of that suit to vindicate. The fact of that litigation has been long known, but little use appears to have been made of it, as bearing upon the life and writings of the dramatist. We are indebted to the research of Halliwell-Phillipps for the unearthing of the original documents. These documents, when closely examined, are full of suggestive detail respecting an interesting phase of the author's life and preparation for his life-work. Read between the lines, they plainly tell us where Shakespeare got his legal education. They thus supersede and make superfluous the theory that he must have been a lawyer, or at all events, an attorney's clerk or office-boy. In the elaborate scheme of conveyancing to effect an iron-clad mortgage of his mother's" Asbies" estate to her brother-in-law, Edmund Lambert, and in the various suits, both at law and in equity, which grew out of it, Shakespeare inherited a rich mine of legal lore (or legal ore) quite enough to furnish forth all the technical nuggets which have given so much trouble to the critics. Add to this that his father, John Shakespeare, appears to have been a champion litigant in a litigious and pettifogging burgh, and we find the dramatist born into a legal atmosphere.*

The very natural inquiry remains to be answered-why has this last-mentioned explanation also escaped the attention of the learned commentators?

It may be recalled that the silence of the commentators with regard to the explanation previously offered was attributed principally to a misleading statement of dates in Blackstone's Commentaries. For their being thrown off the scent in the present instance, an error of an old chancery reporter, worse and more dangerous than Blackstone's, because more obscure and difficult of detection, may possibly be held responsible.

It unfortunately happened that, outside of the original record remaining in MSS. in the registrar's custody, the only chancery reporter who professed to report the case of Mylward vs. Weldon was a very inaccurate one named Tothill. When Aaron Burr was a practising lawyer in New York, he cited a case from Tothill's reports in argument before Chancellor Kent. Chancellor Kent condemned the book as "unfit to serve as a guide and unworthy to be cited as authority."+ In undertaking, many years after the event, to report this case of

* See the cases, some two or three dozen, in which John Shakespeare figured as a litigant, collected in Outl., ii., 215, etc., ninth ed. Nor was he litigant only, when little Billy Shaxbere (as his school-master spelt it) was an inquisitive boy of five years old, he might have seen his father presiding as judge of the Stratford Court of Record.. (ib. ii., 232.)

+ King vs. Baldwin, 2 John. Ch., 558,9.

Mylward vs. Weldon, the author referred to, with his usual inaccuracy, assigned a wrong date to the notable order of the chancellor. In point of fact, he was so wide of the mark as to refer it to the eighth year of Elizabeth.*

This was some thirty years earlier than the actual date, which, as has been seen, corresponded practically with Falstaff's first appearance upon the stage.

This error remained undetected during the whole period of the early commentators-that is to say, during the time when the ruts were being worn which have been mainly followed since. And so the matter stood until nearly the middle of the present century, when two epoch-making works of original research appeared almost simultaneously. In November, 1845, Lord Campbell published his "Lives of the Chancellors," followed soon after by Spence's "Equitable Jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery." Each of these writers independently, the one ignoring, the other exposing the blunder of Tothill, took the trouble to search the original record in Mylward vs. Weldon,† and each of them restored the correct date, as already given upon their authority.

It is true that this authentic correction has now been before the public for nearly half a century. The simple fact appears to be that during all that time no one while reading the true report of this case has happened to think of Falstaff and his queer allusion to "equity stirring," and no one while enjoying Falstaff has happened to think of the equally queer order of the chancellor in Mylward vs. Weldon. The close relation between those two distinct and apparently incongruous lines of thought is at once established by the simple recognition of their coincidence in point of time. The discovery of that relation was not likely to be made otherwise than by one of those lucky accidents which sometimes happens to a professional detective, who stumbles upon a lot of stolen bonds which have never been missed, or whose loss has been forgotten, while tracing the larceny of a watch.

Lord Campbell was a well-read Shakespearian scholar, and it is not a little remarkable that this coincidence should have escaped his notice. In one respect, Lord Campbell's report of this case is more accurate than that of Mr. Spence. The latter, not observing that the date of the order, " 10 February 1596" was "old style," attributes it to Lord Keeper Puckering. Puckering, however, died in the preceding April, and was succeeded by Sir Thomas Egerton, afterwards Lord Ellesmere, to whom Lord Campbell correctly refers the torture of the unhappy scrivener.

*Tothill, Rep., 101.

+ Reg., Liber A, 1596, folio 672.

But the special business here undertaken is to show from these authentic documents what particular reason operated upon the mind of the playwright at the time the character of Falstaff was under construction, to put in Falstaff's mouth a hit at Lambert. It would be manifestly impossible to develop this topic satisfactorily within present limits. The reader is, therefore, asked to "suspend judgment," so far as this point is concerned, until a future occasion, or, in the meantime, to investigate the documents for himself.*

(To be continued.)

CHARLES E. PHELPS.

