that before the publication of Nash's Epistle Shakespeare's first sketch of his play of 'Hamlet,' taken probably from some older play with the same title, had been produced upon the Blackfriars stage and received with applause which generated envy.

From the saying of the players, recorded by BEN JONSON, that Shakespeare never blotted a line, an erroneous notion has prevailed that he carelessly sketched off his dramas, and never retouched them or cared about them after. So far from this (contrary to modern practice), he often materially altered, enlarged, and improved them subsequently to their having been brought out upon the stage and having had a successful run. There is clear proof that he wrote and rewrote 'Hamlet,' 'Romeo and Juliet,' 'The Merry Wives of Windsor,' and several other of his dramas, with unwearied pains, making them at last sometimes nearly twice as long as they were when originally represented.

With respect to these dates it is remarkable that an English translation of Seneca, from which Shakespeare was supposed to have plagiarised so freely, had been published several years before Nash's Epistle;-and in the scene with the players on their arrival at Elsinore (if this scene appeared in the first sketch of the tragedy, as it probably did, from being so essential to the plot), Shakespeare's acquaintance with this author was proclaimed by the panegyric of Polonius upon the new

company, for whom "SENECA could not be too heavy nor Plautus too light."

Therefore, my dear Mr. Payne Collier, in support of your opinion that Shakespeare had been bred to the profession of the law in an attorney's office, I think you will be justified in saying that the fact was asserted publicly in Shakespeare's lifetime by two contemporaries of Shakespeare, who were engaged in the same pursuits with himself, who must have known him well, and who were probably acquainted with the whole of his career.

I must likewise admit that this assertion is strongly corroborated by internal evidence to be found in Shakespeare's writings. I have once more perused the whole of his dramas, that I might more satisfactorily answer your question, and render you some assistance in finally coming to a right conclusion.

In The Two Gentlemen of Verona,' 'Twelfth Night,' 'Julius Cæsar,' 'Cymbeline,' 'Timon of Athens,' 'The Tempest,' 'King Richard II.,' 'King Henry V.,' 'King Henry VI. Part I.,' 'King Henry VI. Part III.,' ‘King Richard III.,' ‘King Henry VIII.,' 'Pericles of Tyre,' and Titus Andronicus '-fourteen of the thirty-seven dramas generally attributed to Shakespeare-I find nothing that fairly bears upon this controversy. Of course I had only to look for expressions and allusions that must be supposed to come from one who has been a professional lawyer. Amidst the seducing beauties of

sentiment and language through which I had to pick my way, I may have overlooked various specimens of the article of which I was in quest, which would have been accidentally valuable, although intrinsically worthless.

However, from each of the remaining twenty-three dramas I have made extracts which I think are well worth your attention. These extracts I will now lay before you, with a few explanatory remarks,—which perhaps you will think demonstrably prove that your correspondent is a lawyer, AND NOTHING BUT A LAWYER.

I thought of grouping the extracts as they may be supposed to apply to particular heads of law or particular legal phrases, but I found this impracticable; and I am driven to examine seriatim the dramas from which the extracts are made. I take them in the order in which they are arranged, as "Comedies," "Histories," and Tragedies," in the folio of 1623, the earliest authority. for the whole collection.

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The Merry Wives of Windsor.

In Act II. Sc. 2, where Ford, under the name of Master Brook, tries to induce Falstaff to assist him in his intrigue with Mrs. Ford, and states that from all the trouble and money he had bestowed upon her he had had no beneficial return, we have the following question and answer :

Fal. Of what quality was your love, then?

Ford. Like a fair house built upon another man's ground; so that I have lost my edifice by mistaking the place where I erected it.

Now this shows in Shakespeare a knowledge of the law of real property, not generally possessed. The unlearned would suppose that if, by mistake, a man builds a fine house on the land of another, when he discovers his error he will be permitted to remove all the materials of the structure, and particularly the marble pillars and carved chimney-pieces with which he has adorned it; but Shakespeare knew better. He was aware that, being fixed to the freehold, the absolute property in them belonged to the owner of the soil, and he recollected the maxim, Cujus est solum, ejus est usque ad cœlum.

Afterwards, in writing the second scene of Act IV., Shakespeare's head was so full of the recondite terms of the law, that he makes a lady thus pour them out, in a confidential tête-à-tête conversation with another lady, while discoursing of the revenge they two should take upon an old gentleman for having made an unsuccessful attempt upon their virtue :

Mrs. Page. I'll have the cudgel hallowed, and hung o'er the altar: it hath done meritorious service.

Mrs. Ford. What think you? May we, with the warrant of womanhood, and the witness of a good conscience, pursue him with any farther revenge?

Mrs. Page. The spirit of wantonness is, sure, scared out of him: if the devil have him not in fee simple, with fine and recovery, he will never, I think, in the way of waste, attempt us again.

This Merry Wife of Windsor is supposed to know that the highest estate which the devil could hold in any of his victims was a fee simple, strengthened by fine and recovery. Shakespeare himself may probably have become aware of the law upon the subject, when it was explained to him in answer to questions he put to the attorney, his master, while engrossing the deeds to be executed upon the purchase of a Warwickshire estate with a doubtful title.