Shakespeare as a Lawyer.
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:
