Chapter 8. Shakespeare as lawyer. The place and poems of Shakespeare supply ample evidence that their

author not only had a very extensive and accurate knowledge of law, but that he was well acquainted

with the manners and customs of members of the ends of court and with legal life generally.

While novelists and dramatists are constantly making mistakes as to the laws of marriage,

of wills and inheritance, to Shakespeare's law, lavishly as he expounds it, there can neither

be demur, nor bill of exceptions, nor writ of error. Such was the testimony borne by one of the most

distinguished lawyers of the 19th century, who was raised to the High Office of Lord Chief Justice in 1850,

and subsequently became Lord Chancellor. Its weight will, doubtless, be more appreciated by lawyers

than by laymen, for only lawyers know how impossible it is for those who have not served

an apprenticeship to the law to avoid displaying their ignorance if they venture to employ legal terms and to

discuss legal doctrines. There is nothing so dangerous, wrote Lord Campbell, as for one, not of the

craft to tamper with our free masonry, unquote. A layman is certain to betray himself by using

some expression which a lawyer would never employ. Mr. Sidney

Lee himself supplies us with an example of this. He writes, quote, on February 15, 1609, Shakespeare

obtained judgment from a jury against Addenbroke for the payment of number six and number five costs,

unquote. Now, a lawyer would never have spoken of obtaining judgment from a jury,

for it is but the function of a jury not to deliver judgment,

which is the prerogative of the court, but to find a verdict on the facts.

The error is indeed a venial one, but is just one of those little things,

which at once enable a lawyer to know if the writer is a layman or one of the craft.

But when a layman ventures to plunge deeply into legal subjects, he is naturally apt to make an exhibition of his incompetence.

Quote, let a non-professional man, however acute, writes Lord Campbell again,

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