384 A Century of Science 



law. His allusions to the common law are often 

 very amusing, as when, in &quot; Love s Labour s Lost,&quot; 

 at the end of a brisk punning-match between Boyet 

 and Maria, he offers to kiss her, laughingly asking 

 for a grant of pasture on her lips, and she replies, 

 &quot; Not so ; my lips are no common, though several 

 they be.&quot; Again, in &quot; The Comedy of Errors,&quot; 

 &quot; Dromio asserts that there is no time for a bald 

 man to recover his hair. This having been writ 

 ten, the law phrase suggested itself, and he was 

 asked whether he might not do it by fine and re 

 covery, and this suggested the efficiency of that 

 proceeding to bar heirs ; and this started the con 

 ceit that thus the lost hair of another man would be 

 recovered.&quot; l In such quaint allusions to the com 

 mon law and its proceedings Shakespeare abounds, 

 and we cannot help remembering that Nash, in his 

 prefatory epistle to Greene s &quot; Menaphon,&quot; printed 

 about 1589, makes sneering mention of Shake 

 speare as a man who had left the &quot; trade of Nove- 

 rint,&quot; whereunto he was born, in order to try his 

 hand at tragedy. The &quot;trade of Noverint&quot; was 

 a slang expression for the business of attorney; 

 and this passage has suggested that Shakespeare 

 may have spent some time in a law office, as stu 

 dent or as clerk, either before leaving Stratford, or 



1 Davis, The Law in Shakespeare, St. Paul, 18S4. 



