Ignoramus, The Woman Turned Bully, and Restoration satire on the common lawyer.
Publication: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900
Date: Sunday, June 22 2008
INTRODUCTION
The mid-1670s stand as a period of apogee in Restoration drama. The two patent companies enjoyed the advantages of new playhouses, a steady flow of scripts from both established and new playwrights, and substantial success in their productions, and could therefore see the
Not all productions achieved the same kind of success; some seem to have had a short stage life and have thereafter been ignored by players, readers, and critics. Others, however, were most likely regarded as worthy of consideration, both for their formal consistency and their bold address of popular topics, and were produced with hopes of success. These plays deserve some critical consideration despite their consignment to the list of neglected plays. Such is the case with the anonymous play The Woman Turned Bully, which premiered at the Duke's Dorset Garden Theatre in 1675. The only direct reference to its performance comes from a record of Nell Gwyn's attendance on 24 March, a Wednesday only days before the Easter vacation. When one also considers that the play is an anonymous comedy whose authorship was never publicly claimed or ascertained, one can assume that it was one of those plays for which the company had no expectation of success, and that after its initial run it was left to lead a second life as a printed text. However, the existence of some dramatic allusions to it in plays performed later that year and in 1676 indicates that The Woman Turned Bully had at least some impact. (1) Moreover, near contemporaries expressed a positive opinion of the play: Gerald Langbaine described it as "very Diverting"; David Erskine Baker found it "very amusing"; and John Genest asserted that "this is on the whole a pretty good C[omedy]." (2) The play does have merits of its own--in terms of both its structural and thematic qualities and its relation with the time in which it was produced--that make it undeserving of the contemporary critical neglect that it has suffered.
For the composition of The Woman Turned Bully, the author tackled the challenges of a tightly patterned structure. Each of the five acts was subdivided into three scenes; each of the three songs included in the play was placed at the end of each of the central acts; and each scene is located in a specific time within the twenty-four hour duration of the story and in locations that alternate between indoor and outdoor spaces within the limited area of London's Inns of Court. This pattern is used for the elaboration of a lively story with two closely balanced and related subplots and a remarkable gallery of characters. The woman bully of the title is young and "airy" Betty Goodfield. Upon discovering that she is to be married to her neighbor, Alexander Simple, she runs away to London, determined to find a way to prevent the marriage. To move around safely, she and her maid, Frank, dress in breeches and speak like London rakes--or rather like the rakes of the London stage, since Betty picks her phrases unashamedly from popular plays of the time. The "romantic" plot tells how she literally bullies her way into finding a more suitable gallant in honest and gentlemanly Jack Truman, a close friend of her brother's; they will form the typical comedic alliance of young gallants and women that will bring the story to a happy end. The other subplot concerns Betty's mother. Widow Goodfield, a veritable precedent of a line of strong matrons that culminates in figures such as Oscar Wilde's Lady Bracknell. She comes to London, despite her hatred of the place, to visit the lawyer who is to draw Betty's jointure, but eventually resolves to marry him after a session in which she smokes and drinks liberally. Docket, the lawyer, is the third remarkable figure in the gallery: he is old and usurious, but also has an extraordinary penchant for phrases and formulas extracted from Latinate legalese, which he uses with the same liberality as Betty Goodfield in her drawing from contemporary plays. Their marriage negotiations will not just constitute an obstacle to the success of the young lovers; they will also represent the prospect of an ideological alliance with significant implications in the context of the Restoration 1670s.
These three characters constitute an interesting combination of tradition and novelty that shows the extent of both the author's familiarity with dramatic tradition and his confidence in the way in which the characters could comment on the play's immediate cultural and ideological context. His use of quotations from contemporary comedies--mostly from plays written by Dryden--for Betty Goodfield's speeches, added to Betty's own bullying behavior, provide a means of criticizing the rakish gallants of the comedy of wit that Dryden defended, and therefore constitute evidence of the author's preference for the Shadwellian model of comedy. (3) In fact, both Betty and her mother could be defined as "new humors," even though Betty incorporates features drawn from the "wild girl" typically represented by Gwyn's roles, and Madam Goodfield, in her hatred of London, resembles another Shadwellian character, Justice Clodpate from Epsom Wells. In contrast, Attorney Docket is clearly modeled upon--and an update of--a specific precedent: the central character in George Ruggle's play Ignoramus, a Latin comedy written several decades before. This difference can be regarded as evidence of the author's attempt to foreground Docket's role, highlighting recognizable connections with Ruggle's character in particular, and with the profession of the common lawyer in a more general but-still-pointed way. The reasons underlying this connection will in fact constitute the basis of the present essay, as I hope to show the extent to which The Woman Turned Bully could be interpreted as a re-elaboration on what Ruggle's Ignoramus represented in the context of the Stuarts' troubled relations with the law and its practitioners, and therefore as a comment on such relations.
