part of a large sum.
A part of the goods delivered on any contract.
(Tomlin’s Law Dict.)

(See No. 148.)

Addition. The title or estate and place of
abode given to a man besides his name. (Tomlin’s
Law Dict.)

(See No. 238.)

No. 91.
Is execution done on Cawdor? Are not
Those in commission yet return’d?
Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 4.

Execution done. The court of king’s bench
may command execution to be done, etc. (2 Hale’s
Hist. 409.)

(See Nos. 22, 231.)

Commission. The warrant of letters patent
which all persons exercising jurisdiction, either or-
dinary or extraordinary, have to authorize them to
hear or determine any cause or action. (Tomlin’s
Law Dict.)

Duncan, in scene 2, had said to Ross concerning
the thane of Cawdor:

Go pronounce his death,
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 137

 

No. 92.
But, in these cases,

We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poison’d chalice
To our own lips; he’s here in double trust.

Macbeth, Act 1, Scene7.
Cases. (See No. 276.)

No. 93.
Macb. If you shall cleave to my consent, wlien ’tis,
It shall make. honour for you.
Ban. So I lose none,

In seeking to augment it, but still keep

My bosom franchis’d and allegiance clear,

I shall be counseled.

Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 1.

No. 94.

Lady M. Who wasit that thuscried ? Why, worthy thane,
You do unbend your noble strength, to think
So brainsickly of things. Go, get some water,
And wash this filthy witness from your hand.
Why did you bring these daggers from the place?
They must lie there: go, carry them; and smear
The sleepy grooms with blood.

Macb. [Pll go no more:
I am afraid to think what I have done;
Look on’t again, I dare not.

Lady M. Infirm of purpose!
Give me the daggers: The sleeping and the dead,
Are but as pictures: ’tis the eye of childhood,
That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed,
Dll gild the faces of the grooms withal,
For it must seem their guilt.

9a

Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 2.
1388 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

= ‘6

 

No. 95.
They were suborned.
Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 4,

Suborn. To procure privately; to procure by
secret collusion. (Johnson.)

Its general legal meaning is to procure another
to commit a crime. In practical use, however, it
means to procure another to take such a false oath
as constitutes perjury. (4 Bl. Comm. Marg. p.

187.)
(See Nos. 88, 286, 304.)

No. 96.
He is already named, and gone to Scone

To be invested.
Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 4.

Invested. Investiture—the giving possession;
investitura est alicujus in suum jus introductio.

Investitures in their original rise were probably
intended to demonstrate in conquered countries the
actual possession of the lord. (Tomlin’s Law Dict.)

To place in possession of a rank or office. (John-
son.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 139

 

No. 97.

For Banquo’s issue have I filed my mind.
Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 1.

Issue. All persons who have descended from
acommon ancestor. (Bouv. Law Dict.)
(See Nos. 74, 99, 100, 102, 237.)

No. 98.
And with thy bloody and invisible hand
Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond.
Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 2.
No. 99.
Then live, Macduff; What need I fear of thee?
But yet I'll make assurance double sure,
And take a bond of fate: thou shalt not live;
That I may tell pale-hearted fear, it lies,
And sleep in spite of thunder. What is this,
That rises like the issue of a king;
And wears upon his baby brow the round

And top of sovereignty ?
Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 1.

Issue. (See Nos. 74, 97, 100, 102, 237.)
Assurance. (See Nos. 69, 276.)
Bond. (See Nos. 40, 51, 52, 56, 98, 131, 306.)

No. 100.

Macb. That will never be;
Who can impress the forest, bid the tree
Unfix his earth-bound root? sweet bodements! good!
Rebellion’s head, rise never, till the wood
Of Birnam rise, and our high-placed Macbeth
Shall live the lease of nature, pay his breath
140 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE,

 

To time, and mortal custom. Yet my heart
Throbs to know one thing; tell me, if your art
Can tell so much, shall Banquo’s issue ever
Reign in this kingdom ?

Macbeth, Act 4, Seene 1.
Impress. To force into service. (Johnson.)
‘Macbeth hopes to “live the lease of nature” and
“pay his breath to time and mortal custom.”
Issue. (See Nos. 74, 97, 99, 102, 237.)

Lease. (See Nos. 296, 303, 308.)

No. 101.

Thy title is affeer’d.
Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 3.

To Affeere. A law term signifying to con-
firm. (Johnson.)

No. 102.

Since that the truest issue of thy throne,
By his own interdiction, stands accursed.
Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 3.

Issue. (See Nos. 74, 97, 99, 100, 237.)

No. 103.

 

here abjure
The taints and blames I laid upon myself.
Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 3.

Abjure. A forswearing or renouncing by oath.
(Lomlin’s Law Dict.)
(See No. 40.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 141

 

No. 104.
What concern they

The general cause? or is it a fee-grief,

Due to some single breast ?
Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 3.

Fee. Here used in the sense of individual prop-
erty in the grief.

No. 105.
Neither to you, nor any one, having no witness to confirm

my specch.
Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1.

No. 106.

If this, which he avouches, does appear,
There is no flying hence, nor tarrying here.
Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5.

Avouch. Evidence; testimony. (Johnson.)
(See Nos. 40, 258.)

No. 107.

Essex. My liege, here is the strangest controversy,
Come from the country to be judged by you,
That e’er I heard: shall I produce the men?

K. John, Let them approach. [42it Sheriff.
Our abbies, and our priories, shall pay
This expedition’s charge.
Re-enter. Sheriff, with Robert Faulconbridge, and Philip, his

bastard brother.
—What men are you?

Bast. Your faithful subject I, a gentleman,
Born in Northamptonshire, and eldest son,
As I suppose, to Robert Faulconbridge;
A soldier, by the honour-giving hand
142 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE,

 

Of Cceur-de-lion knighted in the field.

K. John. What art thou?

Rod. The son and heir to that same Faulconbridge.

K. John. Is that the elder, and art thou the heir?
You came not of one mother then, it seems.

Bast. Most certain of one mother, mighty king ;
That is well known; and, as I think, one father:
But, for the certain knowledge of that truth,

I put you o’er to heaven, and to my mother;
Of that I doubt, as all men’s children may.

Eli, Out on thee, rude man! thou dost shame thy mother,
And wound her honour with this diffidence.

Bast. I, madam? no, I have no reason for it;

That is my brother’s plea, and none of mine;

The whieh if he can prove, ’a pops me out

At least from fair five hundred pound a year:
Heaven guard my mother’s honour, and my land!

K. John, A good blunt fellow. Why, being younger born,
Doth he lay claim to thine inheritance?

Bast. I know not why, except to get the land,

But once he slander’d me with bastardy :

But whether I be as true begot, or no,

That still 1 lay upon my mother’s head;

But, that 1 am as well begot, my liege,

(Fair fall the bones that took the pains for me!)
Compare our faces, and be judge yourself.

If old sir Robert did beget us both,

And were our father, and this son like him,

O old sir Robert, father, on my knee

I give heaven thanks, I was not like to thee.

XK. John. Why, what a madcap hath heaven lent us here!

&li. We hath a trick of Coeur-de-lion’s face,
The accent of his tongue affecteth him:

Do you not read some tokens of my son
In the large composition of this man?
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 143

 

KE. John. Mine eye hath well examined his parts,
And finds them perfect Richard. Sirrah, speak,
What doth move you to claim your brother’s land?

Bast. Because he hath a half-face, like my father ;
With that half-face would he have all my land:

A half-fae’d groat five hundred pound a year!

Rob. My gracious liege, when that my father liv’d,
Your brother did employ my father much—

Bast. Well, sir, by this you cannot get my land;
Your tale must be, how he employ’d my mother.

Rob. And once dispatch’d him in an embassy
To Germany, there, with the emperor,

To treat of high affairs touching that time:
The advantage of his absence took the king,
And in the mean time sojourn’d at my father’s;
Where how he did prevail, I shame to speak:
But truth is truth; large lengths of seas and shores
Between my father and my mother lay,

As I have heard my father speak himself,
When this same lusty gentleman was got.
Upon his death- bed he by will bequeath’d

His lands to me, and took it, on his death,
That this, my mother’s son, was none of his;
And, if he were, he came into the world

Full fourteen weeks before the course of time.
Then, good my liege, let me have what is mine,
My father’s land, as was my father’s will.

&. John. Sirrah, your brother is legitimate ;
Your father’s wife did, after wedlock, bear him:
And, if she did play false, the fault was hers;
Which fault lies on the hazards of all husbands
That marry wives. Tell me, how if my brother,
Who, as you say, took pains to get this son,

Had of your father claim’d this son for his?
In sooth, good friend, your father might have kept
144 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE,

 

This calf, bred from his cow, from all the world;
In sooth, he might: then, if he were my brother’s,
My brother might not claim him; nor your father,
Being none of his, refuse him: This concludes,—
My mother’s son did get your father’s heir ;
Your father’s heir must have your father’s land.

Rod. Shall then my father’s will be of no force,
To dispossess that child which is not his?

Bast. Of no more force to dispossess me, sir,
Than was his will to get me, as I think,

King John, Act 1, Scene 1.

The trial before King John between the brothers
Robert and Philip Faulconbridge, resulted in a de-
cision based upon the ancient common-law pre-
sumption in cases of legitimacy. A child born after
the marriage, and during the husband’s life, was
presumed to be legitimate. It was formerly the
established doctrine that this presumption in favor
of legitimacy could not be rebutted, unless the hus-
band was absent beyond the four seas during the
whole period of the wife’s pregnancy. So, if a
man be within the four seas and his wife hath a
child, the law presumeth that it is the child of the
husband; and against this presumption the law will
admit no proof. (Co. Litt. 878a; 1 Phill. Ev. marg.
p.630; 1 Lord Raym. 895; I Salk. 121. See, also,
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE, 145

 

Eirshine’s Speech in the Banbury Peerage Case, 4
Erskine’s Works, 374.)

The case as reported by Shakespeare is this:
Philip states to the king that he supposes himself
to be the eldest son, and the heir of Sir Robert, to
which his younger brother, Robert, answers that he
is the son and heir, upon the claim that the elder
brother, though born in wedlock, was begotten by
Richard Coeur de Lion, is consequently a bastard,
and cannot, therefore, inherit.

The mother of King Richard, who is present at
trial, sees in Philip the “trick of Coeur de Lion’s
face,” recognizes his paternity in the accent of his
tongue, and reads some tokens of her son in the
“large compositionof the man.” The king examines
the bastard, and finds him “perfect Richard.” The
brother Robert urges, as evidence, that King Richard
had at one time sent Sir Robert, the father, on an
embassy to Germany, and that the king sojourned
at his father’s house in his absence, and overcame
the chastity of his mother. He urges that large
lengths of seas and shores between his father and
his mother lay, and that his father himself had de-

clared Philip illegitimate. He also states that Philip
10
146 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE,

 

came into the world full fourteen weeks before the
course of time,—viz., that Sir Robert’s return from
Germany would show from its date that Philip was
begotten fourteen weeks prior thereto, upon which
facts he claimed the inheritance. The king decides
in favor of the legitimacy of Philip, upon the ground
that his mother bore him after wedlock. Sir Robert
was not absent in Germany during the whole period
of the wife’s pregnancy, and for that reason the
presumption of the legitimacy as it was at that time
became conclusive. It is also to be remarked that
the king pays no attention to the declarations said
to have been made by Sir Robert denying his pa-
ternity of Philip. In this he rules correctly, for
nothing is better settled than that the declarations
of father or mother are inadmissible to bastardize
their children.

This grotesque affront to common sense has long
since ceased to be law. Evidence is admissible in
our day to attack the legitimacy of a child even
where the father was infra quatuor maribus during
the whole period from conception to birth. The
testimony, however, must be of the most cogent
character, and leave no room for doubt.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE, 147

 

Some of the ancient decisions on this subject
read like the wisdom of “crowner’s ’quest law.” In
Done and Egerton’s Case, 1 Rol. Abr. 858, Hobart, J.,
said that “if the husband be castrated, so that it is
apparent that he could not by any possibility beget
issue, and divers years afterwards his wife has
issue, it should be lawful.” And all the judges con-
curred in the opinion that “if a married woman has
issue in adultery, still if the husband be able to
beget issue, and is within the four seas, it is not a
bastard.”

The most striking decision on this topic of seri-
ous nonsense is found in Jenkins’ Centuries, c. 10,
pl. 18: “If the husband be in Ireland for a year,
and the wife in England during that time has issue,
it isa bastard; but it seems otherwise now for Scot-
land, both being under one king.” This is not a
reflection on the virility of residents in Ireland; it
is a sapient distinction based upon the fact that at
that time England and Scotland were one kingdom,
and therefore the husband was within the realm,
whereas Ireland was not then incorporated into the
kingdom,
148 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

No. 108.

Upon thy cheek lay I this zealous kiss,
As seal to this indenture of my love.
King John, Act 2, Scene 1.

Seal. Wax impressed with a device and at-
tached to deeds. (Tomlin’s Law Dict.)

(See Nos. 37, 52, 56, 108, 126, 158, 204, 207, 256, 274, 288.)

Indenture. Aninstrument in writing contain-
ing a conveyance or contract between two or more
persons. (Yomlin’s Law Dict.)

(See Nos. 132, 233, 236, 276.)

No. 109.
In brief, a braver choice of dauntless spirits,
Than now the English bottoms have waft o’er,
Did never float upon the swelling tide.
King John, Act 2, Scene 1.

Bottoms. (See No. 49.)

No. 110.
K. John. From whom hast thou this great commission,
To draw my answer from thy articles? [France,

K. Phi. From that supernal judge, that stirs good thoughts
In any breast of strong authority,
To look into the blots and stains of right.
That judge hath made me guardian to this boy:
Under whose warrant, I impeach thy wrong,
And by whose help I mean to chastise it.
K. Join, Alack, thou dost usurp authority.
K. Phi. Excuse; it is to beat usurping down. a
King John, Act 2, Scene 1.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 149

 

Impeach. To accuse and prosecute for felony
or treason. (Tomlin’s Law Dict.)

Warrant. (See Nos. 4, 114.)

No. 111.

Const. Now shame upon you, whether she does or no!
His grandam’s wrongs, and not his mother’s shames,
Draw those heaven-moving pearls from his poor eyes,
Which heaven shall take in nature of a fee;

Ay, with these crystal beads heaven shall be brib’d
To do him justice, and revenge on you.

Zl. Thou monstrous slanderer of heaven and earth!

Const. Thou monstrous injurer of heaven and earth!
Call not me slanderer; thou, and thine, usurp
The dominations, royalties, and rights,

Of this oppressed boy: This is thy eldest son’s son,
Infortunate in nothing but in thee;
Thy sins are visited in this poor child;
The canon of the law is Jaid on him,
Being but the second generation
Removed from thy sin-conceiving womb.
King John, Act 2, Scene 1.

Fee. Certain perquisities allowed to officers in
the administration of justice as a recompense for
their labor and trouble. (Tomlin’s Law Dict.)

Canon. A law or ordinance of the church.

This passage evidently refers to the Scripture de-
nunciation of penalties for the sins of fathers upon
the children unto the third and fourth generation.
150 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

This being a spiritual censure, Shakespeare uses the

word “canon.”
(See No. 263.)

No. 112.
1 Cit. In brief, we are the king of England’s subjects;
For him, and in his right, we hold this town.
&. John. Acknowledge then the king, and let me in.
1 Cit. That can we not; but he that proves the king,
To him will we prove loyal; till that time,
Have we ramm’d up our gates against the world.
XK. John. Doth not the crown of England prove the king?
And, if not that, I bring you witnesses,
Twice fifteen thousand hearts of England’s breed,—
Bast. Bastards, and else.
K. John. To verify our title with their lives.
&. Phi. As many, and as well-born bloods as those,—
Bast. Some bastards too.
&. Phi. Stand in his face, to contradict his claim.
1 Git. Till you compound whose right is worthiest,
We, for the worthiest, hold the right from beth.
King John, Act 2, Scene 1.

In this instance King John asserts the law of a
sovereign de facto, as afterwards declared by the
statute of Henry VII. The king says:

Doth not the crown of England prove the king?

“Tf there be a king regnant in possession of the
crown, though he be but rex de facto and not de
jure, yet he is seignior le roy; and if another hath
right, if he be out of possession, he is not within
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 151

 

the meaning of the statute 11 Henry VII. c. 1.”
8 Inst. 7. See, also, 1 Hallam’s Const. Hist. p. 25.

It was enacted by the statute of 4 Henry VIL.,
c. 24, that “no person that did assist in arms or
otherwise the king, for the time being, should after-
wards be impeached therefor, or attainted either
by the course of law or by parliament; but if any
such attainder did happen to be made, it should
be void and of none effect.”

No. 113.

Drawn in the flattering table of her eye!
Hang’d in the frowning wrinkle of her brow!
And quarter’d in her heart! he doth espy
Himself love’s traitor: this is pity now,
That hang’d, and drawn, and quarter’d, there should be,
In such a love, so vile a lout as he.
King John, Act 2, Scene 1.

Drawn, hanged, and quartered. Punishment for
treason.

No. 114.

Pand. There’s law and warrant, lady, for my curse.

Const. And for mine too; when law can do no right,
Let it be lawful, that law bar no wrong:
Law cannot give my child his kingdom here,
For he, that holds his kingdom, holds the law:
Therefore, since law itself is perfect wrong,
How can the law forbid my tongue to curse?

King John, Act3, Scene 1,
152 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

Bar. (See Nos. 143, 144.)
Warrant. (See Nos. 4, 110.)

No. 115. 9
K. Rich. Old John of Gaunt, time-honour’d Lancaster,
Hast thou, according to thy oath and band,
Brought hither Henry Hereford thy bold son,
Here to make good the boisterous late appeal,
Which then our leisure would not let us hear,
Against the duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray?
Gaunt. I have, my liege.
K. Rich. Tell me moreover, hast thou sounded him,
If he appeal the duke on ancient malice;
Or worthily as a good subject should,
On some known ground of treachery in him?
Gaunt. As near as I could sift him on that argument,
On some apparent danger seen in him,
Aim’d at your highness, no inveterate malice.
K. Rich. Then call them to our presence; face to face,
And frowning brow to brow, ourselves will hear

The accuser, and the accused, freely speak.
Richard II., Act 1, Scene 1.

Make good. Make: to perform or execute,—
as, to make his law, is to perform that law which
he has formerly bound himself to. (Yomlin’s Law
Dict.)

No. 116.

K. Rich. We thank you both: yet one but flatters us,
As well appeareth by the cause you come;
Namely, to appeal each other of high treason.
Cousin of Hereford, what dost thou object
Against the duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray?
* * * * * * *
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 153

 

Boling. Come I appellant to this princely presence,
* * * * * * *
Disclaiming here the kindred of a king.
Richard IT, Act 1, Scene 1.

Appeal has two senses: (1) The removal of a
cause from an inferior court or judge to a superior.
(2) When spoken of as a criminal prosecution, it
denotes an accusation by a private subject against
another for some heinous crime. It was anciently
permitted to appeal another of high treason.
(Tomlin’s Law Dict.)

Object. To propose as a charge criminal.
(Johnson.)

Appellant. The party by whom an appeal is
made. (Lomlin’s Law Dict.)
(See Nos. 120, 130.)

No. 117.

K. Rich. What doth our cousin lay to Mowbray’s charge?
It must be great, that can inherit us
So much as of a thought of ill in him,
Richard II, Act 1, Scene 1.
No. 118.

Boling. Further I say, and further will maintain
Upon his bad life, to make all this good.
Richard I., Act 1, Scene 1,

Maintain. (See No. 130.)

Wo. 119.

K. Rich. There shall your swords and lances arbitrate

The swelling difference of your settled hate;
10a
154 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

Since we cannot atone you, we shall see
Justice design the victor’s chivalry.
Lord marshal, command our officers at arms
Be ready to direct these home alarms.
Richard IT., Act 1, Scene 1.
No. 120.

K. Rich. Ask him his name: and orderly proceed
To swear him in the justice of his cause.
* * * * * *
And formally, according to our law,
Depose him in the justice of his cause.
* * * * * *
Mar. The appellant in all duty greets your highness.
Richard Il., Act 1, Scene 3.

Appellant. (See Nos. 116, 130.)
Depose. (See No. 163.)

No. 121.

1 Her. Harry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby,
Stands here for God, his sovereign, and himself,
On pain to be found false and recreant,

To prove the duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray,
A traitor to his God, his king, and him,
And dares him to set forward to the fight.

2 Her. Here standeth Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk,

On pain to be found false and recreant,
Both to defend himself, and to approve
Henry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby,
To God, his sovereign, and to him, disloyal;
Courageously, and with a free desire,
Attending but the signal to begin.

* % * * * *

K. Rich. Thy son is banish’d upon good advice,
Whereto thy tongue a party-verdict gave ;
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE, 155

 

Why at our justice seem’st thou then to lower?
* ¥ * * * *
Gaunt. You urg’d me as a judge; butI had rather,
You would have bid me argue like a father :—
Richard IT., Act 1, Scene 3.

Party-verdict. “The verdict in a criminal
case is either general * * * or partial as to a
part of the charge, as where the jury convict the
defendant on one or more counts of the indict-
ment and acquit him of the residue, or convict him
on one part of a divisible count and acquit him as
to the residue.” (Archb. Cr. Pl. & Ev. 146, 147.)

It is implied that John of Gaunt, though he had
endeavored to extenuate the offences of his son,
had admitted his guilt in some respects. He says:

A partial slander sought I to avoid,
And in the sentence my own life destroyed.

The trial by battle was at common law a judicial
mode of determining both civil and criminal cases.
A woman could take this appeal by a champion.
It could be demanded in criminal cases, at the elec-
tion of the appellee, who did so by pleading not
guilty, throwing down his glove, and declaring
himself ready to make good the appeal by his body.
The appellant took up the glove and replied that
he was ready to make good the appeal, body for
body. Each party, holding the other by the hand,
156 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

took an oath,—the accused, that he was not guilty
of the crime charged; the accuser, that the ac-
cused was perjured. Oaths were also taken against
the employment of sorcery, and the battle was
waged in a piece of ground sixty feet square, in-
closed with lists, on one side of which a court was
erected for the judges. When the court was in
session proclamation was made, and the battle be-
gan. It was waged from sunrise until the stars
appeared in the evening. If the appellant cried
craven, or the appellee killed him or maintained
the fight for that time, the appellee was thereby
- acquitted. If the appellee was so far vanquished
that he could not or would not fight any longer,
he was adjudged to be hanged immediately, and in
that case, or if he was killed, his blood was at-
tainted. (8 Bl. Comm. marg. p. 887: 4 Bl. Comm.
marg. p. 346.)

