deeper, and impeach the jurisdiction of the issuing authority, on the ground that execu tive and judicial functions never co-exist? In "Othello" the serpentine Iago, who, in conversation with Roderigo, has been up braiding the Moor for his neglect to advance him in his service, declares (having covertly inspected his vade mcatm) that Othello "nonsuits my mediators. It would be a profitless exercise to inquire whether the full significance of this avowal came home to Shakespeare. No serious tax would seem, however, to be put upon reflection by supposing that a failure, on the part of Iago's champions, to make out even a prima facie case was meant to be conveyed. Would it be possible for a text-writer to express that factor essential to the making of a false oath—competency in the adminis tering officer—more tersely and lucidly than is done through the words of a mouthpiece in "Henry VI.": "An oath is of no moment, being not took Before a true and lawful magistrate, That hath authority over him that swears." Desdemona, who, accepting Iago's feigned excuse for Othello's altered conduct towards her, that matters of state disturbed him, is prompted to offer the amende honorable for believing that it might have sprung from less valid causes, thus delivers herself: "I was (unhandsome warrior as I am) arraigning his unkindness with my soul; but now I find I have suborned the witness, and he's indicted falsely." How subtle this taking un founded opinion to task for having practised on her deeper consciousness! As bearing on the branch of procedure, how capably is the well-established rule as to presence in court, on the oc casion of his trial, of one charged with felony, signified through terms of the Bishop of Carlisle's protest—vehement as courageous—against the totally irregular deposition of Richard II. by Bolingbroke: "Thieves are not judged but they are by to Although hear. apparent guilt be seen in them."
Could there be,—to prove his intimacy with knotty questions—a shrewder apprecia tion of what, in the composer's day, and long after, was treason-felony—depreciating the currency,—than is attested by the brilliant play of words investing this extract from a speech of Henry V'. on the eve of Agincourt: "Indeed, the French may lay twenty French crowns to one, they will beat us; for they bear them on their shoulders: but it is no English treason to cut French crowns: and to-morrow the King himself will be a clipper." Can any impartial, honest inquirer, one prepared to hold evenly the scales of probability, esteem these purely technical ex pressions, which have been collated—so va ried in their signification, so apposite in their employment—none other than the palming off on the public of an over-confident ama teur, oracles delivered by some empty sciol ist? Shakespeare's vamping, in every linguis tic habit, of warrants and indentures—his ringing the changes on covenants and leases, bonds and testaments—howbeit, in handling these, he manifests alike a thorough compre hension of the form, and a secure insight into the use of the particular instrument on which his characters may touch, need not be emphasized. The writer on the other hand (upholding in this the weight of opinion), is free to con fess that the famous trial in "The Merchant of Venice"—with its extra-judicial emana tions from the Duke, the scandalous bias that personage is found to exhibit; with the constituting Portia not merely his assessor, but letting her deliver his rulings; with the forced construction of the bond which is made to govern (passing by the utter irreconcilableness of such an action with the prov ince of any enlightened court); with the as tonishing freedom of utterance enjoyed by strangers to the hearing—pillorir-, judicial gravity, lends judicial methods the guise of opera bouffe. After all, how does this tell against the idea that Shakespeare was in doctrinated, by some unwonte 1 process, in the ways of jurisprudence? Either as habitue" of the courts, or one in a position to have
