have been openly tolerated. Cantilupo having given his opinion, Sanitonella informs him that the Court will sit in half an hour», from which we may infer that the custom of delivering briefs at the last moment, so usual in the present day, is not of modern origin. The next scene is in Court. Before the Judge enters, Sanitonella tells the ushers to be careful to exclude « all brachy-graphy men» (c. e. shorthand writers), his reason being that they would provide material for ballad-mongers. The Judge on entering offers Romelio, the Defendant, an adjournment for a fortnight to enable him to instruct counsel, but the offer is not accepted. Cantilupo then proceeds to open his case, commencing in the stereotyped form «May it please your lordship and this reverend Court> <We are of counsel for this gentlewoman». His speech is a good example of forensic eloquence of the florid order and he appears to be fully conscious of the weak points in his case, but he is evidently not a persona grata with the Judge, who interrupts him with such expressions as these «Leave this stale declaiming against the person and come to the matter», «to your proofs and be not tedious». When he commences to deal with the evidence, Sanitonella, fearing lest he should forget a point, officiously interrupts him and is told to hold his peace ». An unseemly jest meets with a rebuke from the Judge, on which Ariosto remarks «Thus they would jest, were they feed to open their sister's cases », and indeed the temptation to indulge in unseasonable witticisms is one to which more honourable advocates have at times yielded. Cantilupo having concluded, the Judge inquires of the Defendant, whether there has been any cause of dispute between himself and the Plaintiff and questions the Plaintiff as to her motive in bringing the Action, and Ariosto, as Amicus Curiae, points out that, if the Plaintiff establishes her case, her dower will be forfeited for unchastity, on which Sanitonella exclaims «Who shall pay us our fees then? >> The Plaintiff's maid is then called and strictly cross-examined by the Court, Sanitonella following her evidence with a running commentary «Thats a stinger: 'tis a good wench, be not daunted >> There y'are from the bias», «Well come off again ». Eventually the Judge declares himself to be the supposed adulterer, and produc ing a patent for the appointment of Ariosto as Judge in his place, steps down from the Bench and taking his place as a witness, proves a clear alibi, whereupon the Plaintiff's case collapses. Any one, who has had experience of our Courts of Law, will recognise the essential accuracy of this picture. There is of course an element of Melodrama and rules of procedure are at times made to yield to dramatic necessities but it is impossible to believe that the legal characters are not sketches from the life. They represent types, which may be found in Courts of Justice at this day, and bear no resemblance to the conventional lawyer of fiction. Enough has, I think, been said though other examples might be adduced to prove that Webster must have possessed a knowledge of the theory and practice of the Law hardly less 'extensive than Shakespeare's. This fact could no doubt be readily explained by assuming that he was a member of either branch of the Legal Profession, but there are in my opinion strong reasons against such an hypothesis. It is certainly not supported by such external evidence as exists; for in the title of a masque published in 1624 occur the words <invented and written by John Webster, Merchant Tailor». But the Rev. A. Dyce was unable to find any confirmation of the accuracy of this description in the records of the Merchant Tailor's Company. And, in truth, little or nothing is known of Webster's life, so that the matter is not thereby carried much further. We are thus forced to rely entirely on internal evidence. Now to deduce an author's profession from his works is never a very safe proceeding. If a parade of technicalities is to be taken as a sure index of a writer's occupation, the antiquarians of the future will have great difficulty in determining whether Mr. Kipling was a boiler-rivetter or a Major General. And, on the other hand, many authors have sedulously kept their professions in the back ground. John Ford was a member of the Middle Temple and engaged in legal work apparently all his life, yet his plays show little trace of legal learning. And the same is probably true of Talfourd. But, apart from a priori arguments, we have the curious fact that we find in Webster notwithstanding his evident liking for legal subtleties and technicalities a spirit of decided hostility to the law and an attitude of mind which is essentially characteristic of the layman and not of the lawyer. His view of life was, no doubt, a cynical one- and it is fair to say that the Medical Profession is treated with almost equal severity but, when full allowance has been made for this, his bias against the law is so apparent that I think it is as impossible to suppose that his plays can have been the work of a lawyer, as it would have been in the absence of external evidence to conclude that Dickens must have been an attorney. The following quotations will suffice to illustrate my argument, though numerous others could be found. First Madman. Second Madman. I will lay the law to you. O, rather lay a corrasive the law