There was a trial by battle in 1571. (Dyer, p.
801.)

In 1631 Lord Rea impeached David Ramsay of
treason, and offered battle in proof. A commis-
sion was appointed, but the king interposed.

In 1818 one Abraham Thornton was tried and
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE, 157

 

acquitted upon a capital charge. The brother of
the person upon whom the offense was alleged to
have been committed appealed, and the following
proceedings were had in the court.of King’s Bench:
The appellee being brought into court and placed
at the bar, (the appellant being also in court,) the
count was read over to him, and he was called
upon to plead. He pleaded as follows: “Not
guilty; and I am ready to defend the same by
my body.” And thereupon, taking his glove off,
he threw it upon the floor of the court. The right
of battle was most elaborately argued and was
allowed by the court. The appellant declined to
accept the challenge, and Thornton was discharged.
(Ashford v. Thornton, 1 Barn. ¢ Ald. 405.) The
reappearance of this buried specter of the law, clad
in complete steel, after a sepulture of nearly two
hundred years, caused the abrogation of this right
by statute 59 Geo. IIT. ¢. 46.

In the case in Shakespeare each party “appeals”
the other of treason. Bolingbroke throws “down
his gage” and Norfolk takes it up and hurls down
his gage. The lists and throne are set out on
Gosford green. The parties are sworn, but the
158 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

king by throwing down his warder interposes and
forbids the fight.

Walter Scott, lawyer as he was, and learned,
has not described with more technical accuracy the
trial of Rebecca by the wager of battle.

No. 122.
As were our England in reversion his,

And he our subjects’ next degree in hope.
Richard IT., Act 1, Scene 4.

Reversion. The residue of an estate left in
the grantor to commence in possession after the
determination of some particular estate granted
out by him. (# Bl. Comm. marg. p. 175.)

(See No. 192.)

Degree. The distance between those who are
allied by blood; the relations descending from a
common ancestor. (Bouv. Law Dict.)

No. 123.

 

this dear, dear land
* * * * *
Is now leased out * * ¥
Like to a tenement or pelting farm.
Richard IT., Act 2, Scene 1.

Tenement. More largely it comprehends not
only houses but all corporeal inheritances which
are holden of another. (Tomlin’s Law Dict.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 159

 

No. 124.
York. Now, afore God (God forbid, I say true!)
If you do wrongfully seize Hereford’s rights,
Call in the letters-patent that he hath
By his attorneys-general to sue
His livery, and deny his offer’d homage,
* * * * * * *
K. Rich. Think what you will; we seize into our hands
His plate, his goods, his money, and his lands.
x * ¥ * * ¥ *
Willo. And daily new exactions are devised
As blanks, benevolences.

* * * * * * *
Ross. The earl of Wiltshire hath the realm in farm.
* * * * ¥ * *

North. Redeem from broking pawn the blemish’d crown.
Richard Ll., Act 2, Scene 1.

Sue his livery. When the male heir arrived
at the age of twenty-one or the heir female to the
age of sixteen, they might sue out their livery or
ousterlemain ; that is, the delivery of their lands out
of their guardian’s hands. (2 Bl. Comm. marg.
p. 68.)

(See Nos. 127, 135.)

Homage. All lands were held mediately or
immediately of the king; the great nobles usually
held theirs’ immediately. The lord paramount,
whether the king, or others who held under him,
and under whom others held by subinfeudation, not
only bound the tenants, upon their taking posses-
sion or on their investiture, to certain services, but
160 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

also took a submission from them by an oath to be
true to the lord, and this oath was called homage.
(See Nos. 1, 273.)

Letters-patent. Are writings of the king,
sealed, whereby a person was enabled to do or en-
joy that which otherwise he could not. (T'omlin’s
Law Dict.)

(See Nos. 127, 185.)

Livery and homage were in general necessarily
personal acts, but in this case it seems that Here-
ford held letters-patent from the king empowering
him to perform them by attorneys. “Formerly
every suitor was obliged to appear in person to
prosecute or defend his suit, (according to the old
Gothic constitutions,) unless by special license under
the king’s letters-patent.” (8 Bl. Comm. marg. p.
25.)

Exaction. A wrong done by an officer or one
in pretended authority by taking a reward or fee
for that which the law allows not. (Tomlin’s Law
Dict.)

Blank. A mode of extortion by which blank
papers were given to the agents of the crown to be
filled up as they pleased, to authorize such demands
as they chose to make.

Benevolences. Contributions apparently vol-
untary, but in fact extorted from rich subjects.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 161

 

They became an intolerable grievance under Ed-
ward IV., were abolished under Richard III., but
were renewed with great rapacity by Henry VII.
(1 Hallam’s Const. Hist. p. 29.)

In farm. The usual words of operation in a
lease are “demise, grant, and to farm let,” so that a
farmer was one who held his lands upon payment
ofarent. (2 Bl. Camm. marg. p. 317.)

Pawn. A bailment of personal property on
security for some debt or engagement. (Story,
Bailments, § 286.)

No. 125.

The banished Bolingbroke repeals himself.
Richard II., Act 2, Scene 2.

Repeals. (See Nos. 3, 130, 205.)

No. 126.
My heart this covenant makes, my hand thus seals it.
Richard IL, Act 2, Scene 3°

Covenant. The agreement of two or more by
deed in writing, sealed and delivered. (Yomlin’s
Law Dict.)

(See Nos. 66, 217.)

Seals. (See Nos. 37, 52, 56, 108, 158, 204,
207, 256, 274, 288.)

No. 127.

Boling. My gracious uncle, let me know my fault;
On what condition stands it, and wherein?
162 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE,

 

York. Even in condition of the worst degree,
In gross rebellion, and detested treason :
Thou art a banished man, and here art come,
Before the expiration of thy time, :
In braving arms against thy sovereign.

Boling. As I was banish’d, I was banish’d Hereford ;
But as Icomé, I come for Lancaster.
And, noble uncle, I beseech your grace,
Look on my wrongs with an indifferent eye:
You are my father, for, methinks, in you
I see old Gaunt alive; O, then, my father!
Will you permit that I shall stand condemn’d
A wandering vagabond; my rights and royalties
Pluck’d from my arms perforce, and given away
To upstart unthrifts? Wherefore was I born?
If that my cousin king be king of England,
It must be granted, I am: duke of Lancaster.
You have ason, Aumerle, my noble kinsman;
Had you first died, and he been thus trod down,
He should have found his uncle Gaunt a father,
To rouse his wrongs, and chase them to the bay.
Tam denied to sue my livery here,
And yet my letters-patent give me leave:
My father’s goods are all distrain’d, and sold;
And these, and all, are all amiss employ’d.
What would you have me do? Lama subject,
And challenge law: attorneys are denied me;
And therefore personally 1 lay my claim

To my inheritance of free descent.
Richard II, Act 2, Scene 3.

Distrain. Totake and keep any personal chat-
tel in custody. (Bouv. Law Dict.)

Challenge. To claim as due. (Johnson.)
Sue my livery. (See Nos. 124, 135.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 163

 

Letters-patent. (See Nos. 124, 185.)
Attorneys. (See Nos. 172, 178, 287.)
Inheritance. (See No. 63.)

No. 128.

Let’s choose executors, and talk of wills:
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath,
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Richard II., Act 3, Scene 2.

Wills. (See Nos. 195, 207, 208, 293.)

No. 129.

 

he is come to open
The purple testament of bleeding war.
Richard IL, Act 3, Scene 3.

Testament. (See Nos. 150, 195, 207, 293.)

No. 129a.

O, I am pressed to death, through want of speaking.
Richard Il., Act 3, Scene 4.

This obscure line is elucidated by the proceed-
ings which took place when an accused person re-
fused to plead to an indictment. He was said to
stand mute, when, being arraigned for treason or
felony, he either (1) made no answer at all; or (2)
answered foreign to the purpose, or with such mat-
ters as were not allowable, and would not answer
otherwise; or (3) having pleaded not guilty, refused
164 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

to put himself upon the country. (2 Hale, P. C.
816.)

In cases of high treason, petit larceny, and all
misdemeanors, standing mute was equivalent to
conviction.

In indictments for other felonies, or for petit
treason, the prisoner was not looked upon as con-
' vieted for standing mute, but for his obstinacy re-
ceived the sentence of peine forte et dure, which was
that he be remanded to the prison whence he came,
and put into a low, dark chamber, and there be laid
on his back on the floor naked; that there be
placed upon his body as great a weight of iron as
he could bear, and more; that he have no suste-
nance save, on the first day, three morsels of the
worst bread, and on the second day three draughts
of such stagnant water that should be nearest the
prison door; and, in this situation, such should be
his daily diet till he died, or (as anciently the judg-
ment ran) till he answered. (Brit. C. C. 4, 22;
Fleta, lib. 1, c. 84, § 83.)

This proceeding was abolished by statute. (2
Geo. III., c. 20.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 165

 

No. 130.

Aum. Either I must, or have mine honour soil’d
With the attainder of his slanderous lips.
There is my gage, the manual seal of death,
That marks thee out for hell: I say, thou liest,
And will maintain, what thou hast said, is false.
* * * * * ¥ *
Boling. These differences shall all rest under gage,
Till Norfolk be repeal’d: repeal’d he shall be,
And, though mine enemy, restored again
To all his land and signories; when he’s return’d
Against Aumerle we will enforce his trial.
* * * * * * ¥
Lords appellants,
Your differences shall all rest under gage,

Till we assign you to your days of trial.
Rincard IL, Act 4, Scene 1.

Attainder. (See No. 44.)
Maintain. (See No. 118.)
Repealed. (See Nos. 3, 205.)

Assign. The technical term for designating a
day of trial.

Appellants. (See Nos. 116, 120.)

No. 131.
Bound to himself? what doth he with a bond

That he is bound to? Wife, thou art a fool.
Richard II., Act 5, Scene 2.

Bond. (See Nos. 40, 51, 52, 56, 98, 99, 306.)
166 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

No. 181a.

O, villain, thou stolest a cup of sack eighteen years ago, and

wert taken with the manner.
1 Henry IV., Act 2, Scene 4.

Manner. From the French manier, or mainer,
4. €., manu tractare.

To be taken with the manner is where a thief,
having stolen anything, is taken with the same
about him, as it were in his hands. (Tomlin’s Law
Dict.)

A woman had committed burglary and was taken
with the “mainour” and brought before the justices
with the “mainour.” John de C. came and sued
against the woman.

SPicuRNEL took the Inquest whether he sued from
the beginning, so that the woman was attached at
his suit: and it was found that he had continually
sued. It was adjudged that he should recover the
chattels; but if he had not sued from the commence-
ment, notwithstanding his now suing, the king would
have had the chattels. (Year Book, 30 and 81
Edw. I. Horwood’s Ed. 1863, p. 512.)

(See No. 44a.)

No. 132.
Mort. And our indentures tripartite are drawn:
Which being sealed interchangably
(A business that this night may execute,)
* * * * * * *
Hots. Methinks my moiety, north from Burton here,

In quantity equals not one of yours.
1 Henry IV., Act 3, Scene 1.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 167

 

Indenture. A writing containing some con-
tract, agreement, or conveyance between two or
more persons, being indented at the top, answer-
able to another part which hath the same contents.
(Co. Litt. 229.)

(See Nos. 108, 233, 236, 276.)

Tripartite. Consisting of three parts; as a
deed between A of the first part, B of the second
part, and C of the third part. (Bouv. Law Dict.)

Moiety. (See Nos. 56, 259, 298.)

No. 133.
Enfeoff’d himself to popularity.
1 Henry IV., Act 3, Scene 2.

Feoffment. A gift or grant of lands to another
in fee, to him and his heirs, forever, by the delivery
of seisin and possession of the thing given or granted.

No. 134.
And what say you to this? Percy, Northumberland,
The archbishop’s grace of York, Douglas, Mortimer,

Capitulate against us, and are up.
Henry IV., Act 3, Scene 2.

Capitulate. To draw up anything in heads
or articles. (Johnson.)

No. 135.

And, when he heard him swear, and vow to God,
He came but to be duke of Lancaster,

To sue his livery, and beg his peace ;

With tears of innocency, and terms of zeal,
168 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

My father, in kind heart and pity mov’d,
Swore him assistance, and perform’d it too.
Now, when the lords and barons of the realm
Perceiv’d Northumberland did lean to him,
The more and less came in with cap and knee,
Met him in boroughs, cities, villages,
Attended him on bridges, stood in lanes,
Laid gifts before him, proffer’d him their oaths,
Gave him their heirs, as pages follow’d him,
Even at the heels, in golden multitudes,
He presently, as greatness knows itself,
Steps me a little higher than his vow
Made to my father, while his blood was poor,
Upon the naked shore at Ravenspurg;
And now, forsooth, takes on him to reform
Some certain edicts, and some strait decrees,
That lie too heavy on the commonwealth:
Cries out upon abuses, seems to weep
Over his country’s wrongs; and, by this face,
This seeming brow of justice, did he win
The hearts of all that he did angle for.
Proceeded further ; cut me off the heads
Of all the favourites, that the absent king
In deputation left behind him here,
When he was personal in the Irish war.

1 Henry IV., Act 4, Scene 3.

Sue his livery, (See Nos. 124, 127.)
Edicts. (See Nos. 25, 170, 232.)

No. 136.
Page. Sir, here comes the nobleman that committed the
prince for striking him about Bardolph.
* * * # * * *
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 169

 

Ch. Just. I sent for you, when there were matters against
you for your life, to come speak with me.
Fal. As I was then advised by my learned counsel in the

laws of this land-service, I did not come.
2 Henry IV., Act 1, Scene 2.

Committed. (See Nos. 77, 141, 146, 166.)
Matters. (See Nos. 56, 87, 158.)

Land-service. Service was the duty which the
tenant owed to the lord by reason of his estate.
There were many divisions of it in the ancient law,
as into personal and real, free and base, continual
or annual, casual and accidental, intrinsic and ex-
trinsic, ete. (Bracton, lib. 2.)

Magna Charta prescribed that no freeman should
sell so much of his lands but that of the residue
the lord may have his services.

No. 137.

Host. Master Fang, have you entered the action?
Fang. Itis entered.

* ¥ * * * * *
Fang. Sir John, I arrest you at the suit of Mistress Quickly.
* * * ¥ * * *

Fang. A rescue! A rescuel
2 Henry IV., Act 2, Scene 1.

Entered an Action. A technical phrase for
commenced a suit.

Arrest. (See Nos. 11, 17, 86, 87, 137, 1388,
277a, 295, 300.)
lla
170 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

Rescue. The term rescous is likewise applied
to the forcible delivery of a defendant when ar-
rested from the officer who is carrying him to
prison. (3 Bl. Comm. marg. p. 146.)

No. 138.
fost. O my most worshipful lord, an’t please your grace,
I am a poor widow of Eastcheap, and he is arrested at my

suit.
2 Henry IV., Act 2, Scene 1.

Arrested. (See Nos. 11, 17, 86, 87, 1387,
277a, 295, 300.)

No. 139.

I will devise matter enough out of this Shallow to keep
Prince Harry in continua] laughter the wearing out of six
fashions, which is four terms, or two actions, and a’ shall

laugh without intervallums.
2 Henry IV., Act 5, Scene 1.

Terms. Those spaces of time wherein the
courts of justice are open for all that complain of
wrongs or injuries, and seek their rights by course.
of law or action. (J'omlin’s Law Dict.)

(See No. 59.)

There were formerly four terms in every year,—
Hilary, Easter, Trinity and Michaelmas. The is-
suable terms were Hilary and Trinity terms only,
and were so called because in them the issues were
joined and records made up of causes to be tried at
the Lent and summer assizes which immediately
follow. (@ Lil. Abr. 568.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 171

 

Falstaff wishes to assert that six fashions wear
out in a year. His meaning is absolutely unintel-
ligible, except by interpretation of his legal ex-
pressions. He states correctly the number of
terms in a year; it appears that two terms are re-
quired for the trial of one action, and that there
shall be no vacation in the prince’s laughter.

Intervallums. The vacations between terms.

No. 140.
Those precepts cannot be served.
2 Henry IV., Act 5, Scene 1.

Precepts. A command in writing by a justice
of the peace, or other officer, for bringing a person
or records before him. (Tomlin’s Law Dict.)

Served. The action of an officer in executing
legal process.

No. 141.

King. You all look strangely on me: and you most;
[ 1’o the Chief Justice.

You are, I think, assur’d I love you not.

Ch. Just. I am assur’d, if I be measur’d rightly,
Your majesty hath no just cause to hate me.

King. No!
How might a prince of my great hopes forget
So great indignities you laid upon me?
What! rate, rebuke, and roughly send to prison,
172 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

The immediate heir of England! Was this easy?
May this be wash’d in Lethe, and forgotten ?

Ch. Just. I then did use the person of your father ;

The image of his power lay then in me;

And, in the administration of his law,

Whiles I was busy for the commonwealth,

Your highness pleased to forget my place,

The majesty and power of law and justice,

The image of the king whom I presented,

And struck me in my very seat of judgment;
Whereon, as an offender to your father,

I gave bold way to my authority,

And did commit you. If the deed were ill,

Be you contented, wearing now the garland,

To have a son set your decrees at nought; 7
To pluck down justice from your awful bench,
To trip the course of law, and blunt the sword
That guards the peace and safety of your person:
Nay, more, to spurn at your most royal image,
And mock your workings in a second body.
Question your royal thoughts, make the case yours;
Be now the father and propose a son:

Hear your own dignity so much protan’d,

See your most dreadful laws so loosely slighted,
Behold yourself so by a son disdain’d,

And then imagine me taking your part,

And, in your power, soft silencing your son:
After this cold considerance, sentence me;

And, as you are a king, speak in your state,
What I have done that misbecame my place,

My person, or my liege’s sovereignty.

King. You are right, justice, and you weigh this well;
Therefore still bear the balance and the sword:
And I do wish your honours may increase,

Till you do live to see a son of mine
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 173

 

Offend you, and obey you, as I did.

So shall I live to speak my father’s words,

“ Happy am I, that have a man so bold,

That dares do justice on my proper son;

And not less happy, having such a son,

That would deliver up his greatness so,

Into the hands of justice.” You did commit me:
For which, I do commit into your hand

The unstained sword that you have us’d to bear;
With this remembrance,—that you use the same
With the like bold, just, and impartial spirit,

As you have done ’gainst me.
y &
2 Henry IV., Act 5, Scene 2.

In this scene the law of contempt of court is
stated by the chief justice, and recognized by the
king, who when prince had struck the chief justice
in open court, and was committed therefor instanter
to prison. This mode of proceeding has been ex-
ercised from the earliest times. If the contempt
be committed in the presence of the court the of-
fender may be instantly apprehended, and impris-
oned at the discretion of the judges without any
further proof or examination. (4 Bl. Comm. marg.
p. 286.) The writer had occasion to use this scene
in his argument before the senate of Minnesota in
defense of Judge Page, against whom articles of
impeachment had been presented. The action of
the judge, in which he punished in a very summary
174 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE,

 

manner an officer of the court for contempt, was
made the basis of one of the articles. The pro-
ceeding was so summary that it was felt neces-
sary by his counsel to labor greatly in defending
him on that particular article. Accordingly, Shake-
speare was pressed into service, as follows:
“Nearly all of these articles of impeachment are
so trivial as to seem, at first view, scarcely to war-
rant the serious discussion they have received. But
as we have proceeded in our duties we have become
pursuaded that the danger in the charges is not
what they allege, but lies in the principle upon
which they are based; that the danger is not
to this respondent but to the public itself—for the
spirit which inspires them all is the spirit of revolt
against constituted authority. It has appeared in
that most dangerous form of an attack upon the
judicial department of the state, upon its integrity,
upon its independence. There is, after all, a wise
conservatism in the people, and while they make
and unmake with a breath the executive and the
legislature, they instinctively refrain from subject-
ing the judiciary to the attacks of prejudice or dis-
affection. They do not require a judge to be pop-
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 175

 

ular. They require him to be honest and as firm
as the system of law which he administers. They
recognize the fact that there must exist in all forms
of government an ultimate principle of absolutism
and permanency, an impregnable barrier against
the fitful mutations of the hour, an inexorable ex-
pounder of those laws of self-preservation which
precede the formation of states, which preserve
property, which secure liberty, which bear with un-
intermittent force upon the concerns of society with
all the power of gravitation. In our system the
judiciary is this principle. It is this cohesive prin-
ciple of our system which is this day attacked, in
the person of a judge whose integrity has not been
questioned even by his enemies. Our entire policy
is thus assailed at its strongest point. If you de-
stroy that which is most permanent, the efficacy
and independence of the rest of the structure will
fall in ruin without further attack, merely as the
logical consequence of such a process. Is it not
well for us to pause? Rude usurpers, aggressive
kings have paused at this decisive point. Shall we
be less wise than they ?

It is the prerogative of Shakespeare that what-
176 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

ever he stoops to touch becomes authoritative in
quotation. He is the magistrate of both imagina-
tion and reason. There is scarcely a topic in the
universe of human thought which that marvelous
mind has not compassed in its cometary sweep.
He has walked in the abyss of human nature and
seen the thousand fearful wrecks, the unvalued
jewels, and all the lovely and the dreadful secrets
which lie scattered in the bottom of that illimitable
sea. The maxims of policy, the rules of war, the
subtleties of love, the patient forecast of hate, the
pangs of remorse, the ready wages which jealousy
always pays to the miserable being it employs—all
things over which the mind or the nature of man
has jurisdiction, receive from him their definition
and expression, excepting those awful topics of the
hereafter, which, of all the children of men, he, the
greatest, has been too reverent to touch. Heknew
of the circulation of the blood. In instance after
instance he has not only used the terms of the law
with the strictest precision, but has stated its ab-
strusest principles with entire correctness. So
wonderfully true is this assertion of his despotic
empire, that conjecture, in its baffled extremity, has
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE, 177

 

declared that the hidden hemisphere of this world
of thought, must be Francis Bacon, who, in his
youth ‘took all knowledge for his province,’ as if
it were his heritage. Shakespeare has created an
immaterial universe which will, like him, survive
the bands of Orion, and Arcturus and his sons. He
peculiarly knew the limitations of power and author-
ity, and enforced them by many constitutional il-
lustrations. And in that respect he has presented
no finer exposition than that one where he magni-
fies the sacredness of judicial authority in the scene
between Henry V., lately become king, and the
chief justice, who had formerly committed him for
contempt. The old magistrate stood trembling be-
fore the young king, whose life had given no war-
rant of wisdom or integrity; for he had in his reck-
less days been the boon companion of Falstaff and
his disreputable associates.

