Act i. Sc. 3.

And in the very first speech of the first scene of the same play, the husband of this virtuous and careful dame says of the same "Gerardine," (who, as he is poor and a gentleman, it need hardly be said, is about the only honest man in the piece,)—"His lands be in statutes." And that poor debauchee, Robert Greene, who knew no more of law than he might have derived from such limited, though authentic information as to its powers over gentlemen who made debts without the intention of paying them, as he may have received at frequent unsolicited interviews with a sergeant or a bum-bailiff, has this passage in his "Quip for an Upstart Courtier," 1592:—

"The mercer he followeth the young upstart gentleman that hath no government of himself and feedeth his humour to go brave; he shall not want silks, sattins, velvets to pranke abroad in his pompe; but with this proviso, that he must bind over his land in a statute merchant or staple; and so at last forfeit all unto the merciless mercer, and leave himself never a foot of land in England."

Very profound legal studies, therefore, cannot be predicated of Shakespeare on the ground of the knowledge which he has shown of this peculiar kind of statute.

It is not surprising that both our legal Shakespearean commentators cite the following passage from "As You Like It" in support of their theory; for in it the word "extent" is used in a sense so purely technical, that not one in a thousand of Shakespeare's lay readers now-a-days would understand it without a note:—

Duke F. Well, push him out of doors, And let my officers of such a nature Make an extent upon his house and lands." Act iii. Sc. 1.

"Extent," as Mr. Rushton remarks, is directed to the sheriff to seize and value lands and goods to the utmost extent; "an extendi facias" as Lord Campbell authoritatively says, "applying to the house and lands as a fieri facias would apply to goods and chattels, or a capias ad satisfaciendum to the person." But that John Fletcher knew, as well as my Lord Chief Justice, or Mr. Barrister Rushton, or even, perhaps, William Shakespeare, all the woes that followed an extent, the elder Mr. Weller at least would not have doubted, had he in the course of his literary leisure fallen upon the following passage in "Wit Without Money" (1630):—

"Val Mark me, widows Are long extents in law upon men's livings, Upon their bodies' winding-sheets; they that enjoy 'em Lie but with dead men's monuments, and beget Only their own ill epitaphs." Act ii. Sc. 2.

George Wilkins, too, the obscure author of "The Miseries of Enforced Marriage," uses the term with as full an understanding, though not with so feeling an expression or so scandalous an illustration of it, in the following passage from the fifth act of that play, which was produced about 1605 or 1606:—

"They are usurers; they come yawning for money; and the sheriff with them is come to serve an extent upon your land, and then seize your body by force of execution."

Another seemingly recondite law-phrase used by Shakespeare, which Lord Campbell passes entirely by, though Mr. Rushton quotes three instances of it, is "taken with the manner." This has nothing to do with good manners or ill manners; but, in the words of the old law-book before cited,—

—"is when a theefe hath stollen and is followed with hue and crie and taken, having that found about him which he stole;—that is called ye maynour. And so we commonly use to saye, when wee finde one doing of an unlawful act, that we tooke him with the maynour or manner."

Termes de la Ley, 1595, fol. 126, b.

Shakespeare, therefore, uses the phrase with perfect understanding, when he makes Prince Hal say to Bardolph,—

"O villain, thou stolest a cup of sack eighteen years ago, and wert taken with the manner, and ever since thou hast blush'd extempore." 1 Henry IV.Act ii, Sc. 4.

But so Fletcher uses the same phrase, and as correctly, when he makes Perez say to Estefania, in "Rule a Wife and Have a Wife,"—

"How like a sheep-biting rogue, taken i' the manner, And ready for the halter, dost thou look now!"—Act v. Sc. 4.

But both Fletcher and Shakespeare, in their use of this phrase, unusual as it now seems to us, have only exemplified the custom referred to by our contemporary legal authority,—"And so we commonly use to saye, when wee finde one doing of an unlawfull act, that we tooke him with the maynour"; though this must doubtless be understood to refer to persons of a certain degree of education and knowledge of the world.

It seems, then, that the application of legal phraseology to the ordinary affairs of life was more common two hundred and fifty years ago than now; though even now-a-days it is much more generally used in the rural districts than persons who have not lived in them would suppose. There law shares with agriculture the function of providing those phrases of common conversation which, used figuratively at first, and often with poetic feeling, soon pass into mere thought-saving formulas of speech, and which in large cities are chiefly drawn from trade and politics. And if in the use of the law-terms upon which we have remarked, which are the more especially technical and remote from the language of unprofessional life among all those which occur in Shakespeare's works, he was not singular, but, as we have seen, availed himself only of a knowledge which other contemporary poets and playwrights possessed, how much more easily might we show that those commoner legal words and phrases, to remarks upon Shakespeare's use of which both the books before us (and especially Lord Campbell's) are mainly devoted, "judgment," "fine," "these presents," "testament," "attorney," "arbitrator," "fees," "bond," "lease," "pleading," "arrest," "session," "mortgage," "vouchers," "indentures," "assault," "battery," "dower," "covenant," "distrain," "bail," "non-suit," etc., etc., etc.,—words which everybody understands,—are scattered through all the literature of Shakespeare's time, and, indeed, of all time since there were courts and suits at law!

Many of the passages which Lord Campbell cites as evidence of Shakespeare's "legal acquirements" excite only a smile at the self-delusion of the critic who could regard them for a moment in that light. For instance, these lines in that most exquisite song in "Measure for Measure;"—"Take, oh, take those lips away,"—

"But my kisses bring again Seals of love, but seal'd in vain";—

and these from "Venus and Adonis,"—

"Pure lips, sweet seals in my soft lips imprinted, What bargains may I make, still to be sealing!"—

to which Mr. Rushton adds from "Hamlet,"—

"A combination and a form, indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal."