I was

Arraigning his unkindness with my soul:
But now I find I had suborn'd the witness,
And he's indicted falsely.

No one unacquainted with the logic of the law could possibly have written Hamlet's speech to Laertes, excusing himself for what he had done on the plea of madness

Was't Hamlet wrong'd Laertes? never Hamlet:
If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away,

And when he's not himself, does wrong Laertes,
Then Hamlet does it not; Hamlet denies it.
Who does it, then? His madness if it be so,
Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong'd;
His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy.

(v. 2.)

While, in the last couplet, we certainly seem to have a reference to the well known maxim of the law about the punishment of madmen, "furiosus solo furore puniatur." 1

accumulate

But it would be tedious to further illustrations. Enough have been cited to prove not only that Shakespeare had a

1 For this I am indebted to Mr. W. L. Rushton's most interesting, but too brief, little brochure on Shakespeare's Legal Maxims. Mr. Rushton accumulates some very remarkable instances of the way in which Shakespeare illustrates maxims laid down in Coke upon Littleton, and in other ancient legal authorities. Among other things, he points out the parallel between Angelo's remark in Measure for Measure (ii. 2), “The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept," and 2 Instit. 161, “Dormiunt aliquando leges moriuntur nunquam."

remarkably extensive and accurate acquaintance with the English law, but that his memory, during his whole career, was habitually reverting to it and to its associations. It is, therefore, quite possible that the conjecture of Chalmers, corroborated by Malone and supported by Payne Collier and Lord Campbell, namely, that Shakespeare was in early life employed as clerk in an attorney's office, may be correct. At Stratford there was by royal charter a Court of Record sitting every fortnight, with six attorneys, beside the town-clerk, belonging to it,' and it is certainly not straining probability to suppose that the young Shakespeare may have had employment in the office of one of them.

There is, it is true, no tradition to this effect, but such traditions as we have about Shakespeare's occupation between the time of leaving school and going to London are so loose and baseless that no confidence can be placed in them. It is, to say the least, more probable that he was in an attorney's office than that he was a butcher killing calves "in a high style" and making speeches over them. Lord Campbell acutely observes that his Will, "simple, terse, and condensed," is much more likely to have been drawn up by himself than by a Stratford attorney, who would be paid by the

1 Campbell, p. 21.

number of lines contained in it, and that it displays considerable technical skill, not only in the propriety of the terms in which the testator's meaning is expressed and the efficiency with which its provisions are secured, but in the substitution of "give" for "devise" in the clause referring to the non-realty bequest to his wife.

It may, of course, be urged that Shakespeare's knowledge of medicine, and particularly of that branch of it which relates to morbid psychology, is equally remarkable, and that no one has ever contended that he was a physician. It may be urged that his acquaintance with the technicalities of other crafts and callings, notably of marine and military affairs, was also extraordinary, and yet no one has suspected him of being a sailor or a soldier. This may be conceded, but the concession hardly furnishes an analogy. To these and to all other subjects he recurs occasionally and in season, but with reminiscences of the law his memory, as is abundantly clear, was simply saturated. In season and out of season, now in manifest, now in recondite application he presses it into the service of expression and illustration. At least a third of his myriad metaphors are derived from it. It would indeed be difficult to find a single act in any of his dramas, nay, in some of them, a single scene, the diction and imagery of which is not coloured by it. Much of his law

may have been acquired from three books easily accessible to him, namely Tottell's Precedents (1572), Pulton's Statutes (1578), and Fraunce's Lawier's Logike (1588), works with which he certainly seems to have been familiar; but much of it could only have come from one who had had an intimate acquaintance with legal proceedings. We quite agree with Mr. Castle that Shakespeare's legal knowledge is not what could have been picked up in an attorney's office, but could only have been learned by an actual attendance at the Courts, at a pleader's chambers, and on circuit, or by associating intimately with members of the Bench and Bar.

Perhaps the simplest solution of the problem is, to accept the hypothesis that in early life he was in an attorney's office; that he there contracted a love for the law which never left him; that as a young man in London, he continued to study or dabble in it for his amusement, to stroll in leisure hours into the Courts, and to frequent the society of lawyers. On no other supposition is it possible to explain the attraction which the law evidently had for him, and his minute and undeviating accuracy in a subject where no layman, who has indulged in such copious and ostentatious display of legal technicalities, has ever yet succeeded in keeping himself from tripping.

VI

SHAKESPEARE AND HOLINSHED1

THE

HE hearty thanks of all students of Shakespeare are due to Mr. Boswell-Stone. It is, of course, notorious that every one of Shakespeare's English Histories, as well as Macbeth and the historical portions of Lear and Cymbeline, were founded on Holinshed's Chronicles. With a fulness and accuracy which leaves nothing to be desired, Mr. Boswell-Stone has collected those passages from the Chronicles on which the poet has drawn, either directly for the general fabric of his plots, or collaterally for hints and suggestions. And the value of Mr. BoswellStone's work is enhanced by the admirable method adopted by him. He follows the poet, step by step, through Holinshed's narrative, printing at length such portions of it as correspond to what is reproduced in the dramas; interpolating episodically the passages from other parts of the Chronicles which Shakespeare has utilised, or which may have furnished him with

1 Shakspere's Holinshed. The Chronicles and the Historical Plays Compared. By W. G. Boswell-Stone.