IGNORAMUS, 1615 TO THE RESTORATION
The Latin word ignoramus appears in Restoration drama very often. It was especially popular in the early 1680s, after the indictment against the Earl of Shaftesbury that exonerated him with a controversial resolution of "ignoramus," that is, a declaration by a grand jury indicating that they had insufficient evidence to send a case to trial. (4) Originally a verb, the term had by this time become a noun as well and was being used to refer to an ignorant person. However, this evolution was a result not so much of the current political conditions as of the influence exerted by Ruggle's Latin comedy. First performed in Trinity College in 1615 on the occasion of a royal visit to Cambridge, Ignoramus tells of the tactics used by a crafty servant, Trico, to help his master Antonio marry young Rosabella despite her guardian's plans to sell her to an old English lawyer called Ignoramus. Latin was common in the composition of dramas for the university, and was also congenial with the play's classic plot. (5) But the popularity and influence of the play comes from the fact that the Latin spoken by the characters, particularly by Ignoramus, is full of comic solecisms based on the jargon of English common law.
The play proved to be more successful than was probably expected. King James liked it so much that, two months after its premiere, he returned to Cambridge and had it performed once more and probably saw it again in 1616. (6) There are no records of further performances, but some interest in the play must have remained, since it appeared in two printed editions in 1630, and these were eventually followed by a total of eleven subsequent editions throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. That it was a play in Latin could not have been a deterrent for those whose education had made Latin a familiar language, yet some concern with the limited size of its potential readership must have motivated the attempts to offer translated versions. Two such attempts were carried out almost simultaneously: in 1662, Ferdinando Parkhurst provided the Duke's Company with an English version that was performed at Court on 11 November, and in that same year Robert Codrington had his own translation printed. (7) Both are very faithful to the original, and both agree on leaving most of the Latin solecisms as they appear in Ruggle's play, thus implicity acknowleging that these were one of its strongest attractions.
These translations probably served as the main source for attempts to adapt the play to the commercial stage. The most explicit attempt was undertaken by Edward Ravenscroft, whose version, The English Lawyer, was first performed by the King's Company in December 1677 and printed in 1678. Ravenscroft managed to provide the King's Company with a script that reduced the original five-hour performance to less than three hours, but he did so by merely removing scenes and excluding some of the original characters. In other respects, Ravenscroft had no compunction about leaving whole passages as they appear in the 1662 translations. It is perhaps understandable that The English Lawyer proved unsuccessful on the stage and was probably never revived after its premiere. (8)
But Ravenscroft's was not the only attempt to bring Ignoramus to the Restoration stage. Two years before the premiere of The English Lawyer, the Duke's Company produced The Woman Turned Bully. Unlike Ravenscroft, the author of this play took some pains to reshape his lawyer into a rather more original figure, though the influence of Ruggle's play can be perceived very clearly. (9) He too peppers his speeches with abundant legalese expressions in English, French, and Latin, providing ample opportunity for solecisms, many of them picked directly from Ignoramus. Like his forerunner, Docket has several clerks: one of them, Spruce, is ill-treated by his master and, like Musaeus in Ruggle's play, decides to help the young lovers; the other, Dashwell, a much more willing helper and admirer of Docket's practice, is a transubstantiation of Ruggle's Dulman. In other respects, the plot in The Woman Turned Bully follows different paths, some of which can nevertheless be regarded as significant variations from the original. Ignoramus lives in Bordeaux, while Docket is a resident of Clifford's Inn, one of the Inns of Chancery dependent on the Inner Temple, but this variation places Docket in the heart of legal London and pictures him even more clearly as representing his profession as a whole. And he does not court a young woman but a country matron, although this too has ideological implications with regard to the author's attitude toward Docket's profession.