Referring to his humiliation by the judge, the
king asked,

May this be washed in Lethe and forgotten ?
The judge interposed this memorable defense:

I then did use the person of your father ;
The image of his power lay then in me!
And, in the administration of his law,
178 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

Whiles I was busy for the commonwealth,
Your highness pleased to forget my place,
The majesty and power of law and justice,
The image of the king whom I presented,
And struck me in my very seat of judgment,
Whereon, as an offender to your father,

I gave bold way to my authority,

And did commit you.

It prevailed, for the king replied:

You are right, justice, and you weigh this well;
Therefore still bear the balance and the sword ;
And I do wish your honors may increase,

Till I do live to see a son of mine

Offend you, and obey you, as I did.

So shall I live to speak my father’s words—
‘Happy am I, that have a man so bold,

That dares do justice on my proper son:

And not less happy, having such a son,

That would deliver up his greatness so

Into the hands of justice.’ You did commit me,
For which I do commit into your hands

The unstained sword that you have used to bear,
With this remembrance: That you use the same
With the like bold, just and impartial spirit

As you have done ’gainst me.

Of all the illustrations which Shakespeare has
given to authority, in its highest or lowest estate,
I know of none finer than this. Not Richard, sit-
ting upon the ground and telling sad stories of the
death of kings when all his fleeting glory seemed
but a pompous shadow; not Prospero, the ruler of
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 179

 

two realms, who by virtue of his sway over his im-
material kingdom looked upon the great globe it-
self as a phantasma merely, which would vanish
with all its cloud-capped towers, and gorgeous pal-
aces, and solemn temples; not Lear, invoking from
the elements themselves the abdicated regalities of
his sovereignty, seem to me so imposing as this
youth, once so wayward, respecting the majesty of
the law in the person of its faithful servant. Youcan
bow before this mob. You can lead an attack which
will be repeated upon every department of our gov-
ernment by all the blatant and riotous law-breakers
of time to come, who may rise up in rebellion against
statutes enacted for their condemnation, against
magistrates who condemn them. Or you can make
enduring the endangered functions of the state.
You can quell forever that arrogant spirit of insub-
ordination, before which no judge is sacred, no
constitutional provisions are obstacles. Say to this

respondent—
Therefore still bear the balance and the sword;
x * * * * *

The unstained sword which you have used to bear
With this remembrance: That you use the same
With the like bold, just and impartial spirit

As you have done.
180 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

—and this proceeding will live memorable in our
history as one of its preservative events.”
(Trial of Judge Page, vol. 8, p. 248.)

Committed. (See Nos. 77, 136, 146, 166.)

No. 142.

Cant. My lord, I’ll tell you, that self bill is urg’d,
Which, in the eleventh year o’ the last king’s reign
Was like, and had indeed against us pass’d,

But that the scambling and unquiet time
Did push it out of further question.

Lily. But how, my lord, shall we resist it now ?

Cant. It must be thought on. If it pass against us,
We lose the better half of our possession :

For all the temporal lands, which men devout
By testament have given to the church,

Would they strip from us.
Henry V., Act 1, Scene 1.

Bill. An instrument presented by a member or
committee of a legislative body for its approbation,
so that it may become a law or be rejected. After
it has gone through both houses and received the
constitutional sanction of the chief magistrate, it
becomes a law. (Bouv. Law Dict.)

The words “bill,” “urged,” “passed,” are used
here with the easy familiarity of one who knows

the terms applicable to the progress and conse-

quences of a bill.
(See No. 5.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 181

 

Temporal Lands. All things which an arch-
bishop or a bishop have by livery from the king, as
manors, lands, tithes, etc. (1 Rol. p. 881; 1 Bl.
Comm. marg. p. 282.)

The bill in question was proposed by the com-
mons in the reign of Henry IV., who had required
them to grant supplies. They proposed that he
should seize all the temporalties of the church and
employ them as a perpetual fund to serve the ex-
igencies of the state. The archbishop of Canter-
bury urged that the clergy, although they went not
in person to the war, sent their vassals and ten-
ants, while they themselves were employed night
and day in offering up prayers for the happiness
and prosperity of the state. The Speaker replied
that these prayers were a very slender supply.
(See 3 Hume, p. 68.)

No. 148.

My Jearned jord, we pray you to proceed,

And justly and religiously unfold

Why the law Salique, that they have in France,

Or should, or should not, bar us in our claim:

And, God forbid, my dear and faithful lord,

That you should fashion, wrest, or bow your reading.
Henry V., Act 1, Scene 2.

Bar. (See Nos. 114, 144.)
182 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

Reading. This is the one law word to express
the exposition of a statute. Francis Bacon per-
formed such a task upon the statute of uses, and it
is entitled “the learned reading of Mr. Francis
Bacon, one of her majesty’s counsel at law, upon
the statute of uses, being his double reading to the
honorable society of Gray’s Inn, 42 Eliz.”

Wrest. To put a forced construction upon an
authority, statute, or precedent.
(See No. 56.) :

No. 144.

Then hear me, gracious sovereign, and you peers,
That owe your lives, your faith, and services,

To this imperial throne; there is no bar

To make against your highness’ claim to France,
But this, which they produce from Pharamond,
“In terram Salicam mulieres ne succedant,

No woman shall succeed in Salique land:”
Which Salique land the French unjustly gloze,
To be the realm of France, and Pharamond

The founder of this law and female bar.

Yet their own authors faithfully affirm,

That the land Salique lies in Germany,

Between the floods of Sala and of Elbe:

Where Charles the Great, having subdued the Saxons,
There left behind and settled certain French;
Who, holding in disdain the German women,
For some dishonest manners of their life,
Establish’d there this law; to wit, no female
Should be inheritrix in Salique land;

Which Salique, as I said, ’twixt Elbe and Sala,
Is at this day in Germany call’d Meisen.

Thus doth it well appear, the Salique law
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 183

 

Was not devised for the realm of France:

Nor did the French possess the Salique land
Until four hundred one and twenty years

After defunction of king Pharamond,

Idly suppos’d the founder of this law;

Who died within the year of our redemption

Four hundred twenty-six: and Charles the Great
Subdued the Saxons, and did seat the French
Beyond the river Sala, in the year

Hight hundred five. Besides, their writers say,
King Pepin, which deposed Childeric,

Did, as heir general, being descended

Of Blithild, which was daughter to King Clothair,
Make claim and title to the crown of France.
Hugh Capet also, that usurp’d the crown

Of Charles the duke of Lorain, sole heir male

Of the true line and stock of Charles the Great,
To fine his title with some show of truth
(Though, in pure truth, it was corrupt and naught,)
Convey’d himself as heir to the lady Lingare,
Daughter to Charlemain, who was the son

To Lewis the emperor, and Lewis the son

Of Charles the Great. Also king Lewis the tenth,
Who was solc heir to the usurper Capet,

Could not keep quiet in his conscience,

Wearing the crown of France, till satisfied

That fair queen Isabel, his grandmother,

Was lincal of the lady Ermengare,

Daughter to Charles the foresaid duke of Lorain:
By the which marriage, the line of Charles the Great
Was re-united to the crown of France.

So that, as clear as is the summer’s sun,

King Pepin’s title, and Hugh Capet’s claim,
King Lewis his satisfaction, all appear

To hold in right and title of the female:
184 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

So do the kings of France unto this day;
Howbeit they would hold up this Salique law,
To bar your highness claiming from the female,
And rather choose to hide them in a net,

Than amply to imbar their crooked titles

Usurp’d from you and your progenitors.
Henry V., Act 1, Scene 2.

Law Salique. A law by which males only
were allowed to inherit. This rule has ever ex-
cluded females from the throne of France. It was
decreed by Pharamond, and was part of a code of
laws of the Salians, a people of Germany.

“There was a French gentleman speaking with an
English of the law Salique, that women were ex-
cluded from inheriting the crown of France. The
English said, ‘Yes; but that were meant of the
women themselves, not of such males as claimed by
women.’ The French gentleman said, ‘Where do
you find that gloss?’ The English answered, ‘I’ll
tell you, sir; look on the back side of the record of
the law Salique, and there you shall find it in-
dorsed;’ implying there was no such thing as the
law Salique, but that it isa mere fiction.” (Bacon’s
Apophthegms, No. 184.)

The argument of the archbishop that this law
was not designed for France, is, in its order, reason
and arrangement, thoroughly forensic and compact.

Bar. (See Nos. 114, 143.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 185

 

No. 144a.

She hath herself not only well defended,

But taken and impounded, as a stray,

The king of Scots.

Henry V., Act 1, Scene 2.
Beasts of a stranger could be taken by way of

distraint by the owner of grounds into which they
were found straying. The duty of the taker was
to drive them to some pound and there impound
them. (8 Bl. Comm. marg. pp. 7, 12.)

Stray. (See No. 158.)

Wo. 145.

The sad-ey’d justice, with his surly hum,
Delivering o’er to executors pale

The lazy yawning drone.
Henry V., Act 1, Scene 2.

No. 146.

Enlarge the man committed yesterday.
Henry V., Act 3, Scene2.

Enlarge. Torelease from confinement. (John-
son.)

Committed. (See Nos. 77, 186, 141, 166.)

No. 147.

You know, how apt our love was, to accord
To furnish him with all appertinents
Belonging to his honour; and this man

Hath, for a few light crowns, lightly conspir’d
And sworn unto the practices of France,

To kill us here in Hampton.

Henry V., Act 2, Scene 2.
12a
186 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

No. 148.
K. Hen. Their faults are open,
Arrest them to the answer of the law;
And God acquit them of their practices!
Exe. I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Richard,
earl of Cambridge.
larrest thee of high treason, by the name of Henry lord
Scroop of Masham.
I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Thomas Grey,
knight of Northumberland.
* * * ¥ * * *
K. Hen. God quit you in his mercy! Hear your sentence.
You have conspired against our royal person,
Join’d with an enemy proclaim’d, and from his coffers
Receiv’d the golden earnest of our death.
Henry V., Act 2, Scene 2.

¢

The use of the words “arrest,” “acquit,” and

“earnest,” is most accurate. The king states the
offense of high treason with perfect precision.

Earnest. (See No. 90.)

No. 149.

K. Hen. So, if a son, that is by his father sent about mer-
chandise, do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation
of his wickedness, by your rule, should be imposed upon his
father that sent him: orif a servant, under his master’s com-
mand, transporting a sum of money, be assailed by robbers,
and die in many irreconciled iniquities, you may call the
business of the master the author of the servant’s damnation:
But this is not so: the king is not bound to answer the par-
ticular endings of his soldiers, the father of his son, nor the
master of his servant; for they purpose not their death, when
they purpose their services. Besides, there is no king, be
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 187

 

his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrement of
swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers. Some, per-
adventure, have on them the guilt of premeditated and con-
trived murder; some, of beguiling virgins with the broken
seals of perjury; some, making the wars their bulwark, that
have before gored the gentle bosom of peace with pillage and
robbery. Now, if these men have defeated the law, and out-
run native punishment, though tley can outstrip men, they
have no wings to fly from God: war is his beadle; war is his
vengeance; so that here men are punished, for before-breach
of the king’s laws, in now the king’s quarrel; where they
feared the death, they have borne life away; and where they
would be safe, they perish: then if they die unprovided, no
more is the king guilty of their damnation, than he was be-
fore guilty of those impicties for which they are now visited.
Every subject’s duty is the king’s; but every subject’s soul is
hisown. Therefore, should every soldier in the wars do as
every sick man in his bed, wash every mote out of his con-
science: and dying so, death is to him advantage; or not dy-
ing, the time was blessedly lost, whereiu such preparation was
gained: and, in him that escapes, it were not sin to think,
that making God so free an offer, He let him outlive that day
to sce His greatness, and to teach others how they should

prepare.
Henry V., Act 4, Scene 1.

The tone of this exposition is thoroughly legal.
Here again occurs the unaffected use of such fo-
rensic phrases as “miscarry upon the sea;” “trans-
porting a sum of money;” “a cause come to the
arbitrement of swords;” and to “try it out;” “the
broken seals of perjury;” “before-breach of the

king’s laws.”
188 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

Cause. (See Nos. 13, 60, 184, 200, 277a.)
Guilty. (See Nos. 174, 275, 271.)
Perjury. (See No. 38.)

Wo. 150.
And so, espoused to death, with blood he sealed

A testament of noble-ending love.
Henry V., Act 4, Scene 6.

Sealed. (See Nos. 259, 262.)
Testament. (See Nos. 127, 195, 207, 293.)

No. 151.
I do, thou most usurping proditor,

And not protector of the king, or realm.
1 Henry VI., Act 1, Scene 3.

Proditor. The technical word for traitor, used
in indictments when they were written in Latin,—
proditorie, traitorously.

No. 152.

May. Nought rests for me in this tumultuous strife,

But to make open proclamation :

Come, officer; as loud as e’er thou canst,

Cry.

Of. All manner of men, assembled here in arms this day,
against God’s peace and the king’s, we charge and command
you, in his highness’ name, to repair to your several dwelling-
places; and not to wear, handle, or use, any sword, weapon,
or dagger, henceforward, upon pain of death.

Henry VI, Act 1, Scene 3.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE, 189

 

The following is the old form of proclamation:

“Our sovereign lord, the king, chargeth and com-
mandeth all persons here assembled immediately
to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to
their habitations, or to their lawful business, on
pain of death.

God save the king.”

No. 153.

Som. Was not thy father, Richard, earl of Cambridge,
For treason executed in our late king’s days?
And, by his treason, stand’st not thou attainted,
Corrupted and exempt from ancient gentry?
His trespass yet lives guilty in thy blood,
And, till thou be restor’d, thou art a yeoman.

Plan. My father was attached, not attainted,
Condemn’d to die for treason, but no traitor.

1 Henry VI, Act 2, Scene 4.

Attainted. (See Nos. 44, 130.)
Attach. (See Nos. 254, 257, 280.)

Exempt. Cut off. (Johnson.)

The corruption of blood in descendants of an at-
tainted ancestor is here charged upon Plantagenet,
whose answer is a refutation of the imputation
upon clear legal grounds. Attainder was a conse-
quence of sentence of death by judgment of a court,
and not before. “After conviction only a man is
liable to none of these disabilities, for there is still
in contemplation of law a possibility of his inno-
190 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

cence. Something may be offered in arrest of judg-
ment; the indictment may be erroneous, which will
render his guilt uncertain, and thereupon the pres-
ent conviction may be quashed. He may obtain a
pardon or be allowed the benefit of clergy. But,
when judgment is once pronounced, both law and
fact conspire to prove him completely guilty. Upon
judgment of death, therefore, and not before, the
attainder of a criminal commences.” (4 Bl. Comm.
marg. pp. 880, 881.) Plantagenet asserts that his
father had merely been attached, but not attainted;
that is, that the prosecution had not resulted in
any judgment. Here is also displayed knowledge
of another minute legal particular. If the at-
tainted person were noble or gentle before, he and
all his children and posterity were by the attainder
made base and ignoble. (Co. Litt. 891b.) Conse-
quently, Plantagenet, if his father had been at-
tainted, was thereby cut off from the “gentry” and
became a “yeoman,” who is a person next in order
to a gentleman. (Tomlin’s Law Dict.) For an
account of the trial of the earl of Cambridge by a
court of eighteen barons commissioned to try him,
and of its irregularities, see 3 Hume, p. 76.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 191

 

No. 154.

I had in charge, at my depart for France,

As procurator to your excellence.
2 Henry VI., Act 1, Scene 1.

Procurator. One who hath a charge com-
mitted to him by any person, in which general sig-
nification it hath been applied to a vicar or lieu-
tenant who acts instead of another, and we read of
procurator regni. (Tomlin’s Law Dict.)

No. 155.

Suff. Here are the articles of contracted peace,
Between our sovereign and the French king ,Charles,
For eighteen months concluded by consent.

Glo. [Reads] Imprimis, It is agreed between the French king,
Charles, and William de la Pole, marquess of Suffolk, ambas-
sador for Henry king of England, that the said Henry shall
espouse the lady Margaret, daughter unto Reignier king of Na-
ples, Sicilia, and Jerusalem, and crown her queen of England,
ere the thirtieth of May next ensuing. Item, That the duchy
of Anjouand the county of Maine, shall be released and delivered
to the king her father ——

KE, Hen. Uncle, how now?

Glo. Pardon me, gracious lord;

Some sudden qualm hath struck me at the heart,
And dimm’d mine eyes, that I can read no further.

KK. Hen. Uncle of Winchester, I pray, read on.

Win. Item, It is further agreed between them, that the
duchies of Anjou and Maine shall be released and delivered over
to the king her father, and she sent over of the king of England’s
own proper cost and charges, without having dowry.

2 Henry VI., Act 1, Scene 2.
0 6

Gloster speaks of a “contracted peace,” “con-
cluded” by “articles.” The instrument is not in the
192 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

form of treaties, but it is in the law form of a private
agreement. It seems to be rather marriage arti-
cles, by which the cessions made to the king of Na-
ples are to bein lieu of his daughter’s dowry. The
duchies are to be “released and delivered” over,
and the lady is to be sent over “at the proper costs
and charges” of her father.

Wo. 156.
Ah, gracious lord, these days are dangerous;
Virtue is chok’d with foul ambition,
And charity chas’d hence by rancour’s hand ;
Fell subornation is predominant,
And equity exil’d your highness’ land.
2 Henry VI., Act 3, Scene 1.

Subornation. (See Nos. 88, 95, 286, 291,
304.)

Equity. (See No. 239.)

No. 157.

Proceed no straiter ’gainst our uncle Gloster,
Than from true evidence, of good esteem,
He be approv’d in practice culpable.
i @ 2 Henry VI., Act 3, Scene 2.

Practice. This term is sometimes employed in
an unfavorable sense to signify fraud or bad prac-
tice. (Tomlin’s Law Dict.)

Evidence. (See Nos. 170, 285.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE, 193

 

Wo. 158.

Cude. — the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops; and Ll
will make it felony, to drink small beer: all the realm shall
be in common, and in Cheapside shall my palfry go to grass.

Dick. The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.

Cade. Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable
thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made
parchment? That parchment, being scribbled o’er, should
undo aman? Some say the beestings: but I say, ’tis the bee’s
wax, for I did but seal once to a thing, and | was never mine
own man since. How now? who’s there?

Enter some bringing in the Clerk of Chatham.

Smith. The clerk of Chatham: he can write and read, and
cast accompt.

Cade. O monstrous!

Smith. We took him setting of boys’ copies.

Cade. Here’s a villain!

Smith. HW’ as a book in his pocket, with red letters in’t.

Cade. Nay then he is a conjuror.

Dick. Nay, he can make obligations, and write court-hand.
2 Henry VI, Act 4, Scene 2.
* * * * * * * *

Cade. So, sirs: Now go some and pull down the Savoy;
others to the inns of court; down with them all.

Dick. I have a suit unto your lordship.

Cade. Be it a lordship, thou shalt have it for that word.

Dick. Only, that the laws of England may come out of your
mouth.

John. Mass, ’twill be sore law then; for he was thrust in

the mouth with a spear, and ’tis not whole yet. [ Aside.
Smith. Nay, John, it will be stinking law; for his breath
stinks with eating toasted cheese. [ Aside.

Cade. 1 have thought upon it, it shall be so. Away, burn
all the records of the realm; my mouth shall be the parlia-
ment of England.

13
194 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

John. Then we are like to have biting statutes, unless his
teeth be pulled out. [Aside.
Cade. And henceforward all things shall be in common.

Enter a Messenger.
Mess. My lord, a prize, a prize! here’s the lord Say, which
sold the towns in France; he that made us pay oneand twenty
fifteens, and one shilling to the pound, the last subsidy.

Enter George Bevis, with the Lord Say.

Cade. Well, he shall be beheaded for it ten times.—Ah, thou
say, thou serge, nay, thou buckram lord; now art thou within
point-blank of our jurisdiction regal. What canst thou an-
swer to my majesty, for giving up of Normandy unto mon-
sieur Basimecu, the dauphin of France? Be it known unto
thee by these presence, even the presence of lord Mortimer,
that Iam the besom that must sweep the court clean of such
filth as thou art. Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the
youth of the realm, in erecting a grammar-school; and
whereas, before, our fore-fathers had no other books but the
score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used; and,
contrary to the king, his crown, and dignity, thou hast built a
paper-mill. It will be proved to thy face, that thou hast
men about thee, that usually talk of a noun, and a verb, and
such abominable words, as no Christian ear can endure to
hear. Thou hast appointed justices of peace, to call poor
men before them about matters that they were not able to
answer. Moreover, thou hast put them in prison; and be-
cause they could not read, thou hast hanged them; when, in-
deed, only for that cause they have been most worthy to live.
Thou dost ride on a foot-cloth, dost thou not?

¥ * * * * * *

— there shall not a maid be married, but sheshall pay to me
her maidenhead ere they have it; Men shall hold of mein
capite; and we charge and command, that their wives be as
free as heart can wish, or tongue can tell.

2 Henry VI, Act 4, Scene7.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 195

 

Common. (See Nos. 158, 208.)

Cade’s announcement of his intention to reform
the laws by killing the lawyers, and to make it fel-
ony to drink small beer; his discourse on the de-
structive effect of parchment, wax, and seals; the
charge against the clerk of Chatham that he can
make obligations and write court-hand; the order
to pull down the inns of court; the petition of
Dick, who has a suit to Cade, that the laws of
England may come out of Cade’s mouth; the
command to burn all the records of the realm,
and the declaration that his mouth shall be the
parliament of England; the fear of biting stat-
utes; and the decree that all things shall thence-
forth be in common,—are expressions such as a
lawyer would naturally put into the mouth of
a brutal and ignorant insurgent. So, when Lord
Say is brought before him, Cade’s language is
judicial. He asserts his “jurisdiction regal.” Say
has “traitorously” erected a grammar school, and
the use of this word is not only correct, but in-
dispensable; because “the treason must be laid
to have been committed traitorously, this word
being indispensably necessary.” (Tomlin’s Law
196 THE LAW IN SIIAKESPEARE.

