Corrozet, 1540.
That is the very subject against which even Hercules,—“qu’ aqerre honneur par ses nobles conquestes,”—is called into requisition to rid men of the nuisance. We need not quote in full so familiar a narrative, and which Corrozet embellishes with twenty-four lines of French verses,—but content ourselves with a free rendering of his quatrain,—
“All clever though a man may be in various tricks of law,
Though he may think unto the end, his suit contains no flaw,
Yet up there spring forms three or four with which he hardly copes,
And lawyers’ talk and lawyers’ fees dash down his fondest hopes.”
It is not, however, with such speciality that Shakespeare uses this tale respecting Hercules and the Hydra. On the occasion serving, the questions may be asked, as in Hamlet (act v. sc. 1, l. 93, vol. viii. p. 154), “Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery?”
But simply by way of allusion the Hydra is introduced; as in the account of the battle of Shrewsbury (1 Henry IV. act v. sc. 4, l. 25, vol. iv. p. 342), Douglas had been fighting with one whom he thought the king, and comes upon “another king:” “they grow,” he declares, “like Hydra’s heads.”
In Othello (act ii. sc. 3, l. 290, vol. vii. p. 498), some time after the general had said to him (l. 238),—
“Cassio, I love thee;