* Consult the references under the word "Asbies" in index to "Outlines," ii., 419, ninth edition. The learned reader wil! note, with some surprise, that a scholar so accurate and well-informed as Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps should have mistaken an action of assumpsit in the Queen's Bench for a bill in equity to enforce a specific performance, and especially that so palpable an erratum should have been allowed to pass, uncorrected, through all the editions of his invaluable work.

THE SUPERNATURAL IN SHAKESPEARE.

I. IN GENERAL.

AT the outset of any critical study of Shakespeare's use of the supernatural one nice distinction must be clearly made. For mere enjoyment of the drama, the student, without analysis, comparison or conscious intellectual conception, knows and feels the effect of the dramatist's means without knowing what, why or how.

There is a plainly marked difference between the use of actual supernatural forces as dramatic agencies and the use merely of man's belief in the supernatural. A ring encircles Aladdin's finger; he wishes, and palaces arise about him as airy spirits hover in the air at the beck of the magic-garment-clad Prospero. This is using the supernatural-a force unknown in the practical affairs of life-to work out results impossible to the ordinary forces of life and nature. A suggests to B, who is superstitious and credulous, that C has a ring whose possessor may have gratification of every wish. B may seek its possession by fair or by foul means. Thus A, by mere suggestion, directed to B's superstitious credulity, may start a train of human activity, leading to results, criminal or not, according to the moral nature of B. If he resemble Macbeth he will scruple at nothing; if he be morally sound, although profoundly superstitious, like Banquo, he will at least do nothing unlawful, if he do anything. This is using, not supernatural power, but man's belief in the supernatural, as an agency for the production of human activity and results. The first of these methods is the poetical method. Homer, Dante, Virgil, Tasso, Spenser and hundreds of poets have used this supernatural, both in so far as it lies back of the profound human belief in a universal moral government, and in so far as it lies back of human superstition and belief in a brood of creatures, good and ill, subordinate to and agencies of, or in illogical antagonism to the ruling Good. The poet's field is a plane so far above the line of practical daily life that he may use all conceivable agencies, reach out into the unknown, traverse the unknowable and people these fields with all forms imagination may conceive or fancy depict. He is only constrained to poetry, fitness and a skilful use of the supernatural. Leaving out poetry, this supernatural element has not been very happily or very effectively used by any writer in any field of literature, Shakespeare and Goethe alone excepted. Schiller's sheet-iron thunder, farthing-dip lightning and the apparition of a knight warning Joan are neither necessary nor happy incidents in a drama which is otherwise the only respectable presentation of Joan in literature. Molière, in the curiously misnamed Le Festin de Pierre, em

ploys a supernatural which is neither after the poetical nor after the legitimate dramatic method; while he has furnished in the stilted and artificial supernatural of Psyche and other comedies an instructive contrast with the airy and graceful creations of the English master in The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream. The Frenchman must borrow an element which flows naturally out of the English and the German imagination, and the French supernatural, whether it be the clumsy device of Le Festin de Pierre, the false classical of Psyche, or the Peau de Chagrin of Balzac, seldom rises above the grotesque supernatural of Voltaire's witty but shameful La Pucelle. Bulwer, in a short story in Blackwood's for about 1848, in “Zanoni” and in “A Strange Story" has been perhaps least unsuccessful in the use of the supernatural in novels, unless the subtle spirituality of Hawthorne may be called the supernatural. It is idle to multiply references to the use in general literature of an element which has only been successfully used in poetry and by Goethe and Shakespeare in the drama.

The dramatist's field, strictly speaking, is the plane of practical human life and activity. Superstitious beliefs, and the perpetuity of these with only changes of form, so that the witchcraft of yesterday becomes the spiritism of to-day, hardly warrant him in the use of that which transcends the common experience of men. But, while he may not use supernatural forces in the practical drama of human life, the dramatist may well use superstitious beliefs which belong in their fundamental idea to all ages. These beliefs grow out of a profound faith in a power and an intelligence above and beyond human ken. There is a continual tendency in the human mind to go beyond the belief in a wise and powerful moral government of the universe, and to people every crack and cranny of the vast unknown with a brood of secondary and derivative intelligences, transcending the human and falling short of the divine. It is exhibited in the angelology and the saintology of orthodoxy, as well as in the demonology, withcraft and spiritism of popular superstition. These differ in kind, but not in principle. Shakespeare's dramas are all written with direct reference to the idea of a vast moral government of the universe. Indeed, as no intelligible social order can exist without this, no genuine, living and lasting drama is possible without it. Beyond this continual reference to the idea of an intelligent, wisely directed, moral government, Shakespeare has rarely and sparingly used secondary supernatural agencies. His method of using these differs from that of all other dramatists and all other writers. Nothing better attests the clearness and accuracy of his artistic judgment as to all that bore upon his art. It is remarkable, too, that, even with the aid of his example, no other writer has drawn the fine and yet clear-cut distinction between using supernatural forces and the use of man's belief in the supernatural. While he was a profound believer in a vast scheme of intelligent moral government, Shakespeare was clear