 

Dict. “Treason.”) What Say did, is charged to have
been “contrary to the king, his crown, and dig-
nity.” His acts will be proved to his face. Cade
has a fling at the benefit of clergy. This was a
device by which exemption from punishment of all
felonies beneath treason was secured in the. tem-
poral courts. The clergy originally had exemption
from all secular jurisdiction. In the course of
time it was established by law that any one who
could read should therefore be accounted a clerk,
(clericus,) and allowed the benefit of clergy, though
he never was in holy orders. All laymen who were
allowed this privilege, were, on claiming it by a
plea before conviction or after conviction, on mo-
tion in arrest of judgment, simply burned with a
hot iron on the left thumb and were discharged
from the secular court and turned over to the eccle-
siastical courts, which, by a fictitious purgation,
which consisted in the accused reading the open-
ing lines of the Vulgate version of the fiftieth Psalm,
restored the accused to credit, to his liberty, his
lands, and capacity to purchase. (4 Bl. Comm. c.
28.)

Chapter 50 of the Vulgate is the same with chap-
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 197

 

ter 51, King James’ translation: Miserere mei Deus,
secundum magnam misericordiam tuam.

Et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum,
dele iniquitatem meam.

In 1859, Bilanski, who had been found guilty of
murdering her husband, claimed the benefit of
clergy; but her right was denied by the supreme
court of Minnesota. Justice Flandrau, in deliver-
ing the opinion, gave a learned exposition of the
law on this subject and its history. (State v. Bi-
lanski, 3 Minn. 246.)

Cade’s atrocious announcement as to the maidens
is an assertion of a barbarous right once claimed
by lords over the brides of tenants. Itissaid bysome
authors to have been the origin of the English cus-
tom of descent which obtained in certain localities,
called borough English, by which the youngest son,
and not the eldest, succeeded to the burgage tene-
ment on the death of his father, as being more
probably legitimate than his elder brother. Black-
stone says that he cannot learn that this custom
prevailed in England, although it certainly did in
Scotland, under the name of mercheta. Cade un-
doubtedly had this atrocious custom in his mind,
198 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE,

 

and in regard to this jus stupri he puns infamously
by the use of the words in capite,—tenants in capite
being those who hold directly under the king.—
Caput, head, (maidenhead.)

Court-hand. The old Gothic or Saxon hand

or manner of writing used in records and judicial
proceedings. (Imperial Dict.)

Common. (See No. 47, 307.)

Matters. (See No. 87, 136.)

Obligations. (See No. 4.)

Parchment. (See No. 276.)

Seal. (See Nos. 37, 52,56, 108, 126, 204, 207,
256, 274, 288.)

No. 159.

Here’s the lord of the soil come to seize me for a stray,
for entering his fee-simple without leave.
2 Henry VI., Act 4, Scene 10.

Cade, when he sees Iden approaching, in whose
garden he has taken refuge, uses technical language,
calling himself a stray, liable to seizure for entering
the premises.

Stray. (See No. 144a.)
Fee-simple. (See Nos. 6, 63, 247, 312.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE, 199

 

No. 160.
York. He rose against him, being his sovereign,
And made him to resign his crown perforce.
War, Suppose, my lords, he did it unconstrain’d,
Think you, ’twere prejudicial to his crown?
Exe. No; for he could not so resign his crown,

But that the next heir should succeed and reign.
3 Henry VI., Act 1, Scene 1.

This expresses the constitutional principle in
regard to the descent of the crown. The king, in
contemplation of law, never dies, nor is there by
resignation or abdication a moment’s interregnum,
for the heir in any such event instantly becomes
king de jure. The king cannot grant the succes-

sion. (I Bl. Comm. marg. p. 191 et seq.)
(See Nos. 161, 162.)

No. 161.
War. Why should you sigh, my lord ?
K. Hen. Not for myself, lord Warwick, but my son,
Whom I unnaturally shall disinherit.
But, be it as it may: I here entail
The crown to thee, and to thine heirs forever ;
Conditionally, that here thou take an oath
To cease this civil war, and, whilst I live,
To honour me as thy king and sovereign;
And neither by treason, nor hostility,

To seek to put me down, and reign thyself.
3 Henry VI., Act 1, Scene 1.

This is an attempt to grant the crown, subject
to a condition subsequent. The use of the word
200 TILE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

“entail” here seems to be inaccurate, for though
the use of the word “heirs” is necessary to create
a fee, so the word “body” or some other words of
procreation are necessary to make it a fee-tail. A
gift to a man and his heirs, male or female, is an
estate in fee-simple and not in fee-tail. (2 Bl.
Comm. marg. p. 114.)

King Lear, in settling the succession to his king-
dom, was more accurate, using the word “issue.”

Disinherit. (See No. 162.)
Entail. (See Nos. 63, 237.)
Heirs forever. (See No. 208.)

No. 162.

Prince. Father, you cannot disinherit me:
If you be king, why should I not succeed ?
* * * * * *
Q. Mar. Until that act of parliament be repealed,

Whereby my son is disinherited.
3 Henry VI., Act 1, Scene 1.

Here again the constitutional principle is as-
serted. But it is met by another constitutional
principle, that the right of succession to the crown
may from time to time be changed or limited by
act of parliament. (1 Bl. Comm. p. 191.)

Disinherit. (See No. 161.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 201

 

Repealed. (See No. 198.)
Act. (See Nos. 56, 198.)

No. 163.
ich. An oath is of no moment, being not took
Before a true and lawful magistrate,
That hath authority over him that swears:
Henry had none, but did usurp the place;
Then, seeing ’twas he that made you to depose,

Your oath, my lord, is vain and frivolous.
3 Henry VI, Act 1, Scene 2.

Oaths. If administered by persons in a pri-
vate capatity, or not duly authorized, they are co-
ram non judice, and void. (8 Inst. 165; 4 Inst.
278.)

Depose. (See No. 120.)

No. 164.
But for the rest, you tell a pedigree
Of threescore and two years; a silly time

To make prescription for a kingdom’s worth.
3 Henry VI, Act 3, Scene 3.

Prescription. A title acquired by use and
time, and allowed by law; as when a man claims
anything he, his ancestors, or they whose estate he
hath, have had, or used it all the time whereof no
memory is to the contrary. (Co. Litt. 114.)

This time of memory commenced from the be-

ginning of the reign of Richard I., by the statute
13a
202 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

of Westminster, (8 Edw. 1.) By the statute of
32 Henry VIII., the period was fixed at sixty years.

No. 165.
Our sister shall be Edward’s:

And now forthwith shall articles be drawn
Touching the jointure that your king must make
Which with her dowry shall be counterpoised.

3 Henry VI., Act 3, Scene 3.

Articles. (See Nos. 176, 259, 261.)
Dowry. (See No. 66.)

Jointure. A settlement of lands and tene-
ments made to a woman in consideration of mar-
riage.

Under the rule that a right or title to a freehold
cannot be barred, at law, by acceptance of a collat-
eral satisfaction, (Co. Litt. 26,) jointures at com-
mon law were no bar of dower, until the statute of
27 Henry VIII, c. 10. (4 Rep. 8.)

No. 166.

Clar. His majesty,

Tendering my person’s safety, hath appointed

This conduct to convey me to the Tower.
Glo. Upon what cause?
Clar. Because my name is George.
Glo. Alack, my lord, that fault is none of yours;

He should, for that, commit your godfathers.

Richard HI, Act 1, Scene 1.

Commit. (See Nos. 77, 136, 141, 146, 166.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 203

 

No. 167.

Clar, Heard you not, what an humble suppliant
Lord Hasting was to her for his delivery ?
Glo. Humbly complaining to her deity
Got my lord chamberlain his liberty.
Richard III, Act 1, Scene 1.
No. 168.

To both their death shalt thou be accessary.
Richard IIL, Act 1, Scene 2.

Accessary. (See Nos. 291, 297.)

No. 169.
Keep the oath that we administer.

Richard IIL, Act 1, Scene 3.
Oath. (See No. 267.)

No. 170.

Clar. Are you called forth from out a world of men,
To slay the innocent? What is my offense?
Where is the evidence that doth accuse me?
What lawful quest have given their verdict up
Unto the frowning judge? or who pronounc’d
The bitter sentence of poor Clarence’ death?
Before I be convict by course of law,
To threaten me with death is most unlawful.
I charge you, as you hope to have redemption,
By Christ’s dear blood shed for our grievous sins,
That you depart, and lay no hands on me;
The deed you undertake is damnable.
1 Murd. What we will do, we do upon command.
2 Murd. And he, that hath commanded, is our king.
Clar. Erroneous vassal! the great King of kings
Hath in the table of His law commanded,
That thou shalt do no murder; Wilt thou then
204 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

Spurn at His edict, and fulfil a man’s?
Take heed; for He holds vengeance in his hand,

To hurl upon their heads that break His law.
Richard HI., Act 1, Scene 4.

The demands of Clarence are those of one inti-
mate with the phraseology of criminal trials, their
order of procedure, and the rights of accused per-
sons. More than this, there appears here in that
majestic citation of the commandment of the great
King of kings that full sense which Shakespeare had
of the sacredness of law and of judicial functions.

Quest. Inquest; inquisition or inquiry on the
oath of an impaneled jury. (Yomlin’s Law Dict.)

(See No. 298.)

Edict. (See Nos. 25, 135, 232.)
Evidence. (See Nos. 157, 285.)

No. 170a.
Tell them how Edward put to death a citizen,
Only for saying, he would make his son
Heir to the crown; meaning, indeed, his house,
Which, by the sign thereof, was termed so.
Richard III, Act 3, Scene 5.

This passage refers to an event often cited in the
books in discussing the history of the law of treason,
in which these words were construed as sufficient to
constitute the crime. The sufferer was a citizen
of London. (4 Bl. Comm. marg. p. 79.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 205

 

No. 171.

Richard yet lives, hell’s black intelligencer,
Only reserv’d their factor, to buy souls,
And send them thither.

Factor. (See No. 84.)

Richard IIL, Act 4, Scene 4.

No. 172.

Duch. Why should calamity be full of words?
Q. Eliz. Windy attorneys to their client woes,
Airy succeeders of intestate joys,
Poor breathing orators of miseries !
Richard IID, Act 4, Scene 4.

This conceit could never have occurred to a writer
whose knowledge of law was only of that uncertain
kind which every layman has or thinks he has, yet
who would be very cautious how he used it for
such purposes of illustration or personation.

Attorney. (See Nos. 127, 178, 287.)
Client. (See No. 287.)

No. 173.
Flatter my sorrows with report of it;
Tell me, what state, what dignity, what honour,

Canst thou demise to any child of mine?
Richard II., Act 4, Scene 4.

Demise. Is a conveyance either in fee, for life,
or for years. According to Chief Justice Gibson,
the word strictly denotes a posthumous grant, and
no more. (5 Whart. 278.)
206 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

No. 174.
Perjury, perjury, in the high’st degree ;
Murder, stern murder in the dir’st degree;
All several sins, all us’d in each degree,
Throng to the bar, crying all,—Guilty! guilty!
Richard III., Act 5, Scene 3.

In this thrilling soliloquy, Richard, after the aw-
ful procession of accusing spirits has vanished, ar-
raigns himself as a criminal at the bar, with all his
crimes confronting him with their testimony of his
guilt.

Bar. A place in a court having criminal juris-
diction to which prisoners are called to plead to the

indictment. (Bouv. Law Dict.)
(See No. 178.)

Guilty. (See Nos. 149, 275, 291.)

No. 175.
For France hath flawed the league, and hath attached our

merchants’ goods at Bordeaux.
Henry VIII., Act 1, Scene 1.

Attached. (See Nos. 153,177, 254, 257, 280.)

No. 176..
This cunning cardinal,

The articles o’ the combination drew
As himself pleased, and they were ratified.
Henry VIII., Act 1, Scene 2.

Articles. (See Nos. 165, 259, 261.)
Ratified. (See No. 259.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 207

 

No. 177.
He is attached :

Call him to present trial.
Henry VIII, Act 1, Scene 2.

Attached. (See Nos. 153, 175, 254, 257, 280.)

“To call” is a purely technical term, used to sig-
nify the calling a defendant or plaintiff for pur-
poses of trial. (See No. 56.)

No. 178.
First Gent. I'll tell you in a little. The great duke
Came to the bar; where, to his accusations,
He pleaded still, not guilty, and alleg’d
Many sharp reasons to defeat the law.
The king’s attorney, on the contrary,
Urg’d on the examinations, proofs, confessions
Of divers witnesses; which the duke desir’d
To have brought, viva voce, to his face:
At which appear’d against him, his surveyor ;
Sir Gilbert Peck his chancellor, and John Carr,
Confessor to him, with that devil-monk,
Hopkins, that made this mischief.
* * * ¥ & * *
Buck. The law I bear no malice for my death.
It has done upon the premises but justice.

Henry VIIL., Act2, Scene 1.

Bar. (See No. 174.)

After the plea of “not guilty,” the king’s attorney
offered in evidence what were evidently the ex parte
examinations and confessions of witnesses who had
not been confronted with the accused. This was the
208 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

practice of that age, and even of later times, and
is the blot on the trial of Mary queen of Scots, who
was convicted on such testimony as this, against her
demand to be confronted with the witnesses. This
demand made by the duke in the passage quoted
was evidently sustained upon the axiomatic prin-
ciple of legal evidence which requires the testimony
of the witnesses against the defendant in a crim-
inal prosecution to be delivered in his presence.

Attorney. (See Nos. 127, 172, 287.)
Bar. (See No. 174.)
Premises. (See No. 1.)

No. 179.
Wol. Whilst our commission from Rome is read,
Let silence be commanded.
Et. Hen. What’s the need?
It hath already publicly been read,
And on all sides the authority allow’d:
‘You may then spare that time.
Henry VIIT., Act 2, Scene 4.
The installation of a judge into his office was al-
ways by reading his commission at the opening of
his court. The command of silence was part of

the proclamation by which courts were opened.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE, 209

 

No. 180.
I do believe,
Induc’d by potent circumstances, that
You are mine enemy, and make my challenge.
You shall not be my judge: for it is you
Have blown this coal betwixt my lord and me,
Which God’s dew quench! Therefore, I say again,
I utterly abhor, yea, from my soul,
Refuse you formy judge, whom, yet once more,
I hold my most malicious foe, and think not

At alla friend to truth.
Henry VIII, Act 2, Scene 4.

Wo. 181.

I do refuse you for my judge, and here
Before you all appeal unto the pope,
To bring my whole cause ‘fore his holiness,

And to be judg’d by him.
Henry VIII, Act 2, Scene 4.

Challenge. An exception taken to the com-
petency of a juror to try a particular case. One
cause of challenge was always the bias or partial-
ity of a juror against the party.

In this particular case the queen was in error, for
a judge shall not generally be excepted against or
challenged. (1 Inst. 294; 2 Inst. 422.) Indeed,
she does not purpose to be tried in that court at
all, but appeals unto the pope. This appeal, though
illegal, was at that time a matter of disputed right,
and had often been connived at. The contro-

14
210 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

versy was finally put to rest by the statutes of 24,
25, Henry VIII., which made appellants liable to the
pains of premunire. (4 Bl. Comm. marg. p. 115.)
The queen is thereupon called (see Nos. 56, 177)
to come into court. So far there is a remarkable
fidelity to the ceremonial forms of trial. Her
answer to the proclamation requiring her to come
into court, shows knowledge by Shakespeare of a
somewhat recondite matter of legal practice and of
its consequences. An appearance is the legal word
for certain acts of a party, such as entering an ap-
pearance or pleading, or making a motion for inci-
dental action in the cause by the court. The effect
of an appearance is to cure all defects in the pro-
ceedings up to that time which are not jurisdic-
tional. Katherine having protested against the
competency of Wolsey to be her judge, and claim-
ing that her appeal to the pope should operate to
supersede the jurisdiction of the special court com-
missioned to try the case of divorce, could not there-
after appear in the case, for it would probably have
been construed as a waiver of her objection to the
cardinal and of her appeal to Rome. She accord-
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 211

 

ingly refused to make technical appearance and
actually withdrew personally from the presence of
court.

Mary Stuart protested against being tried by the
laws of England, and demanded trial by the civil
law. She said to the commissioners: “Ye make
laws at your pleasure, whereunto I have no rea-
son to submit myself, considering that the English
in times past refused to submit themselves to the
law Salique of France.” The commissioners in-
sisted that she ought to appear before them for the
purpose of hearing, and that by both the civil and
canon law she ought to make full appearance.
She consented to appear, but, as she said, “by way
of interlocution and not judicially.” (1 St. Tr. p.
1171.)

Appeal. (See No. 182.)

No. 182.
Crier. Katherine, queen of England come into the court!
* * * * * * *
Q. Kath. No, nor evermore

Upon this business my appearance make

In any of their courts,
* ¥ ¥ * * * *
Cam. The queen being absent, ’tis a needful fitness

That we adjourn this court till further day:
212 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

Meanwhile must be an earnest motion

Made to the queen to call back her appeal.
Henry VIII, Act 2, Scene 4.

The queen having absented herself from the court,
being before it neither personally nor technically, it
became necessary to adjourn the court until it could
obtain jurisdiction over her person. Therefore,
using the strictest legal expression for this act, the
court is adjourned till further day. In the disputed
state of the law as to appeals to Rome in such a
canonical matter as a divorce suit then was, in-
volving as it did not only the civil but the sacra-
mental tie of marriage, the effect of her appeal was
so doubtful that it was thought best to make a mo-
tion to her to call it back, and thus reinstate beyond
question the jurisdiction of the special court.

Appearance. (See Nos. 79, 187, 298.)
Appeal. (See No. 181.)

No. 183.

Cam. Put your main cause into the king’s protection ;
He’s loving and most gracious; ’twill be much
Both for your honour better, and your cause ;
For, if the trial of the law o’ertake ye,
You’ll part away disgrac’d.
Wol He tells you rightly.
Q. Kath. Ye tell me what ye wish for both, my ruin:
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 213

 

Is this your Christian counsel? out upon ye!
Heaven is above all yet; there sits a Judge,
That no king can corrupt.
Henry VIII., Act 3, Scene 1.
No. 184.

Put my sick cause into his hands that hates me.
Henry VIII, Act 3, Scene 1.

Cause. (See Nos. 13, 60, 149, 200, 2772.)

No. 185.
Stay,

Where’s your commission, lords? words cannot carry
Authority so weighty.

* * * * * *

*
That seal,
You ask with such a violence, the king
Mine, and your master, with his own hand gave me:
Bade me enjoy it, with the place and honours,

During my life, and, to confirm his goodness,
Tied it by letters-patents: now, who’ll take it?
Henry VUI., Act 3, Scene 2.

Wolsey demands the commission of his visitors.
The great seal is not to be delivered up on a merely
verbal message. He received it from the hand of
the king, with words of bestowal for life. This life
appointment had been confirmed by letters-patent.
There is but one technical word capable of fully
expressing the legal proposition of the cardinal, and
that word is “confirmed.” Had he used instead
the word “granted,” the force of the assertion that
214 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

he had previously received the seal manually, with
words of gift, would have been lost, for a grant
takes effect only from its delivery. Buta confirma-
tion is a conveyance of an estate—“a right in esse,”
—to another that hath possession thereof, or some
estate therein, whereby a voidable estate is made
sure and unavoidable, or a particular estate is in-
creased or a possession made perfect. (1 Inst.
295.) Wolsey puts his case strongly. He stands
upon his possession under the gift by parol, con-
firmed as it was by instruments which, in their ef-
ficacy, relate back to the time when his possession
under the gift began.

It will be observed that Wolsey claims to be in-
vested with the office of lord chancellor for life.
This. was an extraordinary tenure, for by the act of
taking back the seal by the king the term of office
has always been ended. The office is created by mere
delivery of the seal into the custody of the person
appointed, whereby he becomes, without writ or
patent, the highest officer in the kingdom. So that
Wolsey’s assertion of his appointment by delivery
of the seal was a sufficient legal statement of his
right to the chancellorship. But the additional
THE LAW iN SHAKESPEARE. 215

 

claim that he was chancellor for life needed some-
thing more to make it valid, and he therefore in-
sisted on the confirmation by letters-patent of his
appointment for life. While it is laid down by
Lord Coke (2 Inst. 87) that a chancellor may be
made “at will by patent, but é is said not for life,”
the proposition was doubtful, as appears from the
guarded language employed by Coke. The princi-
ple was long a disputed one. Lord Clarendon had
a patent to be lord chancellor for life, though he
was afterwards dismissed from office and the pat-
ent declared void. (1 Sid. 838.) It is remarkable
that Hume or Sharon Turner or Froude do not,
in their accounts of the trial of the queen or the
deposition of Wolsey, treat the legal features of
these events with any particularity, nor put into
the mouth of queen or cardinal the legal objections
that each made to the proceedings against them.
For these the reader must look to the dramatist
who has given, with perfect juridical accuracy, an
account of the operation of those legal formalities
by which the queen suffered a separation worse
than the “long divorce of steel” of her successor
wives, and by which, in the language of Turner,
216 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

“Wolsey fell like a loosened avalanche from its
mountain summit of power and ambition, never to
be replaced or dreaded any more.”

Commission. (See Nos. 186, 193.)
The great seal. (See No. 186.)

Letters-patent are writings of the king, sealed
with the great seal of England, whereby a person
is enabled to enjoy or do that which otherwise he
could not; and so called because they are open,
with the seal affixed, and ready to be shown for con-
firmation of the authority there given. (Yomlin’s
Law Dict.)

(See Nos. 124, 137.)

No. 186.

Sur. Have at you.
First, that, without the king’s assent, or knowledge,
You wrought to bea legate; by which power
You maimed the jurisdiction of all bishops.
Suf. Then that without the knowledge
Hither of king or council, when you weut
Ambassador to the emperor, you made bold
To carry into Flanders the great seal.
Sur. Item, you sent a large commission
To Gregory de Cassado, to conclude,
Without the king’s will, or the state’s allowance,
A league between his highness and Ferrara.
Suf. That, out of mere ambition, you have caus’d
Your holy hat to be stamp’d on the king’s coin.
Suf. Lord cardinal, the king’s further pleasure is,
Because all those things, you have done of late
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 217

 

By your power legatine within this kingdom,
Fall into the compass of a premunire,

That therefore such a writ be sued against you;
To forfeit all your goods, lands, tenements,
Chattels, and whatsoever, and to be

Out of the king’s protection.
Henry VIII., Act 3, Scene 2.

