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witness.* No such signature has ever been found. This fact appears to us to dispose of Malone's confident belief that upon Shakspere leaving school he was placed for two or three years in the office of one of the seven attorneys who practised in the Court of Record in Stratford. Malone adds, "The comprehensive mind of our poet, it must be owned, embraced almost every object of nature, every trade, and every art, the manners of every description of men, and the general language of almost every profession: but his knowledge and application of legal terms seem to me not merely such as might have been acquired by the casual observation of his all-comprehending mind; it has the appearance of technical skill; and he is so fond of displaying it on all occasions, that there is, I think, some ground for supposing that he was early initiated in at least the forms of law." + Malone then cites a number of passages exemplifying Shakspere's knowledge and application of legal terms. The theory was originally propounded by Malone in his edition of 1790; and it gave rise to many subsequent notes of the commentators, pointing out these technical allusions. The frequency of their occurrence, and the accuracy of their use, are, however, no proof to us that Shakspere was professionally a lawyer. There is every reason to believe that the principles of law, especially the law of real property, were much more generally understood in those days than in our own. Educated men, especially those who possessed property, looked upon law as a science instead of a mystery; and its terms were used in familiar speech instead of being regarded as a technical jargon. When Hamlet says, "This fellow might be in his time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries," he employs terms with which every gentleman was familiar, because the owner of property was often engaged in a practical acquaintance with them. This is one of the examples given by Malone. "No writer," again says Malone, "but one who had been conversant with the technical language of leases and other conveyances, wouldhave used determination as synonymous to end." He refers to a passage in the 13th Sonnet,

We may

"So should that beauty which you hold in lease

Find no determination.”

add that Coriolanus uses the verb in the same way :

"Shall I be charg'd no further than this present?
Must all determine here?"

:

The word is used as a term of law, with a full knowledge of its primary meaning; and so Shakspere uses it. The chroniclers use it in the same way. Upon the passage in the Sonnets to which we have just referred, Malone has a note, with a parallel passage from Daniel :—

• Mr. Wheler, of Stratford, having taken up the opinion many years ago, upon the suggestion of Malone, that Shakspere might have been in an attorney's office, has availed himself of his opportunities as a solicitor to examine hundreds of documents of Shakspere's time, in the hope of discovering his signature. The examination was altogether fruitless.

+ Posthumous 'Life.'

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Daniel was not a lawyer, but a scholar and a courtier. Upon the passage in Richard III.,

"Tell me, what state, what dignity, what honour,

Canst thou demise to any child of mine?"

Malone asks what poet but Shakspere has used the word demise in this sense; observing that "hath demised, granted, and to farm let" is the constant. language of leases. Being the constant language, a man of the world would be familiar with it. A quotation from a theologian may show this familiarity as well as one from a poet ::—“ I conceive it ridiculous to make the condition of an indenture something that is necessarily annexed to the possession of the demise." If Warburton had used law-terms in this logical manner, we might have recollected his early career; but we do not learn that Hammond, the great divine from whom we quote, had any other than a theological education. We are further told, when Shallow says to Davy, in Henry IV., "Are those precepts served?" that precepts, in this sense, is a word only known in the office of a justice of peace. Very different would it have been indeed from Shakspere's usual precision, had he put any word in the mouth of a justice of peace that was not known in his office. When the Boatswain, in The Tempest, roars out "Take in the topsail," he uses a phrase that is known only on shipboard. the passage of Henry IV., Part II.,—

"For what in me was purchas'd,

Falls upon thee in a more fairer sort,"

In

it is held that purchase, being used in its strict legal sense, could be known only to a lawyer. An educated man could scarcely avoid knowing the great distinction of purchase as opposed to descent, the only two modes of acquiring real estate. This general knowledge, which it would be very remarkable if Shakspere had not acquired, involves the use of the familiar law-terms of his day, fee simple, fine and recovery, entail, remainder, escheat, mortgage. The commonest practice of the law, such as a sharp boy would have learnt in two or three casual attendances upon the Bailiff's Court at Stratford, would have familiarized Shakspere very early with the words which are held to imply considerable technical knowledge-action, bond, warrant, bill, suit, plea, arrest. It must not be forgotten that the terms of law, however they may be technically applied, belong to the habitual commerce of mankind; they are no abstract terms, but essentially deal with human acts, and interests, and thoughts: and it is thus that, without any fanciful analogies, they more readily express the feelings of those who use them with a general significancy, than any other words that the poet could apply. A writer who has carried the theory of Shakspere's professional occupation farther even than Malone, holds that the Poems are especially full of these technical terms; and he gives many instances from the Venus and Adonis, the Lucrece, and the Sonnets, saying, "they

swarm in his poems even to deformity.". Surely, when we read those exquisite lines,

"When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,”

we think of anything else than the judge and the crier of the court; and yet this is one of the examples produced in proof of this theory. Dryden's noble use of "the last assizes" is no evidence that he was a lawyer. Many similar instances are given, equally founded, we think, upon the mistake of believing that the technical language has no relation to the general language. Metaphorical, no doubt, are some of these expressions, such as

