Chapter I: The Fugitive

At the close of a lovely summer's day, two horsemen might have been seen slowly pacing through the main street of Stratford-on-Avon. Attracting no little attention from the group of loiterers around the market-cross, they passed the White-Lion Inn, and, turning into Henley Street, soon drew their bridles before a goodly cottage built of heavy timbers and standing with one of its peaked gables to the street. On the door was a shingle upon which was painted,

Willm. Shakspere,

Attornei at Lawe and Solicitor
in Chancere.

One of the travellers--a grave man, whose head was sprinkled with the snows of fifty winters--dismounted, and, approaching the door, knocked at it with the steel hilt of his sword. He received no answer; but presently the lattice opened above his head, and a sharp voice sharply asked,--

"Who knocks?"

"'Tis I, good wife!" replied the horseman. "Where is thy husband? I would see him!"

"Oh, Master John a Combe, is it you? I knew you not. Neither know I where that unthrift William is these two days. It was but three nights gone that he went with Will Squele and Dick Burbage, one of the player folk, to take a deer out of Sir Thomas Lucy's park, and, as Will's ill-luck would have it, they were taken, as well as the deer, and there was great ado. But Will--that's my Will--and Dick Burbage, brake from the keepers in Sir Thomas' very hall, and got off; and that's the last that has been heard of them; and here be I left a lone woman with these three children, and----Be quiet, Hamnet! Would ye pour my supper ale upon the hat of the worshipful Master John a Combe?"

"What! deer-stealing?" exclaimed John a Combe. "Is it thus that he apes the follies of his betters? I had more hope of the lad, for he hath a good heart and a quick engine; and I trusted that ere now he had drawn the lease of my Wilmecote farm to Master Tilney here. But deer-stealing!--like a lord's son, or a knight's at the least. Could not the rifling of a rabbit-warren serve his turn? Deer-stealing! I fear me he will come to nought!"

The speaker remounted, and soon the two horsemen might again have been seen wending their way back through the deepening twilight.

* * * * *

There are several points that would be novel in such a passage. Among others, we would modestly indicate the incident of the two horsemen as evincing some ingenuity, and as likely to charm the reader by its freshness and originality. But one point, we must confess, is not new, and that is the representation of Shakespeare as a lawyer. The supposition, that the author of "Macbeth," "Hamlet," and "King Lear," was a bustling young attorney, is of respectable age, and has years enough upon its beard, if not discretion. It has been brought forward afresh by two members of the profession for which is claimed the honor of having Shakespeare's name upon its roll,--William L. Rushton, Esquire, a London Barrister, and John Campbell, Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench.[B] Lord Campbell, indeed, addressing himself to Mr. John Payne Collier, says, (p. 21,) that this is a notion "first suggested by Chalmers, and since countenanced by Malone, yourself, and others." An assertion this which savors little of legal accuracy. For Chalmers, so far from being the first to suggest that Shakespeare passed his adolescent years in an attorney's office, was the first to sneer at Malone for bringing forward that conjecture.[C] Malone, in his first edition of Shakespeare's works, published in 1790, has this passage, in the course of a discussion of the period when "Hamlet" was produced:--

"The comprehensive mind of our poet embraced almost every object of Nature, every trade, every art, the manners of every description of men, and the general language of almost every profession: but his knowledge of legal terms is not such as might be acquired by the casual observation of even his all-comprehending mind; it has the appearance of _technical_ skill; and he is so fond of displaying it, on all occasions, that I suspect he was early initiated in at least the forms of law, and was employed, while he remained at Stratford, in the office of some country attorney, who was at the same time a petty conveyancer, and perhaps, also, the seneschal of some manor court."--Vol. I. Part I. p. 307.

[Footnote B: _Shakespeare a Lawyer_. By William L. Rushton. 16mo. pp. 50. London: 1858.

_Shakespeare's Legal Acquirements Considered_. By John Lord Campbell, LL.D., F.R.S.E. 12mo. pp. 117. London: 1859.]

[Footnote C: Into the trap so innocently set the London _Athenaeum_ thus plunges headlong:--"Chalmers, we believe, first put Shakespeare in an attorney's office. Malone _accepted the hint_."]

To this, Chalmers, some years after, (1797,) in his "Apology for the Believers in the Shakespeare Papers which were exhibited in Norfolk Street," (some contemptible forgeries, by a young scapegrace named William Ireland, which should not have deceived an English scholar of six months' standing,) made the following reply:--

"Mr. Malone places the aspiring poet 'in the office of some country attorney, or the seneschal of some manor court'; and for this violation of probability he produces many passages from his dramas to evince Shakespeare's _technical skill_ in the _forms of law_. ...But was it not the practice of the times, for other makers, like the bees tolling from every flower the virtuous _sweets_, to gather from the thistles of the law _the sweetest_ honey? Does not Spenser gather many a metaphor from these weeds, that are most apt to grow in _fattest_ soil? Has not Spenser his law-terms: his _capias, defeasance_, and _duresse_; his _emparlance_; his _enure, essoyn_, and _escheat_; his _folkmote, forestall_ and _gage_; his _livery_ and _seasin, wage_ and _waif_? It will be said, however, that, whatever the learning of Spenser may have gleaned, the law-books of that age were impervious to the illiterature of Shakespeare. No: such an intellect, when employed on the drudgery of a wool-stapler, who had been high-bailiff of Stratford-upon-Avon, might have derived all that was necessary from a very few books; from Totell's 'Presidents,' 1572; from Pulton's 'Statutes,' 1578; and from the 'Lawier's Logike,' 1588. It is one of the axioms of the 'Flores Regii,' that, To answer an improbable imagination is to fight against a vanishing shadow."--p. 553.

And again, in his "Supplemental Apology," etc., 1799, Chalmers remarks,--

"The biographers, without adequate proofs, have bound Shakespeare an apprentice to some country attorney; as Mr. Malone has sent him without sufficient warrant to the desk of some seneschal of a county court: but these are obscurities that require other lights than conjecture and assertion, which, by proving nothing, only establish disbelief."--p. 226.

So much for Chalmers's having "first suggested" the theory, of which Lord Campbell has undertaken the support. Surely his Lordship must have been verifying Rosalind's assertion, that lawyers sleep between term and term, or else he is guilty of having loosely made a direct assertion in regard to a subject upon which he had not taken the trouble to inform himself; although he professes (p. 10) to have "read nearly all that has been written on Shakespeare's _ante-Londinensian_ life, and carefully examined his writings with a view to obtain internal evidence as to his education and breeding."

One exhibition of his Lordship's inaccuracy is surprising. Commenting upon Falstaff's threat, "Woe to my Lord Chief Justice!" (2d _Henry_ IV.,