The offense of premunire was one immediately
affecting the king and his government, and was so
called from the corrupt Latin of the writ preparatory
to the prosecution thereof: “Premunire facias A. B.
Cause A. B. to be forewarned that he appear before
us to answer the contempt wherewith he stands
charged.” It had its origin in the exorbitant power
claimed and exercised in England by the pope.
Among these pretensions was that of the right to
effect an entire exemption of the clergy from any
control by the civil magistrates; the separation
of the ecclesiastical courts from the temporal courts;
the appointment of the judges of the spiritual courts
by merely spiritual authority, without any interpo-
sition of the crown; and the right of exclusive ju-
risdiction over all ecclesiastical causes. The stat-
ute of 16 Richard II., c. 5, provided that whoever
procures at Rome or elsewhere any translations,

processes, excommunications, bulls, instruments, or
14a,
218 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

other things which touch the king, against him, his
crown and realm, and all persons aiding and assist-
ing therein, shall be put out of the king’s protec-
tion, their lands and goods shall be forfeited to the
king’s uses, and they shall be attached by their
bodies to answer to the king and his council; or pro-
cess premunire facias shall be made against them as
in other cases of provisors. The original definition
of the offense was the introduction of a foreign
power into the kingdom, thus creating an “imperium
im tnperio,” by paying that obedience to papal pro-
cess which constitutionally belonged to the king
alone. There were several other statutes prior to
Shakespeare’s time creating and defining this of-
fense. The punishment is stated by Sir Edward
Coke to be, that from the conviction the defendants
shall be out of the king’s protection, and his lands,
tenements, goods, and chattels be forfeited to the
king, and that his body shall remain in prison at
the king’s pleasure.

The march of Cardinal Wolsey towards power
reached its last stage in his appointment by the
pope as legate a latere to England. The effect of
this ecclesiastical commission was to confer upon
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 219

 

him the full power of the papacy within that realm.
Holding this office and that of lord chancellor, as
he did at the same time, his power, both spiritual
and temporal, was undoubtedly greater than has
ever been possessed by any English subject.

The manner in which he used it, and the down-
fall which resulted, re of the most memorable
lessons which history reads to ambition. Surrey
and Suffolk, in summing up to the cardinal his
offenses, do so with legal correctness of definition.
When Wolsey, without the king’s consent, wrought
to bea legate and thereby to stand in the place of
the pope in England, he manifestly maimed the ju-
risdiction of the bishops, which, in that realm was
always restricted by the civil policy of the kingdom,
and was intimately connected with the exercise of
the royal prerogative. Affixing the great seal to
a blank commission to be filled with names of com-
missioners out of the kingdom, authorizing them
to treat with France, was considered such a high
contempt of the power and authority of the crown
that it was made an article of impeachment against
Lord Somers during the reign of William III.,
although the act was done on the order of the
220 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

king. So, also, to commission an ambassador with-
out the king’s will to conclude a league between
him and a foreign state, was in derogation of
one of the highest attributes of royal authority.
The coining of money has in all civilized states
been one of the most essential functions of sov-
ereignty, and in England it was always part of
the king’s prerogative. Sir Matthew Hale observes
(1 Hist. P. C. 191) that the impression or stamping
of coin is the unquestionable prerogative of the
crown, and this was usually done by special grant
from the king, or by prescription, which supposes
one, and those who enjoyed this privilege by grant
or prescription had not the authority of devising
the impression, but had usually the stamp sent them
from the exchequer. Hence, Shakespeare was cor-
rect in making Suffolk say to the cardinal that be-
cause of these things, done by his power legatine,
he had fallen into the compass of a premunire ; and
it will be observed how accurate was Shakespeare’s
understanding, not only of its consequences, but of
the legal formalities necessary to enforce them.
The writ of premunire facias is to be sued against
the cardinal, who is to forfeit all his lands, tene-
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE, 221

 

ments, and chattels, and be out of the king’s pro-

tection.
Commission. (See Nos. 185, 193.)
The great seal. (See No. 185.)

No. 187.
That I can tell you, too. The archbishop
Of Canterbury, accompanied with other
Learned and reverend fathers of his order,
Held a late court at Dunstable, six miles off
From Ampthill, where the princess lay; to which
She oft was cited by them, but appear’d not.
And, to be short, for not appearance, and
The king’s late scruple, by the main assent
Of all these learned men she was divore’d,

And the late marriage made of none effect.
Henry VIII, Act 4, Scene 1.

“To cite” is to summon a person to appear be-
fore a court, and it is the one exact phrase to be used
respecting a spiritual or canonical court. Default
was commonly taken for non-appearance in court at
a day assigned. The ground upon which Henry
based his right to a divorce from Queen Katherine
was her previous marriage with his brother Arthur
and its consummation. From his point of view
this marriage was therefore void from the begin-
ning; and it will be observed how accurately
Shakespeare expresses this, by not only saying
222 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

that she was divorced, but that the late marriage
was made of none effect. And that such was the
procedure appears from the reports of the trial,
though some evidence was taken. The decree
reads, “furthermore, the most illustrious and most
powerful prince, King Henry VIII., in the fore-
mentioned cause, by his proper proctor having ap-
peared, but the said most serene lady Katherine,
in contempt absenting herself, * * * do pro-
nounce sentence and declare for the nullity and in-
validity of the said marriagé, decreeing that the
said pretended marriage always was and still is
null and invalid; that it was contracted and con-
summated contrary to the will and law of God;
that it is of no force or obligation, but that it al-
ways wanted and still wants the strength and sanc-
tion of law.” (1 St. Tr. 259, 260.)

Citation. A summons to appear, applied par-
ticularly to process in the spiritual court. The
ecclesiastical courts proceed according to the course
of the civil and canon laws,—by citation, libel, etc.
(Tomlin’s Law Dict.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 223

 

No. 188.
I do beseech your lordships,

That, in this case of justice, my accusers,
Be what they will, may stand forth face to face,
And freely urge against me.
* ¥ ¥ * * *
Ah, my good lord of Winchester, I thank you,
You are always my good friend ; if your will pass,
I shall both find your lordship judge and juror.
Henry VIII, Act 5, Scene 3.
No. 189.
I bade the vile owl go learn me the tenor of the proclama-

tion.
Troilus and Cressida, Act 2, Scene 1.

Tenor. An exact copy. (Bouv. Law Dict.)
(See Nos. 37, 56, 223, 232.)

No. 190.
There is a law in each well-order'd nation,
To curb those raging appetites that are
Most disobedient and refractory.
If Helen then be wife to Sparta’s king,
As it is known she is, these moral laws
Of nature, and of nations, speak aloud
To have her back return’d; thus to persist
In doing wrong, extenuates not wrong,
But makes it much more heavy.
Troilus and Cressida, Act 2, Scene 2.
No. 191.
And, as aforesaid, Patroclus is a fool.
Troilus and Cressida, Act 2, Scene 3.

No. 192.
A kiss in fee-farm.
* * * * ¥ * *
In witness whereof the parties interchangeably—
* * * * * * *
224 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

No perfection in reversion shall have a praise in present.
¥ * x * * * *
Go to, a bargain made: seal it; seal it;

[ll be witness,
Troilus and Cressida, Act 3, Scene 2.

Fee-farm. Is where the lord, upon the crea-
tion of the tenancy, reserves to himself or his heirs
either the rent for which it was before let to farm,
or was reasonably worth, or at least a fourth part
of the value, without homage, fealty, or other serv-
ices beyond what are especially comprised in the
feofiment. (2 Inst. 44.)

Pandarus, dissatisfied with the lagging dalliance,
evidently means that the kiss he has seen does not
imply that either lover intends to render any other
homage or service. He is throughout quite like
an attorney in his remarks. He advises deeds in-
stead of words, and this lets in the recital by him
of what as to a deed is technically called the conclu-
sion. When he thinks the lovers have concluded
their agreement, he clamors to have it sealed, offer-
ing to be the witness. So Troilus has in his mind
the distinction between estates in reversion and
those in presenti, when Cressida contrasts the
vauntings of lovers with their future performances.

Reversion. (See No. 122.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 225

 

No. 193.

Omission to do what is necessary,
Seals a conimission to a blank of danger.
Troilus and Cressida, Act 3, Scene 3.

Seal. (Sce Nos. 37, 52, 108, 126, 158, 204, 207,
256, 274,288.)

Commission. (See Nos. 185, 186.)
Blank. (See No. 124.)

No. 194.
On whose bright crest Fame with her loud’st oyez.
Troilus and Cressida, Act 4, Scene 5.

Oyez. (See No. 7.)

No. 195.
Performance is a kind of will and testament which argues

a great sickness in his judgment that makes it.
Timon of Athens, Act 4, Scene 3.

Will. (See Nos. 128, 207, 208, 293.)
Testament. (See Nos. 128, 150, 207, 293.)

No. 196.
All have not offended ;

For those that were, it is not square, to take,
On those that are, revenges: crimes, like lands,
Are not inherited.

15

Timon of Athens, Act 5, Scene 4,
226 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

No. 197.

Let us kill him, and we’ll have corn at our own price. Is’t

a verdict?
Cortolanus, Act 1, Scene 1.

Verdict. (See Nos. 121, 298.)

No. 198.

—make edicts for usury, to support usurers; repeal daily
any wholesome act established against the rich, and pro-
vide more piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will, and there’s
all the love they bear us.

Statutes. (See No. 42.)
Act. (See Nos. 56, 162.)

Repeal. (See No. 162.)

Coriolanus, Act 1, Scene 1.

No. 199.
You, Titus Lartius,

Must to Corioli back: send us to Rome
The best, with whom we may articulate,
For their own good, and ours.
Coriolanus, Act 1, Scene 9.

€
Articulate. To specify in articles. (Wor-
cester.)

No. 200.

Men. You know neither me, yourselves, nor any thing.
You are ambitious for poor knaves’ caps and legs; you wear
out a good wholesome forenoon, in hearing a cause between
an orange-wife and a fosset-seller ; and then rejourn the con-
troversy of three-pence to a second day of audience. When
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 227

 

you are hearing a matter between party and party, if you
chance to be pinched with the colic, you make faces like
mummers; set up the bloody flag against all patience; and, in
roaring for a chamber-pot, dismiss the controversy bleeding,
the more entangled by your hearing; all the peace you make
in their cause, is calling both the parties knaves: you area

pair of strange ones.
Coriolanus, Act 2, Scene 1

Rejourn. To adjourn. (Worcester.)
Cause. (See Nos. 13, 60, 149, 184, 2774.)

No. 201.

When he had no power,
But was a petty servant to the state,
He was your enemy ; ever spake against
Your liberties, and the charters that you bear
I’ the body of the weal.

Coriolanus, Act 2, Scene 3.

Charters. Charters of the king are those
whereby the king passeth any grant to any person
or body politic, such as charters of exemption or
privilege.

The word is here used in the legal sense which
it possessed at that time, and it peculiarly meant
those instruments executed by a sovereign to the
people or their representatives by which their lib-
erties were confirmed and guaranteed, as by the
great charter of liberties granted in the ninth
year of King Henry III., and also by Magna
228 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

Charta granted by King John. It was in this form,
also, that political powers and personal rights were
granted and guaranteed by the English sovereigns
for the establishment of colonies in America.

No. 202.
Let them assemble;

And, on a safer judgment, all revoke
Your ignorant election.
Coriolanus, Act 2, Scene 3.
Revoke, The calling back of a thing granted,
or a destroying or making void of some deed that
had existence until the act of revocation made it
void; and where any deed or thing is revoked it is
as if it had never been. (5 Rep. 90.)

No. 203.
Proceed by process,

Lest parties, as he is belov’d, break out,
And sack great Rome with Romans.
* * * * * *
Give me leave,
Ill go to him, and undertake to bring him
Where he shall answer, by a lawful form,
In peace to his utmost peril.
Corialanus, Act 3, Scene 1.
Process. Is so called because it proceeds or
goes out upon former matter, either original or ju-
dicial, and hath two significations: Jirst, it is
largely taken for all the proceedings in any action
or prosecution, real or personal, civil or criminal,
from the beginning to the end. Second, that is
termed the process by which a man is called into
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 229

 

any temporal court because it is the beginning or
principal part thereof, by which the rest is directed ;
or, taken strictly, it is the original part of the pro-
ceeding. (8 Rep. 157.)

(See Nos. 211, 273.)

No. 204.
Then shame to the Romans: and we here deliver,
Subscrib’d by the consuls and patricians,
Together with the seal o’ the senate, what

We have compounded on.
Coriolanus, Act 5, Scene 6.

Seal. (See Nos. 37, 52, 108, 126, 158, 207,
256, 274, 288.)

Compounded. (See Nos. 64, 67.)

No. 205.
Met, Is there no voice more worthy than my own,
To sound more sweetly in great Caesar’s ear,
For the repealing of my banish’d brother?
Bru. I kiss thy hand, but not in flattery, Caesar;
Desiring thee, that Publius Cimber may
Have an immediate freedom of repeal.
Ces. What, Brutus!
Cas. Pardon, Cesar; Cesar, pardon:
As low as to thy foot doth Cassius fall,

To beg enfranchisement for Publius Cimber.
Jultus Cesar, Act 3, Scene 1.

Repeal. (See Nos. 3, 130.)

Enfranchisement. Is when a person is in-
corporated into any society or body politic, and it
signifies the act of incorporating.
230 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

Publius Cimber, having been banished and cut
off from his connection of citizenship with the body
corporate of Rome, became, in the language of
the civil law, capite minutus. Brutus and Cassius,
in petitioning Cesar for his repeal and enfranchise-
ment, ask not merely that he be set at liberty, but
that he may be restored to Roman citizenship.

No. 2086. 3
The question of his death is enrolled in the Capitol: his
glory not extenuated, wherein he was worthy: nor his offenses
enforced, for which he suffered death.
Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2.

Enrolled. (See No. 43.)

No. 207.
But here’s a parchment, with the seal of Cesar;
I found it in his closet; ’tis his will:
Let but the commons hear this testament,
Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read,
And they would go and kiss dead Cxsar’s wounds,
And dip their napkins in his sacred blood;
Yea, beg a hair of him for memory,
And, dying, mention it within their willis,
Bequeathing it, as a rich legacy,

Unto their issue. ‘
Julius Cesar, Act 3, Scene 2.

Seal. (See Nos. 37, 52, 108, 126, 158, 204,
256, 274, 288.)

Will. (See Nos. 128, 195, 208, 293.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 231

 

Testament. (See Nos. 129, 150, 195, 293.)
Bequeath. (See Nos. 57, 293.)

Legacy. A bequest or gift of goods and chat-
tels by will or testament.

(See No. 293.)

Issue. (See Nos. 74, 97, 99, 100, 102, 237.)

It is to be remarked that Antony, in speaking of
the real estate left by Cesar to the Roman peo-
ple, does not use the appropriate word “devise.”
Shakespeare nowhere uses the word in connection
with a will. It was also unnecessary for Cesar’s
will to have contained the expression “to your heirs
forever,” in order to give the people a perpetual es-
tate in the realty devised.

No. 208.
Here is the will, and under Cesar’s seal.
To every Roman citizen he gives,
To every several man, seventy-five drachmas.
* * * * *
Moreover, 2 hath left you all his walks,
His priwate arbours, and new-planted orchards,
On this side Tyber; he hath left them you,
And to your heirs forever ; common pleasures,

To walk abroad, and recreate yourselves.
Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene2.

Will. (See Nos. 128, 195, 207, 293.)
Heirs forever. (See No. 161.)
232 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

No. 209.
That by proscription, and bills of outlawry,
Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus,

Have put to death a hundred senators.
Julius Cesar, Act 4, Scene 3.

Proscription. Outlawry. (Worcester.)

It was a term of the civil law, and its exercise
was one of the severest inflictions of political power
in Rome. It was nearly equivalent to the outlawry
of the English law, which doubtless was derived
from it as both in policy and methods of execution.

Outlawry. To be put out of the protection of
the law.

An outlawry in treason or felony amounted to a
conviction and attainder of the offense charged in
the indictment, as much as if the offender had been
found guilty by a verdict. Anciently, an outlawed
felon was said to have caput lupinum, and might be
knocked on the head like a wolf by any one who
should meet him. (Co. Litt. 128b.)

No. 210.

I'll set a bourn how far to be beloved.
Ant. and Cle., Act 1, Scene 1.

Bourn. A boundary; a limit.
(See No. 271a.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 233

 

No. 211.
Cleo. If the scarce-bearded Cesar have not sent
His powerful mandate to you, ‘Do this, or this;
Take in that kingdom, and enfranchise that ;
Perform’t, or else we damn thee.’’
Ant. How, my love!
Cleo. Perchance,—nay, and most like,
You must not stay here longer, your dismission
Is come from Cesar; therefore, hear it, Antony.—

Where’s Fulvia’s process? Cesar’s, I would say?
Ant. and Cle., Act 1, Scene 1.

Process. (See Nos. 203, 273.)

No. 212.
A lily-livered action-taking knave.
King Lear, Act 2, Scene 2.

No. 213.

His faults, in him, seem as the spots of heaven.
More fiery by night’s blackness; hereditary,

Rather than purchased.
Ant. and Cle., Act 1, Scene 4.

The words “hereditary” and “purchased” are used
here in no other than a legal sense. Title to real
property could be acquired by descent or by pur-
chase. In law language, by “purchase” is always
intended title by some kind of conveyance, either
for money or some other consideration or gift, for
that is also in law a purchase; but a descent, be-
cause it cometh merely by act of law, is not said

to be a purchase, and accordingly the makers of
Lda
234 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

the act of parliament (1. Hen. V. c. 5) speak of
them that have lands or tenements by purchase
or descent of inheritance. (Co. Litt. secs. 12, 18b.)
And the meaning here is that the faults have been
cast upon the person by descent, and have not

been otherwise acquired by him.
(See No. 43a.)

No. 214.

That sleep and feeding may prorogue his honour,

Even till a Lethe’d dulness.
Ant. and Cle., Act 2, Scene 1.

Prorogue. To prolong or put off to another
day. (Tomlin’s Law Dict.)

There is a distinction between the meaning of
prorogation and adjournment, as applied to parlia-
ment. The former is the continuance of parliament
from one session to the next; the latter is a con-

tinuation of that session from day to day.
(See Nos. 246, 252.)

Wo. 215.
You have broken

The article of your oath, which you shall never
Have tongue to charge me with.
Ant. and Cle., Act 2, Scene 2.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 235

 

No. 216.

I crave, our composition may be written,

And seal’d between us.
Ant. and Cle., Act 2, Scene 6.

Sealed. (See Nos. 150, 259, 262.)

No. 217.

Post. Will you’ I shall but lend my diamond till your re-
turn. Let there be covenants drawn between us: my mis-
tress exceeds in goodness the hugeness of your unworthy
thinking: I dare you to this match: here’s my ring.

Phi. I will have it no lay.

Lach. By the gods it is one: If I bring you no sufficient
testimony that 1 have enjoyed the dearest bodily part of your
mistress, my ten thouand ducats are yours; so is your dia-
mond too. If I come off, and leave her in such honour as
you have trust in, she your jewel, this your jewel, and my
gold are yours: provided, I have your commendation, for
my more free entertainment.

Post. I embrace these conditions; let us have articles be-
twixt us: only, thus far you shall answer. If you make
your voyage upon her, and give me directly to understand
you have prevailed, | am no further your enemy, she is not
worth our debate: if she remain unseduced (you not making
it appear otherwise,) for your ill opinion, and the assault you
have made to her chastity, you shall answer me with your
sword.

Lach. Your hand; a covenant: we will have these things
set down by lawful counsel, and straight away for Britain ;
lest the bargain should catch cold, and starve: 1 will fetch
my gold, and have our two wagers recorded.

Cymbeline, Act 1, Scene 5.

Covenant. The agreement or consent of two
or more by writing, sealed and delivered, whereby
236 THE LAW IN SIIAKESPEARE.

 

either or one of the parties doth promise to the
other that something is done already or shall be
done afterwards. (Shep. Touchst. 160.)

(See Nos. 66, 126.)

No. 218. :
Ay; I said so, sir.
If you will make’t an action, call witness to’t.
Cymbetine, Act 2, Scene 3.

Action. Is the form of a suit given by law for
recovery of that which is one’s due; for it is a le-
gal demand for a man’s right. (Co. Litt. 285.)

(See Nos. 139, 289, 299.)

No. 219.
Granted Rome a tribute,
Yearly three thousand pounds, which by thee lately

Is left untender’d.
Cymbeline, Act 3, Scene 1.

Tender. The offering of money or of any other
thing in satisfaction.
(See Nos. 2, 56, 289.)

No. 220.
We do say then to Cesar,

Our ancestor was that Mulmutius, which

Ordain’d our laws; whose use the sword of Cxsar

Hath too much mangled; whose repair, and franchise,

Shall by the power we hold, be our good deed.

Cymbeline, Act 3, Scene 1.

Wo. 221.

Black as the ink that’s on thee! senseless bauble,

Art thou a feodary for this act.
Cymbeline, Act 3, Scene 5.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE, 237

 

Feodary. <A tenant who holds his land by
feudal service. The word also signifies an officer
of the court of wards.

No. 222.
A prison for debtor that not dares

To stride a limit.
Cymbeline, Act 3, Scene 3.

Limit. As to prisoners for debt, certain boun-
daries were designated as prison limits. If the
debtor went beyond these, either of his own will or
by the permission or negligence of the officer, it
constituted an escape.

As to the liability for escape, see No. 89.

No. 223.

This is the tenor of the emperor’s writ.
Cymbeline, Act 3, Scene7.

Tenor. (See Nos. 37, 56, 189, 232.)
Writ. (See No. 242.)

No. 224.
The law

Protects not us; then why should we be tender,
To let an arrogant picce of flesh threat us;
Play judge, and executioner, all himself;

For we do fear the law.
Cymbeline, Act 4, Scene 2.

Wo. 225.
He by the senate is accited home.
Titus Andronicus, Act 1, Scene 1.
238 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

No. 226.
Marcus Andronicus, so I do afty

In thy uprightness and integrity.
Titus Andronicus, Act 1, Scene.

Affy. To put confidence in. (Joknson.)
(See No. 69.)

No. 227.
Titus, I am incorporate in Rome,
A Roman now adopted happily.

Titus Andronicus, Act 1, Scene 2.

The queen of the Goths asserts here her status as
a Roman, upon reasons of the civil law, by the use
of the words “adopted” and “incorporate.”

