—"is when a theefe hath stollen and is followed with hue and crie and taken, having that found about him which he stole;—that is called ye maynour. And so we commonly use to saye, when wee finde one doing of an unlawful act, that we tooke him with the maynour or manner."
Termes de la Ley, 1595, fol. 126, b.
Shakespeare, therefore, uses the phrase with perfect understanding, when he makes Prince Hal say to Bardolph,—
"O villain, thou stolest a cup of sack eighteen years ago, and wert taken with the manner, and ever since thou hast blush'd extempore." 1 Henry IV.Act ii, Sc. 4.
But so Fletcher uses the same phrase, and as correctly, when he makes
Perez say to Estefania, in "Rule a Wife and Have a Wife,"—
"How like a sheep-biting rogue, taken i' the manner,
And ready for the halter, dost thou look
now!"—Act v. Sc. 4.
But both Fletcher and Shakespeare, in their use of this phrase, unusual as it now seems to us, have only exemplified the custom referred to by our contemporary legal authority,—"And so we commonly use to saye, when wee finde one doing of an unlawfull act, that we tooke him with the maynour"; though this must doubtless be understood to refer to persons of a certain degree of education and knowledge of the world.
It seems, then, that the application of legal phraseology to the ordinary affairs of life was more common two hundred and fifty years ago than now; though even now-a-days it is much more generally used in the rural districts than persons who have not lived in them would suppose. There law shares with agriculture the function of providing those phrases of common conversation which, used figuratively at first, and often with poetic feeling, soon pass into mere thought-saving formulas of speech, and which in large cities are chiefly drawn from trade and politics. And if in the use of the law-terms upon which we have remarked, which are the more especially technical and remote from the language of unprofessional life among all those which occur in Shakespeare's works, he was not singular, but, as we have seen, availed himself only of a knowledge which other contemporary poets and playwrights possessed, how much more easily might we show that those commoner legal words and phrases, to remarks upon Shakespeare's use of which both the books before us (and especially Lord Campbell's) are mainly devoted, "judgment," "fine," "these presents," "testament," "attorney," "arbitrator," "fees," "bond," "lease," "pleading," "arrest," "session," "mortgage," "vouchers," "indentures," "assault," "battery," "dower," "covenant," "distrain," "bail," "non-suit," etc., etc., etc.,—words which everybody understands,—are scattered through all the literature of Shakespeare's time, and, indeed, of all time since there were courts and suits at law!
Many of the passages which Lord Campbell cites as evidence of Shakespeare's "legal acquirements" excite only a smile at the self-delusion of the critic who could regard them for a moment in that light. For instance, these lines in that most exquisite song in "Measure for Measure;"—"Take, oh, take those lips away,"—
"But my kisses bring again Seals of love, but seal'd in vain";—