IGNORAMUS AND THE LAW
The author of The Woman Turned Bully was most likely aware of what Ignoramus represented in the context of recent legal debate and was willing to commit himself to specific ideological positions through his updated version of Ruggle's characters. Dana Sutton asserts that Ignoramus "comically exploits ... the differences between university-trained civilians (practitioners of Civil Law) and common lawyers," and was received as an attack against the common-law profession as a whole. (10) And, according to E. F. J. Tucker, Ruggle's play made a significant contribution to the then-ongoing confrontation between James I and Chief Justice Edward Coke, which was motivated by their diverging perspectives on matters concerning the source of justice and, ultimately, the control of the courts of law. (11) Such was the reception that John Chamberlain, a witness of the premiere of Ruggle's play who was acquainted with the talk of the town, recorded in one of his letters: "On Saturday last the King went again to Cambridge to see the play Ignoramus, which hath so nettled the lawyers that they are almost out of all patience, and the Lord Chief Justice, both openly at the King's Bench and diverse other places, hath galled and glanced at scholars with much bitterness, and there be diverse Inn of Court men have made rhymes and ballads against them, which they have answered sharply enough." (12) Ruggle may not have intended Coke to be the source of his character Ignoramus: though inordinately fond of Latin and legal maxims, Coke was extremely proficient in both the theory and practice of the law and had an excellent knowledge of Latin. However, his unwavering defense of the principles of common law and his personal confrontation with James I made him an unfortunate scapegoat, to the extent that his own name remained associated with the figure of Ignoramus during the early Stuart period. It was therefore not a coincidence that the first printed editions of Ignoramus appeared in 1630, at a time when Coke's return to politics reached its peak. Only two years before, he had published his Commentarie upon Littleton (which almost immediately became a standard reference in common-law authority), (13) and had been one of the leading participants in the parliamentary debates that reasserted the prevalence of the law of the land over royal authority. (14) From the perspective of the Royalist party, these debates evinced an alliance between Puritans and common law, which was ultimately tested in the trial and execution of Charles I, legitimized by common-law principles. (15)
Ruggle's most likely target was, nevertheless, a more general one. He had placed the events of his play in Bordeaux, but explicitly featured Ignoramus as an English lawyer. In this manner, Ruggle connected with a rising discontent with the practice of the law, especially with the "lower branch" of the legal profession (attorneys and solicitors) in England. It is a commonplace assumption that lawyers have always been unpopular, yet, as C. W. Brooks explains, the first and most significant rise in hostility toward them took place in the late-Tudor period, coinciding with a relative increase in the income of the emerging middle classes and a corresponding increase in litigation concerning property. Brooks comments that this situation was primarily associated with ideas about the function of the law: "Writers from Sir John Fortescue in the late fifteenth century to Sir Henry Finch in the early seventeenth thought that law was the means by which society was held together." (16) In this context "lawsuits were a potential breach of the social order, more the result of the ill will of men than a product of business dealings or personal accident," and led to the pursuit of unethical self-interest by dishonest lawyers. (17) However, litigation was not a lawyer's most important activity, nor the one that most raised people's concerns. With the increase in wealth came a preoccupation with the proper administration and conveyance of property. As Susan Staves puts it, the modes of conveyancing progressively became "so technically difficult as to be unintelligible and mysterious, not only to ordinary laymen and clients but also to ordinary lawyers, judges, and legislators." (18) This was a matter of pride among those few who were able to comprehend the nuances of this type of legislation, but for those affected (both clients and those who depended on the conveyance of the client's property, such as heirs and tenants) it was a source of anxiety, as their fate was left completely in the hands of the lawyer who produced the writs of conveyance.
In the early modern period, this forced state of dependence was accompanied by a growing concern regarding the competence of those who were most often in charge of the conveyance of property: the attorneys. According to Brooks, "it was widely held that such practitioners were men of base birth and mean education." (19) Gentlemen and noblemen interested in the law could learn about it at Oxford and Cambridge, or join one of the four Inns of Court in London; these men could hope to become judges or occupy the upper levels of the legal profession. Those without the necessary social qualifications were restricted to practicing as attorneys. They did not receive any kind of institutional instruction, nor was their curriculum regulated by any official standards, and they had to learn their profession after a period of apprenticeship, during which they served as clerks to an established attorney. (20) Attorneys were admitted as residents at the Inns of Chancery but were discouraged from seeking residence in the Inns of Court; even in this respect there was a clear segregation between the gentlemanly Inns of Court and their curriculum based on legal theory and the ungentlemanly Inns of Chancery and their association with the lowlier or mechanical aspects of legal practice. The lower social extraction of the attorneys, combined with their irregular instruction, contributed to the development of their image as people who could not be relied on.
