Chancellor of England! It requires
all the learning and the logic of a Lord Chief Justice and a London
barrister to establish a connection between such premises and such a
conclusion. And if Shakespeare's lines smell of law, how strong is the
odor of parchment and red tape in these, from Drayton's Fourth Eclogue
(1605):

"Kindnesse againe with kindnesse was repay'd,
_And with sweet kisses covenants were sealed_."

We ask pardon of the reader for the production of contemporary evidence,
that, in Shakespeare's day, a knowledge of the significance and binding
nature of a seal was not confined to him among poets; for surely a man
must be both a lawyer and a Shakespearean commentator to forget that the
use of seals is as old as the art of writing, and, perhaps, older, and
that the practice has furnished a figure of speech to poets from the
time when it was written, that out of the whirlwind Job heard, "It is
turned as clay to the _seal_," and probably from a period yet more
remote.

And is Lord Campbell really in earnest in the following grave and
precisely expressed opinion?

"In the next scene, [of "Othello,"] Shakespeare gives us a _very
distinct proof_ that he was acquainted with Admiralty law, as well as
with the procedure of Westminster Hall. Describing the feat of the Moor
in carrying off Desdemona against her father's consent, which might
either make or mar his fortune, according as the act might be sanctioned
or nullified, Iago observes,--

"'Faith, he to-night hath hoarded a land carack:
If it prove a _lawful prize_, he's made forever';

the trope indicating that _there would be a suit in the High Court of
Admiralty to determine the validity of the capture_"!--p. 91.

"Why did not his Lordship go farther, and decide, that, in the
figurative use of the term, "land carack," Shakespeare gave us very
distinct proof that he was acquainted with maritime life, and especially
with the carrying-trade between Spain and the West Indies? We
respectfully submit to the court the following passage from Middleton
and Rowley's "Changeling,"--first published in 1653, but written many
years before. Jasperino, seeing a lady, calls out,--

"Yonder's another vessel: Ile _board_ her:
if she be _lawfall prize, down goes her topsail."_
Act i. Sig. B. 2.

And with it we submit the following points, and ask a decision in our
favor. First, That they, the said Middleton and Rowley, have furnished,
in the use of the