In no other civilized community has the power of
the husband and father over the family, and its ab-
solute identification with him, been so complete as
in Rome. His status was at once political or so-
cial, and religious. He was the high priest of his
family. His own ancestors were the objects of the
domestic worship; for them the sacred hearth-fire
was kept burning, and when the family became ex-
tinct by the failure of male issue not only did the
family cease to be, but the sacred fire of a religion
was forever extinguished upon the hearth, which
was also analtar. This was dreaded as a religious
catastrophe. Accordingly, the father who was hope-
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 239

 

less of male issue was permitted to adopt a son,
who, in the line of descent, became in time the fa-
ther of that family and the domestic priest. To
adopt, it was necessary to secure, by apt forms, the
emancipation of the son from his father. When
all this was done the adopted son lost all legal re-
lations to his real kin—he became incorporate into
a new family, (in sacra transiit,) renouncing his old
worship. The same consequences of total change
of legal relationship followed a woman upon her
marriage. She left her kin; she was a lawful apos-
tate from their domestic worship. In the contem-
plation of the law her husband became her father.
“Marriage becomes for her a second birth; she is
henceforth the daughter of her husband; /ilie loco,
say the jurists. His ancestors have become her
ancestors. She ceased to worship her progenitors
and worshiped his.” (De Coulange, The Ancient
City, pp. 59, 68; Maine, Ancient Law, p.143.) This
religious and civic incorporation followed when the
emperor married Tamora. From that instant and
by that act the captive empress of the Goths
became as completely 2 Roman matron as was the
mother of the Gracchi herself.
240 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

No. 228.
Why, how now, lords!

So near the emperor’s palace dare you draw,
And maintain such a quarrel openly?
Titus Andronicus, Act 2, Scene 3.
By the ancient law and before the conquest,
fighting in the king’s palace, or before the king’s
judges, was punished with death. By the statute
of 83 Henry VIII., ¢. 12, malicious striking in the
king’s palace, wherein his royal person resided,
whereby blood was drawn, was punishable by per-
petual imprisonment and fine at the king’s pleasure,
and also with loss of the offender’s right hand. (4

Bl. Comm. marg. p. 124.)

No. 229.
Tit. I did, my lord: yet let me be their bail:
For by my father’s reverend tomb, I vow,
They shall be ready at your highness’ will,
To answer their suspicion with their lives.
Sat. Thou shalt not bail them.
Titus Andronicus, Act 2, Scene 4.

Bail. A delivery of bailment of a person to his
sureties upon their giving (together with himself)
sufficient surety for his appearance, he being sup-
posed to be in their friendly custody instead of go-
ing to gaol. (4 Bl. Comm. marg. p. 297.)

(See Nos. 35, 300.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 241

 

No. 2380.

Yet, for I know thou art religious,
And hast a thing within thee, called conscience,
With twenty popish tricks and ceremonies,
Which I have seen thee careful to observe,
Therefore 1 urge my oath; for that, I know,
An idiot holds his bauble for a god,
And keeps the oath, which by that god he swears;
To that [’ll urge him: therefore, thou shalt vow
By that same god, what god soe’er it be,
That thou ador’st and hast in reverence,
To save my boy, to nourish, and bring him up,
Or else I will discover nought to thee.

Titus Andronicus, Act 5, Scene 1.

All persons, of whatever religion or country, were
competent witnesses at common law. The test was
whether he believed in a God, in the obligation of
an oath, and in a future state of rewards and pun-
ishments.

A Mahometan was sworn on the Koran; a Parsee,
according to the custom of India. (Leach, Cas. p.
52; 1 Atk. pp. 19,21.) The cases in Atkyns were
decided by Lord Hardwicke, “the most consummate

2

judge who ever sat in the court of chancery;” and
he states that Coke alone, of all the authorities,
“has taken upon himself to insert the word ‘Chris-
tian,’ and he alone has grafted this word into an
oath.”

16
242 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

No. 231.

Like a forlorn and desperate cast-away,
Do shameful execution on herself.
Titus Andronicus, Act 5, Scene 3.

Do execution. (See Nos. 22, 91.)

No. 232.

But I will gloze with him. Young prince of Tyre,
Though by the tenor of our strict edict,
Your exposition misinterpreting,
We might proceed to cancel of your days,
Yet hope, succeeding from so fair a tree
As your fair self, doth tune us otherwise:
Forty days longer we do respite you.
Pericles, Act1, Scene 1.

Tenor. (See Nos. 37, 56, 189, 223.)
Exposition. (See No. 56.)
Respite. (See No. 28.)

Edict. (See Nos. 25, 185, 170.)

No. 233.

For if a king bid a man be a villain, he is bound by the

indenture of his oath to be one.
Pericies, Act 1, Scene 3.

Indenture. (See Nos. 108, 132, 236, 276.)

No. 234.

One sorrow never comes, but brings an heir,
That may succeed as his inheritor.
Pericles, Act 1, Scene 4.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 248

 

Inheritor. (See Nos. 276, 308.)
Heir. (See No. 244.)

No. 235.

Help, master, heip; here’sa fish hangs in the net, like a
poor man’s right in the law, ’twill hardly come out.
Pericles, Act 2, Scene 1.

No. 236.

Do any thing but this thou doest. Empty
Old receptacles, common sewers, of filth;
Serve by indenture to the common hangman;
Any of these ways are better yet than this.
Pericles, Act 4, Scene 6.

Indenture. (See Nos. 132, 233, 276.)

No. 237.

Of all these bounds, even from this line to this,
With shadowy forests and with champains rich’d
With plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads,
We make thee lady: to thine and Albany’s issue
Be this perpetual.

King Lear, Act 1, Scene 1.
By the use of the word “issue” Lear entailed
this grant by apt words, while Henry VI., though
he used the word “entail,” (see No. 161,) failed
to create an estate tail by using only the words

“and to thine heirs, forever.”

Issue. (See Nos. 74, 97, 99, 100, 102, 207.)
244 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE,

 

No. 238.
Ido invest you jointly with my power,
Pre-eminence, and all the large effects
That troop with majesty. Ourself, by monthly course,
With reservation of a hundred knights,
By you to be sustain’d, shall our abode
Make with you by due turns. Only we still retain
The name, and all the additions to a king;
The sway, revenue, execution of the rest,
Beloved sons, be yours: which to confirm,
This coronet part between you.

Invest. (See No. 96.)
Addition. (See No. 90.)

Confirm. (See No. 185.)
Lear perfects this grant and investiture by deliv-

King Lear, Act 1, Scene 1.

ering his coronet to Albany and Cornwall, and di-
recting them to part it between them. A livery in
deed is when the feoffor takes the ring of the door
or a turf or twig on the land and delivers the same
on the land in the name of seizin of theland. (Co.
Litt. secs. 48a, 59.)

Seizin is a technical term to denote the comple-
tion of that investiture by which the tenant was ad-
mitted into the tenure, and without which no free-
hold could be constituted or pass. (Per Lord Mans-
field, 1 Burr. 107.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 245

 

No. 239.
Lear. It shall be done, I will arraign them straight:
Come, sit thou here, most learned justicer; (To Edgar.

Thou, sapient sir, sit here. [To the Fool.] Now,
you she foxes!
dg. Look, where he stands and glares!
Wantest thou eyes at trial, madam?
Come o’er the bourn, Bessy, to me;
Fool. Her boat hath a leak,
And she must not speak
Why she dares not come over to thee.
dg. The foul fiend haunts poor Tom in the voice of a
nightingale. Hopdance cries in Tom’s belly, for two white
herrings. Croak not, black angel; I have no food for thee.
Kent. How do you, sir? Stand you not so amaz’d:
Will you lie down and rest upon the cushions?
Lear, Ill see their trial first: bring in the evidence.

Thou robed man of justice, take thy place; [Yo Edgar.
And thou his yoke-fellow of equity, [Z'o the Fool.
Bench by his side: you are of the commission,

Sit you too. [Zo Kent.

Hidg. Let us deal justly.
Sleepest, or wakest thou, jolly shepherd ?
Thy sheep be in the corn;
And for one blast of thy minikin mouth,
Thy sheep shall take no harm.
Pur! the cat is grey.

Lear, Arraign her first; ’tis Goneril. I here take my oath
before this honourable assembly, she kicked the poor king her
father.

Fool. Come hither, mistress; is your name Goneril ?

fear. She cannot deny it.

Foal. Cry you mercy, 1 took you for a joint-stool.

Lear, And here’s another, whose warp'd looks proclaim
What store her heart is made of—Stop her there!
246 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

Arms, arms, sword, fire! Corruption in the place!
False justicer, why has thou let her ’scape.
King Lear, Act 3, Scene 6.

Arraign. (See Nos. 27, 78.)

Justicer. A judge, justice, or,as he was some-
times termed, justiciary.

Cushion. A reference to the woolsack.

This is the seat of the lord chancellor in the
House of Lords, and was a large cushion stuffed with
wool. Itis said to have had its origin from the
fact that wool formerly was regarded as a chief
source of the wealth of England, and the woolsack,
covered with red cloth, was first put into use for
the above purpose to commemorate an act passed
in the reign of Queen Elizabeth forbidding the ex-
portation of wool. Lear’s conception, in his in-
sane caprice, is that the Fool is a justice of a
court of common law, and that Edgar is the chan-
cellor, and he invites Kent to sit with them, as one
of the commission.

(See No. 91.)

Bench. Banke is a Saxon word and signifieth

a bench or high seat, or a tribunal, and is properly
applied to the justices of the court of common pleas,

\
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 247

 

because the justices of that court sit there as in a
certain place. (Co. Litt. 96, 71D.)
(See Nos. 9, 141.)

Commission. The warrant of letters-patent,
which all persons exercising jurisdiction, ordinary
or extraordinary, have to authorize them to hear
or determine any cause or action; as the commis-
sion of the judges. (Tomlin’s Law Dict.)

Equity. (See No. 156.)

No. 240.
Pinion him like a thief, bring him before us.
Though well we may not pass upon his life
Without the form of justice, yet our power

Shall do a courtesy to our wrath.
King Lear, Act 4, Scene 7.

Pass upon. This is the law phrase which sig-
nifies the power and act of judicial decision on any
question. (See No. 17.)

No. 241.

Lear. See how yon’ justice rails upon yon’ simple thief.
Hark, in thine ear: change places ; and, handy dandy, which
is the justice, which is the thief? thou hast seen a farmer’s
dog bark at a beggar ?

Glo. Ay, sir.

Lear, And the creature run from the cur? There thou
might’st behold the great image of authority: a dog’s obeyed
in office.

Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand:

Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back;

Thou hotly lust’st to use her in that kind

For which thou whipp’st her. The usurer hangs the cozener,
King Lear, Act 4, Scene 6.
248 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

No. 242.
Quickly send,—

Be brief in it,—to the castle; for my writ
Is on the life of Lear, and on Cordelia:
Nay, send in time.

Alb, Run, run, O, run—

dg. To who, my Lord? who has the office? send
Thy token of reprieve.

Edm. Well thought on; take my sword.
King Lear, Act 5, Scene 3.

Writ. In general, the king’s precept in writing
under seal, issuing out of some court to the sheriff
or other person and commanding something to be
done touching a suit or action. (1 Inst. 73.)

(See No. 223.)

Writ of execution. Is a judicial writ
grounded on the judgment of the court from whence
it issues. The execution of criminals was formerly
by a precept under the hand and seal of the judge.
(2 Hale, P. C. c. 81.) Afterwards it became the
usage for the recorder of London to report the result
of the trial to the king in person, and who, having re-
ceived the royal pleasure that the law take its
course, issued his warrants to the sheriff. (4 St.
Tr. 482.)

Reprieve. (See Nos. 30, 32.)

No. 243.

Sam. Let us take the law of our sides; let them begin.

Gre. I will frown, as I pass by; and let them take it as
they list. ;

Sam. Nay, as they dare. I will bite my thumb at them,
which is a disgrace to them, if they bear it. ,
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 249

 

Abr. Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

Sam. I do bite my thumb, sir.

Abr. Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

Sam. Is the law on our side, it I say—ay ?

Gre. No.

Sam. No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite
my thumb, sir.

Gre. Do you quarrel, sir?

Abr. Quarrel, sir? no, sir.

Sam. If you do, sir, 1 am for you; I serve as good a man
as you.

Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 1.

This is an amusing application of the law of
assault and battery. Sampson and Gregory wish
to affront Abraham by physical action which will
fall short of assault; probably intending, however,
to lay the ground-work fora plea of molliter manus
imposuit, in case Abraham, in his rage, attacks

them.

Self-defense. (See No. 275.)

No. 244.

Now old desire doth in his death-bed lie,
And young affection gapes to be his heir.
Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 5.

Heir. (See No. 234.)

No. 245.

And the demesnes that there adjacent lie.
Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 5.
léa
250 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

No. 246.
My life were better ended by their hate,

Than death prorogued, wanting of thy love.
Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2.

Prorogue. (See Nos. 214, 252.)

No. 247.
Ben. An I were so apt to quarrel as thou art, any man
should buy the fee-simple of my life for an hour and a quarter.
Mer. The fee-simple? O simple!
Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, Scene 1.
Benvolio, in offering to sell the fee-simple of his
life for an hour and a quarter, falls into contradic-
tion in terms, and therefore Mercutio, ridiculing his

ignorance, exclaims, “The fee-simple? O simple!”

Fee-simple. (See Nos. 6, 68, 159, 312.)

No. 248.

But I'll amerce you with so strong a fine,
That you shall all repent the loss of mine.
Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, Scene 1.

Amerce. Signifies the pecuniary punishment
of the offender against the king or other lord in his
court that he is found to have offended, and to stand
at the mercy of the king or lord. The difference
between an amercement and a fine is this: Fines
are said to be punishments certain, and grow ex-
pressly from some statute, but amercements are
such as are arbitrarily imposed. (Tomlin’s Law
Dict.)

Fine. (See Nos. 23, 56.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 251

 

No. 249.
Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,
Displant a town, reverse a prince’s doom,

It helps not, it prevails not.
Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, Scene 3.

Reverse. Is the making void of an erroneous
judgment for error, (Yomlin’s Law Dict.)
(See No. 2.)

Doom. (See Nos. 2, 22.)

No. 250.
How now, wife;
Have you delivered to her our decree ?
Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, Scene 5.
No. 251.

That is no slander, sir, which is a truth;
And what I spake, I spake it to my face.
Romeo and Juliet, Act 4, Scene 1.

In a suit for slander, if the defendant proves the
words true, no action will lie. (4 Rep. 13.) Ju-
liet’s defense to the charge of slander is perfect. She
avers that the words are true, and that the alleged
slander was committed merely by speaking them to
the face. It was never slander to say toa man’s face
any evil concerning him, unless it was done in the
presence and hearing of one or more third persons.
To charge the most flagrant crimes to another’s
face privately, though very annoying, and possibly
injurious in its effect upon his mind, is no slander,
252 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

because there is no publication. His reputation is
not assailed before others, and he cannot presum-
ably be injured when the false charge is made only
tohimself. Itis no slander if the party thus falsely
accused repeats it to others by way of complaint
or otherwise, because the publication is not made
by the defamer, who, it is true, uttered the charge,
but has not published it. (Cooley, Torts, 193.)

No. 252.
I hear thou must, and nothing must prorogue it,

On Thursday next be married to this county.
Romeo and Juliet, Act 4, Scene 1.

Prorogue. (See Nos. 214, 246.)

No. 253.
Such mortal drugs I have, but Mantua’s law
{s death, to any he that utters them.
Romeo and Juliet, Act 4, Scene 1.

Utter. To deliver for an unlawful purpose any
unlawful article or thing. The more restricted
meaning of this word is the disposal or negotiation,
with a fraudulent intent, of a forged instrument or
a false coin, knowing it to be forged or false.

Wo. 254.
I do defy thy conjurations,
And do attach thee as a felon here.
Romeo and Juliet, Act 5, Scene 1.

Attach. (See Nos. 86, 257, 280.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 253

 

No. 255.
Condemned villain, I do apprehend thee:

Obey, and go with me; for thou must die.
Romeo and Juliet, Act 5, Scene 3.

No. 256.
seal with a righteous kiss

A dateless bargain to engrossing death!
Romeo and Juliet, Act 5, Scene 3.

Engrossing. Is the getting in one’s possession,
or buying up large quantities of corn or other dead
victuals with intent to sell them again. The offense
of engrossing is said to extend only to the neces-
saries of life. (7 Moore, P. C. 239, 262.)

The word as here used signifies that death is the
great engrosser of all mortal beings.

Seal. (See Nos. 37, 52, 108, 126,158, 204, 207,
QT4, 288.)

Bargain. (See No. 288.)

No. 257.
The ground is bloody; search about the church-yard :

Go, some of you, whoe’er you find, attach.
? ? ¥
Romeo and Juliet, Act 5, Scene 3.

Attach. (See Nos. 86, 153, 177, 254, 280.)

No. 258.
Before my God, I might not this believe,
Without the sensible and true avouch
Of mine own eyes.
Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1.

Avouch. (See Nos. 40, 106.)
254 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

No. 259.

Did slay this Fortinbras, who, by a seal’d compact,
Well ratified by law and heraldry,

Did forfeit, with his life, all thosc his lands
Which he stood seiz’d of, to the conqueror:
Against the which, a moiety compctent

Was gaged by our king, which hal return’d

To the inheritance of Fortinbras,

Had he been vanquisher, as, by the same co-mart,
And carriage of the article design’d,

His fell to Hamlet.

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1.

This technical statement of the agreement is
almost pedantic in its legal phraseology. In every
line a legal expression is used. Terms of art are
packed into this passage so closely as to form the

greater part of its composition.
Article. (See Nos. 165, 176, 261.)
Forfeit. (See Nos. 17, 25, 52, 56, 306.)
Moiety. (See Nos. 56, 132, 298.)
Ratified. (See No. 176.)
Sealed. (See Nos. 150, 216, 262.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 255

 

No. 260.

Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
The imperial jointress of this warlike state.
Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2.

Jointress. She who had an estate settled on
her by the husband, to hold during her life if she
survived. (J Inst. 46.)

Jointure. (See No. 165.)

No 261.
and we here despatch
You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltimand,
For bearers of this greeting to old Norway,
Giving to you no further personal power
To business with the king, more than the scope

Of these dilated articles allow.
. Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2.

Articles. (See Nos. 165, 176, 259.)

No. 262.

Upon his will I sealed my hard consent.
Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2.

Sealed. (See Nos. 150, 216, 259.)

No. 263.

Or, that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon ’gainst self-slaughter !

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2.
Canon. (See No. 111.)
256 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

No. 264.

Oph. He hath, my lord, of late, made many tenders
Of his affection tome.

Pol. Affection! pooh! you speak like a green girl,
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
Do you believe his tenders, as you call them ?

Oph, Ido not know, my lord, what I should think,

Pol, Marry, I'll teach you: think yourself a baby,
That you have ta’en these tenders for true pay,
Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly,
Or, not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,
Wronging it thus, you’ll tender me a fool.

Hamiet, Act 1, Scene 3.

Tender. (See Nos. 2, 56, 289.)

No. 265.

Do not believe his vows, for they are brokers,
Not of that die which their investments show,
But mere implorators of unholy suits,
Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds,

The better to beguile.
Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3.

Brokers. Those who contrive, make, and con-
clude bargains and contracts between merchants
and tradesmen in matters of money and merchan-
dize for which they have a fee or reward.

The distinction between a broker and a factor
(see Nos. 84, 171) is that the factor is entrusted
with possession, management, control, and disposal
of the goods, while a broker, on the contrary, usually
has no such possession. It will be observed that
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 257

 

in each case where Shakespeare speaks of a broker
or factor, he uses the words with this distinction.

No. 266.
So the whole ear of Denmark,

Is, by a forged process of my death,
Rankly abus’d.
Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5.
Process. The word “process” generally means

the writ of the court, yet it has also the special
meaning of an official statement designed to memo-
rialize and authenticate an event, as the proces-
verbal of the French law.

No. 267.
Propose the oath, my lord.

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5.
Oath. (See No. 169.)

No. 268.
Having ever seen in the prenominate crimes,

The youth you breathe of, guilty, be assured.
Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 1.

Prenominate. Is the synonym of ‘aforesaid.’

No. 269.
I did repel his letters and denied

His access to me.
Hamict, Act 2, Scene 1.

No. 270.
sends out arrests
On Fortinbras, which he, in brief, obeys;
* * * * * *
Gives him three thousand crowns in annual fee.
Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2.
17
258 THE LAW IN SITAKESPEARE,

 

No. 271.

May one be pardon’d, and retain the offence ?
In the corrupted currents of this world,
Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft ’tis seen, the wicked prize itself

Buys out the law: but ’tis not so above:

There is no shuffling; there the action lies

In his true nature, and we ourselves compell’d,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,

To give in evidence.
Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 3.

Here, as in many passages, Shakespeare attests
his reverence for justice as judicially administered,
and his abhorrence of judicial corruption. The
phrase “the action lies” is a legal formula to ex-
press that a suit can be maintained ina court. It
lies in its true nature. In the court above there is
none of that shuffling which quashes the declaration
because it does not conform to the writ, or which
quashes the writ itself because its framer has
adopted a wrong form and has brought an action of
the wrong nature; perhaps having sued in trover
when his action lay only in trespass or case, or mis-
apprehended the distinction between the action of
covenant and that of debt.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 259

 

No. 271a.

The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns.

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1.
Bourn. (See No. 210.)
No. 272. ;
Besides, to be demanded of a sponge! What replication

should be made by the son of a king?
Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 2.

Replication. An exception or answer made
by the plaintiff to the defendant’s plea.
(See No. 311.)

No. 273.
thou may’st not coldly set
Our sovereign process, which imports at full,
By letters conjuring to that effect,

The present death of Hamlet.
Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 3.

Process. (See Nos. 203, 211.)
Homage. (See Nos. 1, 124.)

No. 274.
King. Now must your conscience my acquittance seal,
* * * x * * *
Laer. It well appears: but tell me,

Why you proceeded not against these feats.

So crimeful and so capital in nature.
Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 7,

Acquittance. (See Nos. 4, 45.)

Seal. (Seo Nos. 37, 52, 56, 108, 126, 158, 204,
207, 256, 288.)
269 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

No. 275.

1 Clo. Is she to be buried in Christian burial, that wilfully
seeks her own salvation ?

2 Clo. I tell thee, she is; therefore make her grave straight :
the crowner hath set on her, and finds it Christian burial.

1 Clo. How can that be; unless she drowned herself in her
own defense? :

2 Clo. Why, ’tis found so.

1 Clo. It must be se offendendo ; it cannot be else. For here
lies the point : If I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act:
and an act hath three branches; it is, to act, to do, and to
perform: Argal, she drowned herself wittingly.

