Shakespeare mentions law more than any other profession. Although we assume Shakespeare did not formally study law, we see from the many references in the plays that he had acquired a significant general knowledge of legal terminology. The legal jargon in Hamlet’s speech in Act 5 is especially impressive.
One play in particular contains the bulk of Shakespeare’s writings on the law: Measure for Measure. As Daniel Kornstein explains in his book Kill All the Lawyers: Shakespeare's Legal Appeal:
Measure for Measure is an ideal play for lawyers. It quivers with legal immediacy and raises fundamental questions of law and morality. Legal themes permeate the play and rivet the attention of both lawyers and nonlawyers alike. "Good counselors lack no / clients" one character announces in the first act (1.2.198-99), and we know near the start that we are watching a play about law (Kornstein, 35).
The following is a selection of Shakespearean quotations on lawyers and the law. Please click on the links for detailed annotations. Enjoy!
Quotations
Why, may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillities, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? Why does he suffer this mad knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery? Hum! This fellow might be in's time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries: is this the fine of his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt? Will his vouchers vouch him no more of his purchases, and double ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair of indentures? The very conveyances of his lands will scarcely lie in this box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?
(Hamlet, 5.1.97), Hamlet to Horatio
Yea, and so used it that were it not here apparent
that thou art heir apparent--But, I prithee, sweet
wag, shall there be gallows standing in England when
thou art king? and resolution thus fobbed as it is
with the rusty curb of old father antic the law?
Do not thou, when thou art king, hang a thief.
(1 Henry IV, 1.2.54), Falstaff to Prince Hal
Between two hawks, which flies the higher pitch;
Between two dogs, which hath the deeper mouth;
Between two blades, which bears the better temper:
Between two horses, which doth bear him best;
Between two girls, which hath the merriest eye;
I have perhaps some shallow spirit of judgement;
But in these nice sharp quillets of the law,
Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw.
(2 Henry VI, 2.4.17), Warwick to Lords
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
(2 Henry VI, 4.2.59), Butcher to Jack Cade
Push him out of doors;
And let my officers of such a nature
Make an extent upon his house and lands:
Do this expediently and turn him going.
(As You Like It, 3.1.16), Duke Frederick to Oliver
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: There's no time for a man to recover his hair that grows bald by nature.
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: May he not do it by fine and recovery?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig and recover the lost hair of another man.
(The Comedy of Errors, 2.2.71)
When law can do no right,
Let it be lawful that law bar no wrong:
Law cannot give my child his kingdom here,
For he that holds his kingdom holds the law.
(King John, 3.1.189), Constance to Cardinal Pandulph
A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking knave.
(King Lear, 2.2.14), Kent
Help, master, help! here's a fish hangs in the net,
like a poor man's right in the law.
(Pericles, 2.1.153), Fisherman
We have strict statutes and most biting laws.
The needful bits and curbs to headstrong weeds,
Which for this nineteen years we have let slip;
Even like an o'ergrown lion in a cave,
That goes not out to prey.
(Measure for Measure, 1.3.21), Duke Vincentio
We must not make a scarecrow of the law,
Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,
And let it keep one shape, till custom make it
Their perch and not their terror.
(Measure for Measure, 2.1.1), Angelo to Escalus
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