will eat to the bone. Of all men living (Duchess of Malfi, IV. 2.) You lawyers I account the only men To confirm patience in us; your delays Would make three parts of this little Christian World Run out of their wits else. (Devil's Law Case, II. 3.) Truth needs no advocate; the unjust cause Buys up the tongues that travel with applause In these your thronged courts. (Appius and Virginia, IV. 1.) In these three passages we have expressed the three conventional charges against the Law, which find most ready acceptance among the laity. The Law's rapacity and the Law's delays are proverbial, and probably nine laymen out of ten hold that fallacious view of the duty of a barrister, which assumes that it is impossible for an honourable man to represent a dishonest client or for an honest litigant to stand in need of the skill of the advocate. Such expressions as these would therefore be natural enough in the mouth of a layman, but, if Webster was a lawyer, I can only account for them by supposing that ill success or absence of employment led him to take a jaundiced view of his profession and even in that case his abuse would probably have been of a less conventional character. It seems therefore impossible to accept the hypothesis that Webster must have been in the old fashioned phrase « bred to the law». We are thus left as in Shakespeare's case with the problem, how did he acquire that special knowledge, which we have seen that he possessed, and it is perhaps idle to speculate on possible solutions in the total absence of biographical data. Webster and Ford are known to have collaborated in a play, which has since been lost, and Webster may well have had other legal acquaintances. The members of the Inns of Court were in those days great supporters of the Drama, and both dramatists and lawyers frequented the Taverns of Fleet Street which at that time. took the place of clubs. « There are also some indications that Englishmen in the seventeenth century found a sort of intellectual amusement in the subtleties of that old Antic the Law». Shakespeare and Webster would hardly have introduced into their plays allusions to abstruse legal technicalities, if they had not thought that their audiences would appreciate them. And, fifty years later, we find Pepys taking pleasure in listening to arguments on points of law and himself mastering the complications of Copyhold tenure, instead of relying entirely upon the advice of experts. Probably also in days, when attornies were less trusted than now, every man of property was forced to be to some extent his own lawyer. Webster undoubtedly possessed acute powers of observation and had a keen eye for character; he seems to have realized that Courts of Law are excellent places for the study of human nature and it is possible that he may have deliberately frequented Westminster Hall with the object of obtaining material for his plays a supposition which is to some extent confirmed by the fact that legal allusions are more numerous in the «Devil's Law Case» than in any other of his plays, whilst comparatively few are found in the «Duchess of Malfi». Yet, after all whatever explanations may be offered it is certainly a curious phenomenon that a man, who apparently regarded the Law as little better than an organized engine of oppression, should have been thoroughly conversant with legal procedure and should have made use of the peculiar jargon of the Law as a natural vehicle for the expression of his ideas. It constitutes a most striking example of that intellectual receptivity, which, as Mr. Sidney Lee has pointed out, was a prominent characteristic of the Elizabethan age. Notizen über die englische Bühne Mitgeteilt von Albert Leitzmann. Ich stelle im folgenden alle diejenigen Bemerkungen zusammen, die sich in Lichtenbergs Tagebüchern von seiner großen, in den Jahren 1774 und 1775 unternommenen Reise nach England über die englische Bühne finden. Den Hauptertrag seiner theatralischen Eindrücke hat uns ja der Verfasser selbst in seinen berühmten, zuerst in Boies Deutschem Museum 1776 und 1778 erschienenen « Briefen aus England in vollendeter und geistvoller Behandlung vorgeführt und dabei wie billig Garricks überragende Gestalt in den Mittelpunkt seiner Darstellung gerückt. Trotzdem wird es, denke ich, nicht ohne Interesse sein, einerseits von manchem, was in den Museumsbriefen behandelt wird, hier die den unmittelbaren Eindruck wiedergebende, noch nicht für einen größeren Zusammenhang verarbeitete Fassung kennen zu lernen, andrerseits allerlei andre Notizen zu mustern, die in den Briefen an Boie keine Aufnahme gefunden haben und deren man gar zu gern noch mehr wünschen würde. Natürlich können sich diese disjecti membra poetae nicht entfernt messen mit jenem vollendeten Gemälde von Garricks Persönlichkeit, vielleicht der besten zusammenhängenden schriftstellerischen Arbeit, die dem ältesten deutschen Klassiker des Aphorismus jemals gelungen ist.1) In den Anmerkungen habe ich in aller Kürze zusammengestellt, was 1) Von Gaehde (David Garrick als Shakespearedarsteller, Berlin 1904) sind Lichtenbergs Schilderungen an verschiedenen Stellen seines wertvollen Buches gebührend berücksichtigt worden. Nur vor einem Mißverständnis möchte ich Lichtenbergs Beschreibung des Garrick'schen Hamlet und damit auch Garricks darstellende Kunst retten. Mit ausdrücklicher Berufung auf Lichtenbergs Worte |