Chapter 8

Shakespeare as a Lawyer {2}

The Plays and Poems of Shakespeare supply ample evidence that their
author not only had a very extensive and accurate knowledge of law,
but that he was well acquainted with the manners and customs of
members of the Inns of Court and with legal life generally.

"While novelists and dramatists are constantly making mistakes as
to the laws of marriage, of wills, and inheritance, to
Shakespeare's law, lavishly as he expounds it, there can neither be
demurrer, nor bill of exceptions, nor writ of error." Such was the
testimony borne by one of the most distinguished lawyers of the
nineteenth century who was raised to the high office of Lord Chief
Justice in 1850, and subsequently became Lord Chancellor. Its
weight will, doubtless, be more appreciated by lawyers than by
laymen, for only lawyers know how impossible it is for those who
have not served an apprenticeship to the law to avoid displaying
their ignorance if they venture to employ legal terms and to
discuss legal doctrines. "There is nothing so dangerous," wrote
Lord Campbell, "as for one not of the craft to tamper with our
freemasonry." A layman is certain to betray himself by using some
expression which a lawyer would never employ. Mr. Sidney Lee
himself supplies us with an example of this. He writes (p. 164):
"On February 15, 1609, Shakespeare . . . obtained judgment from a
jury against Addenbroke for the payment of No. 6, and No. 1. 5s.
0d. costs." Now a lawyer would never have spoken of obtaining
"judgment from a jury," for it is the function of a jury not to
deliver judgment (which is the prerogative of the court), but to
find a verdict on the facts. The error is, indeed, a venial one,
but it is just one of those little things which at once enable a
lawyer to know if the writer is a layman or "one of the craft."

But when a layman ventures to plunge deeply into legal subjects, he
is naturally apt to make an exhibition of his incompetence. "Let a
non-professional man, however acute," writes Lord Campbell again,
"presume to talk law, or to draw illustrations from legal science
in discussing other subjects, and he will speedily fall into
laughable absurdity."

And what does the same high authority say about Shakespeare? He
had "a deep technical knowledge of the law," and an easy
familiarity with "some of the most abstruse proceedings in English
jurisprudence." And again: "Whenever he indulges this propensity
he uniformly lays down good law." Of Henry IV., Part 2, he says:
"If Lord Eldon could be supposed to have written the play, I do not
see how he could be chargeable with having forgotten any