1898.] on the Early Life and Work of Shakespeare. 749 



age between sixteen and three-and-twenty," says the Shepherd in 

 ' The Winter's Tale,' " or that youth would sleep out the rest." 

 Shakespeare may have relieved the tedium of those years by some of 

 the exploits suggested by the Shepherd, but of his serious occupations 

 we know nothing. There is therefore nothing to exclude any con- 

 clusion which may fairly be suggested by his writings. The clever 

 and needy boy of sixteen may have found employment for a time in 

 the office of one of the six attorneys practising in the Court of Eecord 

 which we know to have then existed at Stratford. He may also 

 have earned his bread for a time, as tradition asserts, by teaching in 

 the school of Holophernes. Finally, tiring alike of school and law, 

 he drifted into play-acting and play-writing. Certainly the age 

 between sixteen and three-and-twenty does not seem to have suggested 

 to his mind in after life the idea of sustained eifort or fixed purpose, 

 but only a certainty that the " boiled brains of nineteen and two-and- 

 twenty " would hunt in any weather. 



Such familiarity with legal phraseology as we find in Shakespeare's 

 works bespeaks some acquaintance with law, but not more than 

 could be readily acquired by a clever youth (and I suppose that 

 Lord Frederick Verisopht's estimate of Shakespeare still holds 

 good) who had served some sort of apprenticeship to the law, and 

 had gained access to a few law books. A man may talk of warrants, 

 charters, leets and law days, and not be a Lord Chancellor. He 

 may play on the words " recovery," and " assurance," and yet not be 

 a learned conveyancer. Jarndyce v. Jarndyce need not have been 

 attributed to a Lord Chancellor, nor Bardell v. Pickwick to a 

 Chief Justice, even if we did not know that the wiiter had picked up 

 his legal knowledge in a proctor's office. Where a writer has a 

 little law and sound brains he may be fairly expected to use his legal 

 terms aright. This is what Shakespeare for the most part does. 

 Mr. Castle indeed adduces several instances of the use of technical 

 terms, otherwise than they would be used by a lawyer, from which he 

 concludes that the plays were written by a layman, who sometimes 

 relied on his own resources, and at other times had recourse to the 

 aid of a trained lawyer. But why should this layman for ever hanker 

 after legal phrases and allusions, in season and out of season ? And 

 why, if he realised the need of advice, did he adventure on their use 

 in the absence of his adviser ? It is surely more reasonable to have 

 regard to Shakespeare's legal phraseology as a whole, and to draw 

 our conclusion accordingly. There is a curious passage in Nash's 

 ' Epistle to the Gentlemen Students of two Universities,' in which 

 he writes of some that leave " the trade of noverint " and busy them- 

 selves with the endeavours of art, '* affording whole Hamlets, I 

 should say handfuls of tragical speeches." This passage, which was 

 printed in 1589, may not refer to Shakespeare, but that it proves that 

 a limb of the law turned playwright — for this is the significance of 

 Nash's reference to the trade of noverint — is not an improbable sup- 

 position. 



