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Affectio tua nomen imponit operi tuo.-BRACTON.
Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer?-HAMLET.

SECOND EDITION.

ST. PAUL:

WEST PUBLISHING COMPANY.

1884.

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INTRODUCTION.

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HAKESPEARE'S persistent and correct use of law terms was long ago noticed and caused the conjecture that he must have studied in an attorney's office. What is the truth in this respect will probably never be certainly known; but that he was more addicted to the employment of legal nomenclature than any English writer (excepting, of course, the jurists) is incontestable.

The work of winter evenings, commenced long ago, as an incident to habitual study of the works of him "who converted the elements which awaited at his command into entertainments," is submitted with little speculation upon questions concerning which there have been many words and few demonstrations. It is not pretended that every legal phrase which he used is here presented. The aim has been not to extend the task beyond the necessity of proof into a wearisome repetition of expressions which often recur in scores. To the lawyer many of the

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notes will be needless, though some of them will be found helpful. I have not hesitated to present the definitions of the commonest legal terms. To those unversed in law lore, they will present at a glance the argument intrinsic in the text. Some of the quotations, taken alone, are doubtless of trifling probative force. They are given because, in cumulative testimony, each independent fact is a multiplier.

We seem to have here something more than a sciolist's temerity of indulgence in the terms of an unfamiliar art. No legal solecisms will be found. The abstrusest elements of the common law are impressed into a disciplined service with every evidence of the right and knowledge of commanding. Over and over again, where such knowledge is unexampled in writers unlearned in the law, Shakespeare appears in perfect possession of it. In the law of real property, its rules of tenure and descents, its entails, its fines and recoveries, and their vouchers and double vouchers; in the procedure of the courts, the methods of bringing suits and of arrests, the nature of actions, the rules of pleading, the law of escapes, and of contempt of court; in

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the principles of evidence, both technical and philosophical; in the distinction between the temporal and the spiritual tribunals; in the law of attainder and forfeiture; in the requisites of a valid marriage; in the presumption of legitimacy; in the learning of the law of prerogative; in the inalienable character of the crown,-this mastership appears with surprising authority.

It is not necessary in accounting for this to assault truth with a paradox, or to put a mask upon the face of the first of men. The law books of that time were few. Shakespeare's French is nearly as bad as the law French in which many of them were written; and it is not to be forgotten that to learn must have been easy to this man, whose mental endowments were so universal that the best intellects of after times have vainly essayed to admeasure them.

Coleridge has remarked "that a young author's first work almost always bespeaks his recent pursuits." He might have said with equal correctness that any author's works can never entirely hide his former pursuits. These may be betrayed by the style, or by prejudices, affections, antipathies, or af

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