After the Tudor period, the next peak in the criticism of the legal profession took place in the 1640s, in the context of the confrontation between Court and Parliament and the path toward civil war. The arguments of both parties were rooted in diverging conceptions of the source of legal authority. Understandably, lawyers played a significant role in this respect. For parliamentarians, the lawyers who sympathized with the royal cause were "perverters of justice" and "the vilest of men and greatest abusers of mankind," who made it "vain for any plain honest mean man to expect justice against any sort of ... rich and wealthy man." (21) For the Cavalier party, it was those in favor of the prevalence of the reason of the laws of the land and the necessary submission to it of all men, including the king, who perverted justice, and their attacks against common lawyers were especially focused on their support of the Puritan cause.
To the audiences and readers of Ruggle's play, therefore, the collective of common-law practitioners continued to be the most likely target of criticism throughout the first half of the seventeenth century. This was probably also the perspective adopted by those responsible for the revival of the Ignoramus figure after 1660. The Restoration settlement had defined the basis for the cohabitation of royal and parliamentary authority, but also stressed that in most matters the laws of the Restoration would ignore the changes effected during the Interregnum. By the mid-1670s, the legal and constitutional debates that had poisoned the last years of Charles I's reign had largely subsided, even if the new king still faced the opposition of a party that sought to restrict his political initiative and direct the country's policy along stronger Protestant lines. (22) Nonetheless, the alliance between common law and Puritans was still perceived and resented by the Royalist party. The reappearance of Ignoramus served to express this resentment in a critical manner, both directly, as in Ravenscroft's The English Lawyer, or indirectly, through his avatar Docket in The Woman Turned Bully. The satire in Ravenscroft's play has been discussed by Paul Raffield in a recent article on the representation of the common lawyer in seventeenth-century drama, but, somewhat surprisingly, he makes no mention of Ravenscroft's indebtedness to Ruggle nor of The Woman Turned Bully, despite the poignancy of this play's satire. (23) The following pages examine the extent to which its author uses the figure of the common lawyer to expose the most outstanding features of his practice.
IGNORAMUS IN THE WOMAN TURNED BULLY
Legal jargon, in its seemingly chaotic and incomprehensible combination of Latin, Old French, and English, is the foregrounding resource exploited by Ruggle in his satire of Ignoramus and his world; this is also true in the case of The Woman Turned Bully. Here, however, it is possible to discern two different but complementary strategies. One has its focus on the inadequate use of legal discourse, and is particularly targeted at Docket's clerk Dashwell. Indeed, some of the most evident echoes of Ruggle's Ignoramus concern Dashwell rather than his master, and suggest a deliberate attempt on the part of the author to feature him as the real ignoramus of the play. He uses the term "ignoramus" in reference to himself, when asked by Ned Goodfield about his mother's presence in London:
GOODFIELD. D'you know her business? DASHWELL. To that, sir, I answer ignoramus. I can say little-- TRUMAN. [Aside]--To the purpose, I'm sure. (I.i.71-3)
And later on, he appears carrying "a great inkhorn," "a quire of copying paper in [his] pocket," and quills in a scene that is strongly evocative of the image of a lawyer or clerk included in the editions of Ignoramus (see Figure 1):
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
DOCKET. Hast thou brought thy inkhorn with thee, Tom?
[Dashwell] shows a great inkhorn.
DASHWELL. Yes, yes, sir, vous avez the inkhorn, look ye, sir,
but--alas, I've forgot my almanac.
DOCKET. No matter, man, if thou hast any paper about thee.