2 Cle. Nay, but hear you, goodman delver.

1 Clo. Give me leave. Here lies the water; good: here
stands the man; good: if the man go to this water, and
drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes; mark you that:
but if the water come to him, and drown him, he drowns not
himself: Argal, he, that is not guilty of his own death,
shortens not his own life.

2 Clo, But is this law ?

1 Clo. Ay marry is’t; crowner’s-quest law.

2 Clo. Will you ha’ the truth on’t? If this had not been a
gentlewoman, she should have been buried out of Christian
burial.

Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1.

In the argument between the clowns Shakes-
peare ridicules the proceedings in a case reported
by Plowden. (8 Eliz.) The question arose in the
case of Hales v. Petit, upon a demurrer in an ac-
tion of trespass brought by Lady Margaret Hales,
widow of Sir James Hales, against Cyriack Petit.
It appeared that it was claimed that Sir James
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 261

 

Hales had feloniously and voluntarily drowned him-
self, and that fact had been found by an inquisition
before the coroner. It was maintained that by
reason of the felony of suicide and this inquisition,
Sir James had forfeited his interest and that of
his wife in certain property. A commission had
been issued out of the court of exchequer directing
commissioners to inquire what kinds of goods and
chattels, real and personal, were possessed by Sir
James at the time of his death, to take the same
into their hands for the king and queen, and the
commission found among such property a lease-
hold interest in the premises in question, to Sir
James and Margaret his wife. The defendant Petit
claimed that under these circumstances the interest
in the term which James and Margaret possessed
jointly had been totally forfeited to the king and
queen; that the interest of Margaret was ended
and extinct; and he pleaded a grant from the king
and queen of the same premises to himself. It
was to this plea that Lady Margaret demurred.
Sergeants Southcote and Puttrell argued that the
plea in bar was not good, and did not disclose suf-
ficient matter to divest the term out of the plaintiff
262 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

and put it in the king and queen; that the felony
of her husband did not take away her title as sur-
vivor. They said: “Now, in this matter of felony,
two things are to be considered,—first, the cause
of the death; secondly, the death ensuing the cause;
and these two make the felony, and without both
of them first done the felony is not consummate.
And the cause of the death is the act done in the
party’s life-time which makes. the death to follow.
And the act which brought on the death here was
the throwing himself voluntarily into the water, for
this was the cause of his death. And if a man
kills himself by wound, if he kills himself with a
knife or if he hangs himself, asthe wound or hang-
ing, which is the act done in the party’s life-time,
is the cause of his death, so is the throwing him-
self into the water here. And this act done, which
he has done to himself, is to be considered in the
same light as if he had done it to another; and if
he had given another mortal wound whereof he aft-
erwards died, there, although the wound was the
cause of the death, yet it should not have relation
as to the forfeiture of his goods to the time of the
wound given. So, here, the death has not relation
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 263

 

to the cause of it, but for the forfeiture; it has rela-
tion to the death itself, and when so caused he
shall be adjudged a felon. And forasmuch as he
cannot be attainted of his own death because he is
dead before there is any time to attaint him, the
finding of his body by the coroner or other person
authorized is, by necessity of law, equivalent to an
attainder in fact, coming after his death, as to his
goods.” .

It was argued on the other side by Walsh, Chol-
mey, Bendlow, and Carus, sergeants, that the for-
feiture of the goods and chattels, real and personal,
shall have relation to the act done in the party’s
life-time, which was the cause of his death, and
upon this the parts of the act are to be considered,
and Walsh said that “the act consists of three parts.
First, is the imagination, which is a reflection or
meditation of the mind whether or no it is con-
venient for him to destroy himself, and what way
itcan be done. The second is a resolution, which is
a determination of the mind to destroy himself, and
to do it in this or that particular way. The third
is the perfection, which is the perfection of what
the mind has resolved to do, and this perfection
264 TILE LAW IN SIAKESPEARE.

 

consists of two parts, viz., the beginning and the
end. The beginning is the doing of the act which
causes the death, and the end is the death, which
is only a sequel to the act, and of all the parts the
doing of the act is the greatest in the judgment of
law, and it is in effect the whole, or the only part
that the law looks upon to be material, for the im-
agination of the mind to do wrong without an act
done is not punishable in our law; neither is the
resolution to do that wrong which he does not, pun-
ishable, for the doing of the act is the only point
which the law regards. And here the act done by
Sir James Hales, which is evil, and the cause of his
death, is the throwing himself into the water, and
the death is but a sequel thereof, and this either act
ought some way to be punished.” Justice Brown,
in delivering his opinion, said: “Sir James Hales
was dead, and how came he to his death? Itmay
be answered, by drowning. And who drowned him?
Sir James Hales. And when did he drown him?
In his life-time. So that Sir James Hales, being
alive, caused Sir James Hales to die. The act of
tle living man was the death of the dead man.” It
was adjudged that the plea in bar was sufficient to
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 265

 

preclude Margaret from having her action, and it
was considered that she take nothing by her writ,
but be in mercy for her false claim. (1 Plowden,
258.)

Sir James Hales was a justice of the common
pleas during the reign of Edward VI. When that
king insisted that the judges should sign the deed
of settlement by which he attempted to settle the
crown upon Lady Jane Grey, Hales was the only
judge who refused. He could not, though a Prot-
estant, be induced to do any act against the right
of the Princess Mary, whom he considered the heir
apparent. After her accession he acted as a mag-
istrate in the county of his residence presiding at
the quarter sessions, and charged the grand jury that
the acts of the former reigns respecting religious
worship were still in force. Under this charge an
indictment was found for unlawfully celebrating
mass, and the defendant, having been convicted,
was sentenced by Hales according tolaw. For this
he was not allowed to take the oath of office before
the chancellor under Mary, and was committed to
the Fleet. While there he was so terrified by stories

told him by the keeper of the torments in store for
1%a
266 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

him, that he attempted to stab himself, and did,
after his release, drown himself, and then the re-
lentless and unfeminine zealot, whose rights he had
so stoutly stood for, followed him with a rancor
which the grave could not abate, and insisted on the
forfeiture of his wife’s claim as joint tenant of his
leasehold estate.

Self-defense. (See No. 243.)
Guilty. (See Nos. 149, 174, 291.)

No. 276.

Ham. There’s another: Why may not that be the skull of
alawyer? Where be his quiddits now, his quillets, his cases,
his tenures, and his tricks? why does he suffer this rude
knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel,
and will not tell him of his action of battery? Humph! This
fellow might be in’s timea great buyer of land, with his stat-
utes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his re-
coveries ; is this the fine of his fines, and the recovery of his
recoveries, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt? Will his
vouchers vouch him no more of his purchases, and double
ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair of indentures?
The very conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in this box;
and must the inheritor himself have no more? ha?

Hor. Not a jot more, my lord.

Ham. Is not parchment made of sheep-skins?

Hor. Ay, my lord, and of calves-skins too.

Ham. They are shecp, and calves, which seek out assur-

ance in that.
Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 267

 

Here the lawyer descants upon mortality in the
abstrusest language of his science. With the skull
in his hand, Hamlet does not here speculate on the
base uses to which the dust of Alexander or the
imperial clay of Cesar may have returned. Nor
does he indulge in any of those stately and dirge-
like meditations in which the literature of Shakes-
peare’s time was so abounding, and in which
Shakespeare himself could teach the nothingness of
all human things so feelingly as to persuade us all,
—a time when a chief justice in a peerage case
could pausé to moralize on the extinction of great
families,—saying, “and yet Time hath his revolu-
tions; there must be a period and an end to all
temporal things—/inis rerum—an end of names and
dignities and whatever is terrene,—and why not of
De Vere? for where is Bohun? where is Mowbray ?
where is Mortimer? nay, which is more and most
of all, where is Plantagenet? They are entombed
in the urns and sepulchres of mortality.”

Action of battery. (See Nos. 12, 20.)

Statutes. Statutes-staple and statutes-mer-
chant were securities for money,—the one entered
268 THE LAW IN SIIAKESPEARE.

 

into before the chief magistrate of some trading
town, pursuant to 13 Edw. I. St. 38, de mercatori-
bus, and therefore called a statu'e-merchant; the
other pursuant to 27 Edw. III. St. 2, ¢. 9, before the
mayor of the staple, which was the grand mart for
the principal commodities and manufactures of the
kingdom, formerly held, under act of parliament,
in certain trading towns, from which this security
was called a statute-staple. Under them not only
could the debtor be imprisoned and his goods
seized to satisfy the debt, but also his lands could
be delivered to the creditor, to be held*by him un-
til he should satisfy the debt out of the rents and
profits. By these statutes, and by that of Acton
Burnel, (11 Edw. I.,) the creditor was empowered to
cause the debtor to appear before the mayor and
acknowledge the debt by recognizance, which was
enrolled. These securities, therefore, became the
sources of title to lands, and estates by statute-
merchant and statute-staple were classed as estates
defeasible on condition subsequent.

Fine and recovery. (See Nos. 6, 85.)
Assurance. (See Nos. 69, 99.)
Cases. (See No. 92.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 269

 

Double-voucher. This was an incident of
alienation of lands by a common recovery. A. de-
sired to suffer a common recovery so as to bar en-
tails, reraainders, and reversions, and thereby to
convey the land in fee-simple to B. To effect this
B. brought a suit against A. for the lands, alleging
that A. had no legal title, but that he camo into
possession after one C. (a fictitious person) had
turned the plaintiff out. Whereupon A., the de-
fendant, appeared, and called on D., (who was usu-
ally the crier of the court, who was used for that
purpose,) who, by fiction, was supposed to have
warranted the title to A. when the latter bought, to
come in and vouch and defend the title which he had
so warranted. D. thereupon pleaded, defending the
title. B. then requested leave of the court to imparl
or confer with the voucher D. in private, which was
done. B.returned into court, but D. absented him-
self and made default. Whereupon judgment was
given that B. recover the lands of A., and A. had
judgment to recover lands of equal value of D., the
man of straw. This recovery was with a single
voucher. But D. being a mere man of straw, it
was manifest that A. had only a nominal recom-
270 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

pense for the lands. It was customary to have a
recovery, with double voucher, by first conveying
an estate of freehold to any indifferent person
against whom the suit was brought, who vouched
the tenant in tail who wished to carry through the
recovery, who in turn vouched the man of straw
again. The reason of this double voucher was
that if a recovery was had immediately against the
tenant in tail, (A.,) it barred only such estate in
the lands of which he was then actually seized, but
if the recovery was had against another person,
and A., the tenant in tail, was vouched, it bound
every latent or contingent right which he might
have in the premises recovered. Death is there-
fore the fine and common recovery of all things and
the man himself, and his vouchers, single or double,
vouch him nothing then.

Indenture. (See Nos. 108, 132, 233, 236.)
Inheritor. (See Nos. 234, 308.)
Parchment. (See No. 158.)

No. 277.
Hor. How was this seal’d?
Ham, Why, even in that was heaven ordinant.
I had my father’s signet in my purse,
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE, 271

 

Which was the model of that Danish seal:
Folded the writ up in form of the other,
Subscrib’d it, gave’t the impression, plac’d it safely,

The changeling never known.
Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2.

No. 277a.

Had I but time as this fell sergeant, death,

Is strict in his arrest, O, I could tell you,—

But let it be: Horatio, I am dead;

Thou liv’st ; report me and my cause aright

To the unsatisfied.

Hamiet, Act 5, Scene 2.
Sergeant. Sergeants-at-arms were officers

whose duty it was to attend the king and to arrest
persons of condition offending. The office survives
in our time, in legislatures. There were also ser-
geants of an inferior dignity, as sergeants of the
mace, who attended the mayor or other head offi-
cers of cities for purposes of justice. Formerly all
justices in eyre had.certain officers attending them
who were called sergeants, who were in the nature
of tip-staves. (Stat. Westm. 1, 8 Edw. I. ¢. 80.)
There was also a sergeant of the hundred, who was
no more than the bailiff of the hundred. (Bract.
lib, 5, c. 4.)

Arrests. (See Nos. 11, 17, 86, 87, 1387, 138,
295, 300.)

Hamlet desires that his cause may be reported
aright. He has failed, and is held in the strict
arrest of death. The merits of his controversy
have never been tried. His own procrastination
272 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

has postponed the arbitrament, and he asks Hora-
tio to make a legal memorial which will show its
justice.

Cause. (See Nos. 13, 60, 249, 184, 200.)

No. 278.
And, in conclusion, nonsuits

My mediators.
Othello, Act 1, Scene 1.

Nonsuits. When the plaintiff failed to make
out his case by adducing insufficient evidence to
support it, he was called, and failing to answer
was nonsuited or adjudged not to have followed his
remedy.

No. 279.
It seems not meet, nor wholesome to my place,
To be produc’d (as, if I stay, I shall,)
Against the Moor: for, I do know, the state,
However this may gall him with some check,

Cannot with safety cast him.
Othello, Act 1, Scene 1.

Produced. An accuser or adverse witness is
said in law to be produced against the accused.
(See No. 53.)

Cast. Is to be defeated in a lawsuit; often ex-
pressed by the common phrase “cast in costs;”
probably derived from the words of judgment
against a plaintiff, “cassetur breve.”

(See No. 282.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 273

 

No. 280.

Bra. J therefore apprehend and do attach thee,
For an abuser of the world, a practiser
Of arts inhibited and out of warrant—
Lay hold upon him; if he do resist,
Subdue him at his peril.

Oth. Hold your hands,
Both you of my inclining, and‘the rest:
Were it my cue to fight, I should have known it
Without a prompter. Where will you that I go
To answer this your charge?

Bra. To prison, till fit time
Of law, and course of direct session,

Call thee to answer.
Othello, Act 1, Scene 2.

Attach. (See Nos. 86, 153, 177, 257.)

Tf the felon in any case resists or flies, whether
after arrest or before, the officer may kill him, and
such killing is justifiable. (2 Hale, P. C. 90, 95,
120.)

Session. A sitting of justices in court upon
their commission. (Lomlin’s Law Dict.)
(See Nos. 78, 79, 283, 296a.)

No. 280a.

Whoe’er he be that in this foul proceeding

Hath thus beguiled your daughter of herself,
And you of her, the bloody book of law

You shall yourself read in the bitter letter,

After your own sense, yea, though our proper son

Stood in your action,
Othello, Act 1, Scene 3.

Action. (See Nos. 139, 218, 289, 299.)
18
274 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

No. 281.

Bra. I therefore vouch again,
That with some mixturcs powerful o’er the blood,
Or with some dram conjur’d to this effect,
He wrought upon her.

Duke. To vouch this, is no proof;
Without more certain and more overt test,
Than these thin habits, and poor likelihoods
Of modern seeming, do prefer against him.

Othello, Act 1, Scene 3.
No. 282.

What, man! there are ways to recover the general again:
You are but now cast in his mood; a punishment more in
policy than in malice: even so as one would beat his offence-
less dog, to aftright an imperious lion; sue to him again, and

he’s yours.
Othello, Act 2, Scene 3.

Recover. The obtaining anything by judg-
ment or trial of law. (Yomlin’s Law Dict.)

Cast. (See No. 279.)

No. 283.
who has a breast so pure,

But some uncleanly apprehensions
Keep leets, and law-days, and in session sit

With meditations lawful?
Othello, Act 3, Scene 3.

Leets. A court-leet is a court of record having
the same jurisdiction within some particular pre-
cinct which the sheriff’s tourn hath in the county.
(4 Bl. Comm. p. 273.) It is also a word used for a
law-day in several ancient statutes. (Dyer, 30D.)
Ii is the most ancient court for criminal matters.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 275

 

Law-day. Called also court-leet. It was any
day of open court and commonly used for courts of
a county or hundred.

Session. (See Nos. 78, 79, 280, 296a.)

No. 284.
Yet, ’tis the plague of great ones;

Prerogativ’d are they less than the base.
Othello, Act 3, Scene 3.

No. 285.
Villain, be sure thou prove my Jove a whore;

Be sure of it; give me the ocular proof.
Othello, Act 3, Scene 3.

Evidence. (See Nos. 157, 170.)

No. 286.
I was (unhandsome warrior as I am)
Arraigning his unkindness with my soul;
But now I find, I had suborn’d the witness,

And he’s indited falsely.
Othello, Act 3, Scene 4.

Arraign. (See Nos. 27, 78, 239.)
Suborned. (See Nos. 88, 95, 304.)

Indicted. A bill of indictment is a written
accusation of one or more persons of a crime or a
misdemeanor preferred to and presented on oath by
a grand jury. (4 Bl. Comm. p. 802.)
276 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

No. 287.

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

Attorney. (See Nos. 127, 172, 178.)
Client. (See No. 172.)

No. 288.

Pure lips, sweet seals in my soft lips imprinted,
What bargains may I make, still to be sealing?
To sell myself I can be well contented,
So thou wilt buy, and pay, and use good dealing,
Which purchase if thou make, for fear of slips,
Set thy seal-manual on my wax-red lips.

7 Venus and Adonis.
Bargain. (See No. 256.)

Seal. (See Nos. 37, 52, 56, 108, 126, 158, 204,
207, 256, 274.)

No. 289.

Now let me say good night, and so say you;
If you will say so, you shall have a kiss.
Good night, quoth she; and ere he says adieu,

The honey fee of parting tender’d is.

Venus and Adonis.
Fee. (See No. 111.)

Tendered. (See Nos. 2, 56, 264.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE, 277

 

No. 290.
Guilty thou art of murder and of theft;
Guilty of perjury and subornation;
Quilty of treason, forgery, and shift;
Guilty of incest, that abomination ;
An accessory by thine inclination
To all sins past, and all that are to come,

From the creation to the general doom.
The Rape of Lucrece.

Guilty. (See Nos. 149, 174, 275.)
Accessory. (See Nos. 165, 297.)

Guilty of a felonious offense, not principally,
but by participation,--as by command, device, or
concealment.

Subornation. (See No. 156.) The connec-
tion of this word with perjury is most accurate.

Wo. 291.
No man inveigh against the wither’d flower,
But chide rough winter that the flower hath kill’d:
Not that devour’d, but that which doth devour,
Is worthy blame. 0, let it not be hild
Poor women’s faults, that they are so fulfill’d
‘With men’s abuses: those proud lords, to blame,

Make weak-made women tenants to their shame.
The Rape of Lucrece.
278 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

No. 292.

And with my trespass never will dispense,
Till life to death acquit my forced offense.

The Rape of Lucrece.
Acquit. (See No. 148.)

No. 293.

My stained blood to Tarquin I’ll bequeath,
Which by him tainted, shall for him be spent,
And as his due, writ in my testament.

My honor Ill bequeath unto the knife

That wounds my body so dishonoured,

* * * * ¥ *
Dear lord of that dear jewel I have lost,

What legacy shall I bequeath to thee?

* * * * * *
This brief abridgment of my will I make:

My soul and body to the skies and ground.

Bequeath. (See No. 57.) Gag nen
Legacy. (See No. 207.)

Testament. «See Nos. 129,150, 195, 207.)
Will. (See Nos. 128, 195, 207, 208.)

No. 294.

Mine enemy was strong, my poor self weak,
And far the weaker with so strong a fear;

My bloody judge forbade my tongue to speak;
No rightful plea might plead for justice there:
His scarlet lust came evidence to swear

That my poor beauty had purloin’d his eyes,

And when the judge is robb’d, the prisoner dies.

The Rape of Lucrece.
Plea. (See Nos. 54, 297.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 279

 

No. 295.

The deep vexation of his inward soul
Hath served a dumb arrest upon his tongue;
The Rape of Lucrece.

Served. The execution of process.
(See No. 140.)

Arrest. (See Nos. 11, 17, 86, 87, 187, 138,
277Ta, 800.)

No. 296.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
XVUHI. Sonnet.

Lease. The conveyance of land for a certain
time or at will. (See Nos. 100, 303, 308.)

No. 296a.

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

Sessions. (See Nos. 78, 79, 280, 283.)

No. 297.

Thy adverse party is thy advocate,
And ’gainst myself a lawful plea commence;
Such civil war is in my love and hate,
That I an accessary needs must be
To that sweet thief, which sourly robs from me.
XXXV. Sonnet.

Accessary. (See Nos. 165, 291.)

Plea. That which either party alleges in a suit.
(See No. 54, 294, 298.)
280 THE LAW IN SITAKESPEARE.

 

No. 353.
My .:eart doth plead, that thou in him dost lie,
A closet never p'erced with crystal eyes,
Eu: the defendant doth that plea deny,
Aad says in him thy fair appearance lies.
To ’cide this title is empanelled
A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart,
And by their verdict is determined
The clear eye’s moiety, and the dear heart’s part.
XLVI. Sonnet.

Plea. (See Nos. 54, 294, 297.)
Appearance. (See Nos. 79, 182, 187.)
Verdict. (See Nos. 121, 197.)

Empanelled. The writing and entering into
a parchment schedule by the sheriff the names of
the jury.

Quest. Inquest. Inquisition or inquiry upon
the oaths of an empanelled jury.

Moiety. (See Nos. 56, 132, 259.)

No. 299.

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o’er-sways their power,
How with his rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
LXV. Sonnet.

Hold a plea. An ancient phrase for holding
acourt. “Pleas before the honorable,” etc.

Action. (See Nos. 139, 218, 280a, 289.)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 281

 

No. 300.

But be contented: when that fell arrest
Without all bail shall carry me away,
My life hath in this line some interest,

Which for memorial still with thee shall stay.
LXXIV. Sonnet.

Arrest. (See Nos. 11, 17, 86, 87, 187, 138,
277a, 295.)

Bail. (See Nos. 35, 229.)

No. 301.

But do thy worst to steal thyself away,

For term of life thou art assured mine.
XCII. Sonnet.

Term. The limitation of time or estate; asa
lease for term of life, or years. (Tomlin’s Law
Dict.)

Assured. (See No. 51.)

No. 302.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments.

CXVI. Sonnet.
Impediments. And (because in the times of

popery a great variety of degrees of kindred were
made impediments to marriage, which impedi-
ments might, however, be bought off for money) it
is declared by the statute 32 Henry VIII., c. 38,
that nothing, God’s law except, shall impeach any
marriage but within the Levitical degrees, the

18a
282 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE,

 

furthest of which is that between uncle and niece.
(Gilb. Rep. 158.)

No. 303.

It fears not policy, that heretic,

Which works on leases of short-number’d hours.
CXXIV. Sonnet.