"But be contented when that fell arrest

Without all bail shall carry me away;"

but the metaphors are as familiar to the reader as to the poet himself. They present a clear and forcible image to the mind; and, looking at the habits of society, they can scarcely be called technical. Dekker describes the conversation at the third-rate London ordinary :--" There is another ordinary, at which your London usurer, your stale bachelor, and your thrifty attorney do resort; the price three-pence; the rooms as full of company as a jail; and indeed divided into several wards, like the beds of an hospital. The compliment between these is not much, their words few; for the belly hath no ears: every man's eye here is upon the other man's trencher, to note whether his fellow lurch him, or no: if they chance to discourse, it is of nothing but of statutes, bonds, recognizances, fines, recoveries, audits, rents, subsidies, sureties, enclosures, liveries, indictments, outlawries, feoffments, judgments, commissions, bankrupts, amercements, and of such horrible matter." Here is pretty good evidence of the general acquaintance with the law's jargon; and Dekker, who is himself a dramatic poet, has put together in a few lines as many technical terms as we may find in Shakspere. It has been maintained, as we have mentioned, that our poet was brought up as a gardener, as proved by his familiarity with the terms and practice of the horticultural art. Malone, after citing his legal examples, says, "Whenever as large a number of instances of his ecclesiastical or medicinal knowledge shall be produced, what has now been stated will certainly not be entitled to any weight." We shall not argue that none but an apothecary could have written the description of the vendor of drugs, and the culler of simples, in whose

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Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds." §

Nor do we hold, because he has mentioned the 'ague about a dozen times, he was familiar with the remedies for that disorder; nor that, when Falstaff describes the causes of apoplexy to the Chief Justice, and says that he has read

* Brown's Autobiographical Poems, &c. Dekker's Gull's Hornbook:' 1609.

Ode on Mrs. Killigrew.

§ Romeo and Juliet, Act v., Scene 1.

of the effects in Galen, Shakspere had gone through a course of study in that author to qualify himself for a diploma. He does not use medical terms as frequently as legal, because they are not as apposite to the thoughts and situations of his speakers. It is the same with the terms of divinity, which Malone cannot find in such abundance as the terms of law. But if the terms be not there, assuredly the spirit lives in his pure teaching; and his philosophy is lighted up with something much higher than the moral irradiations of the unassisted understanding. Of his manifold knowledge it may be truly said, as he said of his own Henry V.,

"Hear him but reason in divinity,

And, all-admiring, with an inward wish

You would desire the king were made a prelate :
Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,

You would say,—it hath been all-in-all his study:

List his discourse of war, and you shall hear

A fearful battle render'd you in music :
Turn him to any cause of policy,

The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter; that, when he speaks,
The air, a charter'd libertine, is still,
And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears,
To steal his sweet and honey'd sentences;
So that the art and practic part of life

Must be the mistress to this theoric."

We hold, then, that William Shakspere, the son of a possessor and cultivator of land, a gentleman by descent, married to the heiress of a good family, comfortable in his worldly circumstances, married the daughter of one in a similar rank of life, and in all probability did not quit his native place when he so married. The marriage-bond, which was discovered a few years since, has set at rest all doubt as to the name and residence of his wife. She is there described as Anne Hathwey, of Stratford, in the diocese of Worcester, maiden. Rowe, in his 'Life,' says," Upon his leaving school he seems to have given entirely into that way of living which his father proposed to him; and in order to settle in the world, after a family manner, he thought fit to marry while he was yet very young. His wife was the daughter of one Hathaway, said to have been a substantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford." At the hamlet of Shottery, which is in the parish of Stratford, the Hathaways had been settled forty years before the period of Shakspere's marriage; for in the Warwickshire Surveys, in the time of Philip and Mary, it is recited that John Hathaway held property at Shottery, by copy of court-roll, dated 20th of April, 34th of Henry VIII. (1543).† The Hathaway of Shakspere's time was named Richard; and the intimacy between him and John Shakspere is shown by a precept in an action against Richard Hathaway, dated 1576, in which John Shakspere is his bondman. Before the discovery of the marriage-bond Malone had found a con*Henry V., Act I., Scene 1.

The Shottery property, which was called Hewland, remained with the descendants of the Hathaways till 1838.

firmation of the traditional account that the maiden name of Shakspere's wife was Hathaway; for Lady Barnard, the grand-daughter of Shakspere, makes bequests in her will to the children of Thomas Hathaway, "her kinsman." But Malone doubts whether there were not other Hathaways than those of Shottery, residents in the town of Stratford, and not in the hamlet included in the parish. This is possible. But, on the other hand, the description in the marriage-bond of Anne Hathaway, as of Stratford, is no proof that she was not of Shottery; for such a document would necessarily have regard only to the parish of the person described. Tradition, always valuable when it is not opposed to evidence, has associated for many years the cottage of the Hathaways at Shottery with the wife of Shakspere. Garrick purchased relics out of it at the time of the Stratford Jubilee; Samuel Ireland afterwards carried off what was called Shakspere's courting-chair; and there is still in the house a very ancient carved bedstead, which has been handed down from descendant to descendant as an heirloom. The house was no doubt once adequate to form a comfortable residence for a substantial and even wealthy yeoman. It is still a pretty cottage, embosomed by trees, and surrounded by pleasant pastures; and here the young poet might have surrendered his prudence to his affections:

"As in the sweetest buds

The eating canker dwells, so eating love
Inhabits in the finest wits of all."

The early marriage of the young man,

with one more

than seven years

his

very

elder, has been supposed to have been a rash and passionate proceeding. Upon

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