pplication 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_."

Act iii. Sc. 4.

"Now must your conscience my acquittance
_seal_."--Act iv. Sc. 7.

And because indentures and deeds and covenants are sealed, these
passages must be accepted as part of the evidence that Shakespeare
narrowly escaped being made Lord High