And because indentures and deeds and covenants are sealed, these passages must be accepted as part of the evidence that Shakespeare narrowly escaped being made Lord High Chancellor of England!  It requires all the learning and the logic of a Lord Chief Justice and a London barrister to establish a connection between such premises and such a conclusion.  And if Shakespeare’s lines smell of law, how strong is the odor of parchment and red tape in these, from Drayton’s Fourth Eclogue (1605): 

  “Kindnesse againe with kindnesse was repay’d,
  And with sweet kisses covenants were sealed.”

We ask pardon of the reader for the production of contemporary evidence, that, in Shakespeare’s day, a knowledge of the significance and binding nature of a seal was not confined to him among poets; for surely a man must be both a lawyer and a Shakespearean commentator to forget that the use of seals is as old as the art of writing, and, perhaps, older, and that the practice has furnished a figure of speech to poets from the time when it was written, that out of the whirlwind Job heard, “It is turned as clay to the seal,” and probably from a period yet more remote.

And is Lord Campbell really in earnest in the following grave and precisely expressed opinion?

“In the next scene, [of “Othello,”] Shakespeare gives us a very distinct proof that he was acquainted with Admiralty law, as well as with the procedure of Westminster Hall.  Describing the feat of the Moor in carrying off Desdemona against her father’s consent, which might either make or mar his fortune, according as the act might be sanctioned or nullified, Iago observes,—­

  “’Faith, he to-night hath hoarded a land carack: 
  If it prove a lawful prize, he’s made forever’;

the trope indicating that there would be a suit in the High Court of Admiralty to determine the validity of the capture"!—­p. 91.

“Why did not his Lordship go farther, and decide, that, in the figurative use of the term, “land carack,” Shakespeare gave us very distinct proof that he was acquainted with maritime life, and especially with the carrying-trade between Spain and the West Indies?  We respectfully submit to the court the following passage from Middleton and Rowley’s “Changeling,”—­first published in 1653, but written many years before.  Jasperino, seeing a lady, calls out,—­

  “Yonder’s another vessel:  Ile board her: 
  if she be lawfall prize, down goes her topsail."
  Act i.  Sig.  B. 2.

And with it we submit the following points, and ask a decision in our favor.  First, That they, the said Middleton and Rowley, have furnished, in the use of the phrase “lawful prize,” in this passage, very distinct proof that they were acquainted with Admiralty law.  Second, That, in the use of the other phrases, “board,” and especially “down goes her topsail,” they have furnished yet stronger evidence that they had been sailors on board armed vessels, and that the trope indicates, that, had not the vessel or lady in question lowered her topsail or top-knot, she would then and there have been put mercilessly to the sword.