Lease. (See Nos. 100, 296, 308.)

Wo. 304.

Hence, thou suborn’d informer! a true soul,

When most impeach’d, stands least in thy control.
CXXV. Sonnet,

Suborned. (See Nos. 88, 95, 286.)

Informer. The person who informs against
or prosecutes in any of the king’s courts those who
offend against any law or penal statute.

Impeach. To accuse and prosecute for felony
or treason.

No. 305.

Her audit, though delay’d, answer’d must be,

And her quietus is to render thee.
CXXVI. Sonnet.

Quietus. A word made use of in the ex-
chequer in the discharge given to accountants. It
also signifies the discharge of an administrator.
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE. 283

 

No. 306.

So now I have confess’d that he is, thine,
And [ myself am mortgaged to thy will;
Myself I'll forfeit, so that other mine
Thou wilt restore, to be my comfort still;
But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,
For thou art covetous, and he is kind ;
He learn’d but, surety-like, to write for me,
Under that bond that him as fast doth bind.
The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take,
Thou usurer, that put’st forth all to use,
And sue a friend, came debtor for my sake;
So him I lose through my unkind abuse.
Him have I lost; thou hast both him and me;

He pays the whole, and yet I am not free.
CXXXIV. Sonnet

Mortgage. A conveyance of property as se-
curity. The property at common law became ab-
solutely forfeited to the mortgagee upon default in
the performance of the condition.

Forfeit. (See Nos. 17, 25, 52, 56, 259.)
Bond. (See Nos. 40, 51, 52, 56, 98, 99, 131.)
Statute. (See No. 276.)

Surety. (See No. 50.) .

No. 307.

Why should my heart think that a several plot,
Which my heart knows the wide world’s common place ?
CXAXXVII. Sonnet.

Common. (See Nos. 47, 208.)
284 THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

No. 308.

Poor soul, the center of my sinful carth,
Fool’d by those rebel powers that thee array,

Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?

Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend ?

Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body’s end?

Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;

Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more:

So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men,

And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.
CXLVI. Sonnet.

Lease. (See Nos. 100,296, 303.)
Term. (See No. 301.)
Inheritor. (See Nos. 234, 276.)

Wo. 309.
Whence hast thou this becoming of thimgs ill,
That in the very refuse of thy deeds
There is such strength and warranties of skill.

CL. Sonnet.
Deeds. (See Nos. 56, 67.)

Warranties. A promise or covenant by deed
by the bargainor, for himself and his heirs, to war-
rant or secure the bargainee and his heirs against
all men in the enjoyment of the thing granted.
to
ay
ou

THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE.

 

No. 310.

Think women still to strive with men,
To sin, and never for to saint:
There is no heaven, by holy then,
When time with age shall them attaint.
Passionate Pilgrim, XVII.

Attaint. (See Nos. 44, 130, 153.)

No. 311.
So on the tip of his subduing tongue
All kinds of arguments and question deep,
All replication prompt, and reason strong,

For his advantage still did wake and sleep.
Lover's Complaint.

Replication. (See No. 272.)

No. 312.

My woeful self, that did in freedom stand,
And was my own fee-simple, (not in part.)
Lover's Complaint.

Fee-simple. (See Nos. 6, 63, 159, 247.)
INDEX.

(The Figures refer to due Numbers.)

ABJURE, 40, 103.

Access, 269.

Accessory, 168, 291, 297.

Accited, 225.

According to the tenor, 56.

Acquit, 148, 292.

Acquittance, 4, 45, 274.

Act, (Statute,) 56, 162, 198.

Action, 189, 218, 280a, 289, 299.

Action of battery, 12, 20, 276.

Action, bring my, 68.

Action entered, an, 137.

Action lies, 271.

Action on the case, 87.

Action of slander, 20.

Accused and accuser face to face, 115.

Addition, (title of honor,) 90, 238.

Adjourn court, 182.

Administer oath, 169.

Adoption, citizenship by, in Roman law, 227.

Advised by counsel, 136.

Advocate, an, 297.

Adverse party, 297.

Affeered, 101.

Affied, 69.

Afty, 226.

All his right, 40.

Alleged, 178.

Alleges, in Latin, 64.

Allegiance, 93.

Ambassador, 186.

Amerced with a fine, 248.
(287)
288 INDEX.

 

And whereas, 158.

Annual fee in tribute, 270.

Anawer, 56.

Answer, to a charge, 158.

Answer to, by lawful form, 208.

Anything to say before judgment, 56.

Appeal, 181, 182.

Appeal, to accuse, 116.

Appeal, to make good an, 115.

Appearance, 79, 182, 187, 298.

Appeared against, 178.

Appeared in court, 187.

Appearance, personal, distinguished from that by attor-
ney, 127.

Appellant, 116, 120, 180.

Appertinents, 147.

Apprehend, (to arrest,) 255.

Arraign, 27, 78, 79, 239, 286.

Arraign and try, 27.

Arraigning, 286.

Arbitrate, 119.

Arbitrement, 149.

Arrest, 11, 17, 86, 87, 187, 138, 277a, 295, 300.

Arrest, at suit of, 11.

Arrest, mode of, 148.

Arrested on the case, (form of action,) 87.

Arrest, resistance to, 280.

Arrest, to answer, 148.

Arrests, warrant of, 270.

Armigero, 4.

Articles, 165, 176, 259, 261.

Article of an oath, 215.

Articles contracted, 155.

Articulate, (treaty,) 199.

As aforesaid, 191.

Assign a day of trial, 180.

Assurance, 69, 99, 276.

Assure, to, 66, 67.

Assured, 51, 301.
INDEX. 289

 

At the suit of, 11.

Atone, 119.

Attach, 1538, 175, 177, 257, 280.
Attach by officer, 86.
Attached goods, 175.
Attainder, 44, 130.
Attainder, law of, 153.
Attaint, 310.

Attainted, 153.

Attested, 14.

Attorney, die by, 60.
Attorneys, 127, 172, 178, 287.
Attorneys general, 124.
Audit, 305.

Avouch, 40, 106, 258.

Award judgment to, 56.

Baix, 35, 229, 300.

Banishment, law of, 127.

Bankrupt, 56.

Bar, 114, 148, 144.

Bar, (in a court,) 174, 178.

Bar from succession, 83.

Bargain, 256, 288.

Bargain sealed, 192.

Battery, 276.

Beadle, 241.

Before-breach of laws, 149.

Bench, 9, 141, 239.

Benefit of clergy, 158.

Benevolences, 124.

Bequeathed, 87, 293.

Bequeathed legacy, 293.

Bequeathing a legacy, 207.

Bill, (bond,) 4.

Bill, (parliamentary law,) 5, 142.

Bills of outlawry, 209.

Blanks, 124, 186.

Bond, 40, 51, 52, 56, 98, 99, 181, 306.
19
290 INDEX.

 

Bond, condition of, 52.

Bond, single, 52.

Bottom, 49, 109.

Bound to, 181.

Bourn, (a boundary,) 210, 271a.
Broken seal, 149.

Brokers, 265.

Burglary, 38.

By these “presence,” 158.

CALL, (to trial,) 177.

Call into court, 56.

Call to answer, 280.

Cancel a bond, 98.

Canon, 111, 263.

Capital, (crime, ) 274.

Capitulate, 134.

Case, (form of action,) 87.

Cases, 92, 276.

Case of justice, 188.

Cast, to defeat in a suit, 279, 282.
Cause, 18, 60, 149, 184, 200, 277a.
Cause, hearing of, 21.

Cause in controversy, 56.

Challenge, to a judge, 181.

Challenge law, (to demand a trial,) 127.
Charity fulfils the law, 48.

Charge, 34.

Charters, 201.

Chattels and goods, 68,

Cite to, 53. ,

Cited to court, 187.

Client, 172, 287.

Come into court, 182.

Commission, 185, 186, 193.
Commission, those in, 91, 239.
Commission to office, reading of, 179.
Committed, (to prison,) 77, 136, 141, 146, 166.
Common estate in, distinguished from severalty, 158, 307.
INDEX. 291

 

Common of pasture, 158.
Common, right of, 208.

Common, tenancy.in, 47, 158, 207.
Compact sealed, 259.

Composition, an agreement, 216.
Compound to, 64, 67.
Compounded, (agreed to,) 204,
Conclude to a league, 186.
Concluded articles, 155.
Conditions, 217.

Condition of bond, 52.
Conditionally, 161.

Confess a bond to, 56.
Confessions, 178.

Confirm, 185, 238.

Confirm to, (by letters patent,) 185.
Confirm to, (as evidence, ) 105.
Confirmed, 14.

Conspired, 148.

Contempt of court, law of, 141.
Contracted, 155.

Contrary to the king, his crown, and dignity, 158.
Conveyances, 275.

Convict, 170.

Coram, 4.

Coroner, 8, 275.

Corrupted, (in blood by attainder,) 153.
Counsel, 217.

Counsel, advised by, 136.
Countermand, a, 31.

Course of law, 170.

Court-hand, 158.

Covenants kept, 66.

Covenant, 126, 217.

Covenants, 66, 126, 217.
Crowner’s-quest, 275.

Cushion, (judge’s seat, a) 239.
Cust-alorum, 4

Cut the entail, 63.
292 INDEX.

 

Desrors, prison limits, 222.
Deed, 67.

Deed of gifts, 56.

Deeds, warranties in, 309.
Decide title, 298.

Decree, 250.

De facto officer, law of, 112.
Defendant, 298.

Default for non-appearance, 187.
Degree, (of crime,) 174.

Degree, (in descent,) 122.,
Deliver, subscribed with seal, 204.
-Demesnes, 245.

Demise, 173.

Deny plea, 298.

Depose, (to swear,) 120, 163.
Deputed sword, 24.

Derived, 40.

Disclaiming, 116.

Disinherit, 161, 162.
Dismission, 211.

Dismiss controversy, 200.
Dismissed offense, 25.
Distrained, 127.

Divorced, 187.

Do thy office, 11.

Doom, 22, 249,

Double-voucher, 276.

Dowager, 40.

Dower, 15, 66, 67, 69.

Dowry, 66, 165.

Dowry, in lands and leases, 66.
Drawing swords within palace, 228.
Drawn, hanged, and quartered, 113.
Duress, law of, 160.

During life, 185.

Earnest, (to bind a bargain,) 90, 148.
Edict, 25, 185, 170, 232.
INDEX. 293

 

Either part’s agreement, 69.
Empanelled a ’quest, 298.
Enacted in the laws, 56.
Enemy proclaimed, 148.
Enfeoffed, 183.

Enfranchise, 211.
Enfranchisement, 205.
Enlarge, (release from prison,) 146.
Enrolled, 438, 206.

Entail, 63, 161, 237.

Entering lands, 159.

Entered an action, 187.

Equity, 156, 239.

Escape, law of, 89.

Espouse, 155.

Espoused, 150.

Estate unto, 40.

Even-handed justice, 92.
Evidence, 157, 170, 285.
Evidence, arule, 80.

Evidence, rule of, in cases of legitimacy, 107.
Evidence, simulated, 94.
Evidence, to give in, 271.
Exactions, 124.

Examinations, 178.

Examine, to, before a magistrate, 36, 38, 61.
Execute, (a deed,) 132.
Execution, 22, 91, 231.
Execution, done on, 91.
Executors, 128.

Exempt, 153.

Exhibit, 5.

Exposition of the law, 56, 232.
Extent, an, 58.

Face to face, to bring witnesses, 178.
Face to face, accusers, 188.

Factor, 84, 171.

Fee, a, 56.
294. INDEX.

 

Fee, (compensation,) 111.

Fee, (officer’s,) 86.

Fee, (reward,) 289.

Fee-farm, 192.

Fee-grief, 104.

Fee-simple, 6, 63, 159, 247, 312.
Felon, 254.

Felony, 158.

Feodary, 221.

Fine, as a penalty, 23, 56, 248.
Fine, (real estate,) 85, 276.
Fine and recovery, 6, 85, 276.
Forfeit, 17, 25, 52, 56, 259, 306.
Forfeiture, 52.

Form of justice, 240.

Further agreed, 155.

GAGED, 259.

Goods and chattels, 68.

Goods, chattels, lands, tenements, 186.
Good men and true, 34.

Grand jury, 10.

Grant, pasture to, 47.

Granted, 219.

Guardian, 110.

Guilty, 149, 174, 275, 291.

HAVE judgment, 92.

Hearing a cause, 200.

Hearing a matter, 200.

Heir, 234, 244.

Heirs forever, 161, 208.

Held court, 187.

“Higher law,” exposition of, 170.
Homage, (feudal,) 1, 124, 278.
Humbly complaining, (petition,) 167.

ImpPEACH, to, 110.
Impeached as a witness, 804.
INDEX. 295

 

Impediments to marriage, 302.
Impounded, 144a.

Impress, (into military service,) 100.
Imprimis, 155.

In farm, to have in, 124.

In lieu of, 1.

In witness whereof, 192.
Indenture, 108, 182, 2383, 236, 276
Indentures, tripartite, 132.
Indicted, 286.

Informer, suborned, 304.
Inheritance, 63, 127, 259.
Inheritor, 234, 276, 308.
Inheritrix, 144.

Inns of court, 158.

Interdiction, (of the realm,) 102.
Intervallums, 139.

Intestate, 172.

Invest jointly, 238.

Invested, (with an office,) 96, 238.
Issue, (descendants,) 74, 97, 99, 100, 102, 207, 237.
Issue, unto their, 207.

Item, 155.

JOINTLY, 238.

Jointure, 165.

Jointress, 260.

Judge, 183.

Judge, a delegate of the king, 141.
Judge and executioner, 223.
Judge and juror, 188.
Judge, function of, 110.
Judge’s robe, 23.
Judgment, 21, 24.
Judgment, to award, 56.
Judgment, have, 92.
Judgment, to stand for, 56.
Jurisdiction of bishops, 186.
Jurisdiction, regal, 158.
296 INDEX.

 

Jury, 17.

Justice, a, 241.

Justice, a judge, 145, 239.

Justicer, 239.

Justice of the peace, 158.

Justification that plaintiff first assaulted, 12.

Lavy, (paramount owner of an estate,) 239.
Law, 158.

Law-days, 283.

Laws, out of Cade’s mouth, 158.

Laws of nature and of nations, 190.
League, 175.

Lease, 100, 296, 308, 308.

Leased, 123.

Leets, 283.

Legacy, 207, 293.

Legate, 186.

Legatine, 186.

Legitimacy, presumed conclusively, 107.
Letters, 269, 273.

Letters-patent, 124, 127, 185.

Liberties, 201.

Livery, in deed, 238.

Livery, to sue, 124, 127, 185.

Lord of the soil, 159.

Marnraiy, (to prove,) 118, 180.
Make good, (to prove,) 118.

Malefactors, 19, 38.

Manner, taken with, 44a, 131a.

Manual seal, 130.

Marriage, requisites of contract of, 14, 15, 82.

Marriage, contract and articles, 155.

Marriage, made of none effect by decree of divorce, 187.
Marriage, pre-contract of, 29.

Married women, status of, at common law, 71.
Marshal’s truncheon, 23.

Master and servant, 149.
INDEX. 297

 

Matter, 87, 186, 158.

Miscarry, (bailment,) 149.

Mercy, its relations to justice, 24, 25, 48, 56.
Misprision, 41.

Moiety, 56, 132, 259, 298.

Mortgaged, 306.

Motion, 182.

Murder, premeditated, 149.

Nations, laws of, 190.
Next ensuing, 155.

Next heir, 160.

Nominated in the bond, 56.
Non com., 36.

Nonsuits, 278.

Not guilty, 72, 178.

OATH, 169, 267.

Oath, not taken before a magistrate, not binding, 163.
Oath, to be taken according to affiant’s religion, 230.
Object to against, 116.

Obligations, (bonds,) 4, 158.

Officer de facto, law of, 112.

Open proclamation, 152.

Ordained laws, 220.

Outlawry, bills of, 209.

Overt, 281.

Own proper cost, 155.

O-yes, 7, 194.

PACKING with a witness, 70.
Parchment, 158, 276.

Pardon, 80.

Party and party, between, 200.
Parties, 200.

Parties interchangeably, 200.
Parties to stand forth, 56.
Pass on, (jury,) 17.

Pass upon, 240.

19a
298 INDEX.

 

Patent, 40.

Pawn, 124,

Passed a bill, (parliamentary law,) 142.
Peine forte et dure, 129a.
Penalty, 56.

Penalty of bond, 56.

Perjury, 38, 149.

Perpetual succession, 63.
Person, die in, 60.

Plaintiff, 18, 39.

Plea, 54, 294, 297, 298.

Plea, hold a, 299.

Plea, justice of, 56.

Plea, to mitigate, 56.

Plead, 298.

Pleaded not guilty, 178.

Point of law, 81, 275.

Practice, (wrong-doing,) 157.
Premunire, and causes of, 186.
Pre-contract of marriage, 29.
Precedent, effect of, 56.
Precepts, (process,) 140.
Premeditated murder, 149.
Premises, 1, 178.

Prenominate, 268.
Prerogativ’d, 284.

Prerogative, 75.

Prescription, law of, 164.
Present satisfaction, 86.
Present to, 34.

Present trial, 177.

Principal of bond, 56.

Prison limits to debtor, 222.
Privileged communication, slander, 251.
Proceed by process, 203.
Proceeded against, 274.
Process, 203, 211, 278.

Process forged, (official statement, ) 266.
Proclamation, 189.
INDEX. 299

 

Proclamation to disperse, (form of,) 152,

Procurator, 154.

Proditor, 151.

Produce a witness, 53, 279.

Produced as an accuser, 279.

Proofs, 178. ‘

Prorogue, 214, 246, 252.

Prosecutions, 209.

Prosecute a right, 40.

Protection out of, 186.

Proved to thy face, 158.

Purchase, 288.

Purchase, title by, distinguished from title by descent,
48a, 218.

QuEsT, 298.

’Quest, verdict of, 170.
Quiddets, 276.
Quietus, 305.

Quillets, 276.

Quit a fine, 56.
Quittance, 4.

RATIFIED, 176, 259.
Ratolorum, 4.

“Ready” for trial, 56.
Receipt, 45.

Recover in a suit, 282.
Recoveries, 276.
Recognizances, 273.
Record, 22.

Records of statutes, 158.
Recorded, 42.

Recover, (real estate,) 85.
Recovery, (real estate,) 75.
Redeem from pawn, 124.
Rejourn (adjourn) a controversy, 200.
Released and delivered, 155.
Remainders, 63.
300 INDEX.

 

Render into, 55.

Render to, 305.

Repeal, (to return,) 125.

Repealed, (to recall from exile,) 3, 130, 205.
Repealed, (statute,) 162, 198.
Replication, 272, 311.

Report a cause, 277a.

Reprieve, 30, 32, 242,

Rescue, a, 137.

Reservation, (in grant,) 238.
Resignation of crown, effect of, 160.
Respite, 28, 232.

Reverse, 249.

Reversion, 122, 192.

Revoke, to, an election, 202.

Robed justice, 239.

SALIQUE law, (exposition of,) 143, 144.
Seal, 37, 52, 56, 108, 126, 158, 204, 207, 256, 274, 288.
Seal to deed, 192.

Seal to blank commission, 193.

Sealed between us, 216. -

Seal-manual, 288.

Seal to indenture, 108.

Sealed, 150, 216, 259, 262.

Sealed interchangeably, 132.

Sealed under, 50.

Sealing-day, 40.

Seals, the great, 185, 186.

Seize a stray, 159.

Seize into our hands, 124.

Seized of lands, 259.

Self-defense, 248, 275.

Sentence, 24, 148.

Sentence pronounced, 170.

Sergeant, 277a.

Serve by indenture, 236.

Served, (process,) 140, 295.

Session of court, 78, 79, 280, 283, 296a.
INDEX. 301

 

Several man, every, 208.
Severalty, tenancy in, 47.
Severalty, estate in, distinguished from common, 307.
Silence commanded, 179.

Single bond, 52.

Slander, 251.

Sound, exposition, a most, 56.
Specialties, 46, 66.

Standing mute, 129a.

Stands for judgment, 56.

Star chamber, 4.

Statutes, 42, 198.

Statutes, biting, 158.

Statutes, (merchant and staple,) 276, 306.
Statutes, (staple,) 306.

Statute, rigour of, 16.

Statutes that have slept, 16.
Stray, 144a, 159.

Subornation, 156, 291.
Suborned, 88, 95, 286, 304.
Subsidy, 154.

Subscribe, 42.

Subscribe with seal, 204,
Succeed as heir, 234.

Succession, bar from, 83.

Sue, 306.

Sue to, 282.

Suicide not entitled to Christian burial, 275.
Suit, 287.

Suit, arrested at, 87. :
Suit, a losing, 56.

Suit, unto a, 154.

Summon, 78.

Surety, 50, 306.

Surety, paying debt, 306.

Swear him, 120.

Sworn twelve; (jury,) 17.

TABLES of his law, 170.
302 INDEX.

 

Temporal lands, 142.
Tenancy in capite, 158.
Tenants, 298.

Tender in court, 56.
Tenders, 264.

Tendered, 2, 289.
Tenement, 123.

Tenor, 37, 56, 189, 223, 232.
Tenor, according to, 56.
Tenures, 276.

Term, (lease,) 308.

Term, 42, 48.

Term of court, 59, 189.
Term of life, 301.
Testament, (will,) 129, 150, 195, 207, 293.
Till further day, 182.

Time, the old justice, 61.
Title, a crazed, 40.
Traitorously, 158.
‘Transporting, (bailment,) 149.
Treason, law of, 148.

Try to, 61.

UNREVERSED, 2.

Untendered, 205.

Urge against, to, 176.

Utter, (to sell or give out,) 238.

VACATION, 59.

Verdict, 121, 197, 298. ¢
Verdict given up to judge, 170.
Videlicet, 60.

Viva-voce, 178.

Vouch, 281.

WAGER of battle, procedure in, 121.
Ward, in, 62.

Warrant, 4, 110, 114.

Warranties in deeds, 309.
INDEX, 803

 

Waste, 6.

Wax, (seal,) 388.

Wills, 128, 195, 207, 208, 293.
Witness to deed, 192.
Witness to produce a, 53.
Witnesses, 178.

Wrest, 56, 143.

Writ, 223, 242.

Writ sued against you, 186.

Your honor, 18.

 

‘WEST PUBLIGHING CO., PRINTERS, SAINT PAUL, MINN.
5

Set

Sah