748 The Bight Hon. D. H. Madden [May 20, 



Jonson is not likely to have exaggerated Shakespeare's proficiency in 

 the classical studies upon which he justly prided himself. *' The rudi- 

 ments of Greek," Mr. Sidney Lee tells us, " were occasionally taught in 

 Elizabethan grammar-schools to very promising pupils." If Shake- 

 speare had some Greek, we may fairly conclude that he was a promising 

 pupil, and credit him with the full amount of learning which a clever 

 boy would carry away from the grammar-school at Stratford — scholar- 

 ship perhaps neither critical nor profound, and not disdaining the aid 

 of translations when procurable, but for literary purposes a sufficient 

 introduction to the masterpieces of the older civilisations. 



If the early works of Shakespeare had been published anonymously, 

 and we had to seek for some clue as to their probable authorship, 

 a careful inquirer could not fail to note the frequent use of legal 

 phraseology, es^/ecially in the Poems and earlier plays. I have 

 recently seen it stated that there are no fewer than fifty-one legal 

 terms and allusions in the Poems, of which twenty-nine occur in 

 the Sonnets. I have not verified this statement, but I see no reason 

 to doubt its accuracy. Remarkable as is the frequency of those 

 allusions, the manner of their introduction is still more noteworthy. 

 They are for the most part of a casual character, introduced without 

 special reference to the matter in hand, or to the context, with which 

 they are often out of harmony. A poet or a dramatist may employ a 

 term of art with strict accuracy, without leading to the conclusion 

 that he was himself possessed of technical knowledge. He may have 

 consulted a book, or (better still) a friend skilled in the art, when- 

 ever it became needful to make use of technical language. But when 

 terms of art are used, not of set purpose, but because they present 

 themselves unbidden to the writer's miud, it is impossible to avoid 

 the conclusion that they have become, somehow or other, part of his 

 mental equipment. No one but a lawyer would go to a law book in 

 search of a simile or a pun. 



It is, I think, impossible for a layman to realise the extent to 

 which legal terms and allusions are embedded in the ordinary lan- 

 guage of Shakespeare. It would be easy to accumulate instances. 

 Some are obvious enough, such as Eosaline's pun on the announce- 

 ment of three proper young men of excellent growth and presence : 

 " Be it known unto all men by these presents ; " and the suggestion 

 of Autipholus of Syracuse that a man may recover his hair by fine and 

 recovery, capped by Dromio's " Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig and 

 recover the lost hair of another man." Others are more recondite, 

 as when Lepidus, with a lawyer's appreciation of the difference be- 

 tween taking by descent and by purchase, says of Mark Antony that 

 his faults are "hereditary rather than purchased; what he cannot 

 change, than what he chooses." 



There is no known fact in Shakespeare's life associating him with 

 the practice of the law. It is, however, reasonably certain that he 

 found some employment for his time and his brains between his 

 leaving school and his coming to London. " I would there were no 