DASHWELL. O Lord, sir, I put a whole quire of copying-paper in my
pocket, and here's two quills--
(II.ii.12-7) (24)
The size of the inkhorn and the amount of paper point to a parodic display of the instruments of his trade and mark Dashwell as a ridiculous character. The same distorting effects are achieved by his penchant for legal jargon, which he uses excessively and inappropriately. Such is the case when, before Docket and Dashwell leave for business, he comes to Docket's ward Lucia to tell her that she is wanted at home:
DASHWELL. Mistress Lucia, my master desires to be recommended to you, and has sent me to conduct you home. He and I are just going forth about business, and he desires to see your ingress before our egress. LUCIA. So. Have ye any other commendations from your master? DASHWELL. Non sum informatus; that is to say, in English, he gave me no farther instructions. LUCIA: Then come along. GOODFIELD. Mr. Dashwell, your humble servant. Pray, sir, quota cloka? DASHWELL. Sweet sir, I think it is near octa hora. Your servant, gentlemen. GOODFIELD. [Aside] Farewell, cod's-head. (II.i.254-66)
In a strict legal sense, the words "ingress" and "egress" have a meaning that is not suitable to the occasion; the same condition applies to Dashwell's use of the Latin expression "non sum informatus," a legal formula that has a meaning beyond the mere acknowledgement of a lack of information. (25) The tirade concludes with his response to Goodfield's question about the time, which has direct echoes of Ignoramus, and suggests that the author of The Woman Turned Bully may have intended to further focus the connections between his and Ruggle's play through the character of Dashwell. (26)
Dashwell is a suitable illustration of the type of humor described by Shadwell in his reapplication of Ben Jonson's theory. Shadwell defined humor as "the artificial folly of those, who are not Coxcombs by Nature, but with great Art and Industry make themselves so." (27) He advocated a type of comedy that could expose the most fashionable extravagances of the age and "make People hate and despise them, not only in others but (if it be possible) in their dear selves." (28) Shadwell's main targets were the fops who longed to pass for wits but lacked the necessary qualifications; Dashwell, on the other hand, acts on the assumption that being "full of ... law terms" can earn him recognition, not as one of the fashionable wits of Court and Town, but as a worthy follower of the likes of his master. Docket expresses his admiration for Dashwell in very positive terms; he declares that "he's one that loves the law, nay, dotes upon the law; I mean, the practic part. And o' my conscience he was cut out for a practicer in his mother's belly. He's one that has found out the amorous beauties and the ravishing graces of practice" (III.iii.27-32). But to the young gallants of the play, he is but a veritable "cod's-head," a fop who will be unable to find respectable accommodation in the gallants' world or even in the world of the practicing lawyers that he so much admires.
The second strategy applied in The Woman Turned Bully in its presentation of the original Ignoramus type is not so much focused on ridicule as on satire, and is centered on the attorney Docket. In his characterization, his profession is of foremost importance, but his handling of legal terminology places him on a different level from that of his clerk. Docket rarely indulges in the use of legal terms outside their context, nor does he employ solecisms; on the contrary, he displays a thorough command of legal language, and he uses it to suit his purposes in the course of his legal practice. Additionally, he embodies the Restoration variant of the blocking father-figure of classic comedy. He is old ("ancient" is the word used in the Dramatis Personae) and, like many other elderly characters in Restoration drama, he has features that connect him with the Puritans, as represented in Restoration drama: he is hypocritical, usurious, hates the pleasures that life can offer, and lacks the qualifications that would render him acceptable in the society of the young generation that Restoration comedy typically upholds. (29) Truman sums all this up when he describes him as "a pure downright attorney, with as little mixture of gentleman or scholar as possible" (I.i. 105-6). However, through his command of legal practice, Docket wields considerable power over those in need of his expertise, regardless of their social position. In this respect, he is featured not so much as a ridiculous figure but as an unlikable, even a fearsome, one. The play's satire foregrounds and seeks to neutralize the threat that such a figure could pose to the society of young gentlemen, both in the play and in the real world.
Language still plays an important role in this strategy of foregrounding and undermining. Legal discourse is the instrument of Docket's practice, and he proves that he can use it skillfully for his own benefit, whereas, to the layman, its complexities make it unwieldy or even unintelligible. Docket's mastery of the nuances of legal discourse is illustrated in II.ii, when he comments on a draft of the jointure written by Madam Goodfield's secretary, Trupenny:
DOCKET. [Reads] Let me see: here's the manor of--uh, and the manor of--uh, with the advowson appurtenant--appendant, you mean; but I understand ye. Then here's 600 acres of pasture, and 400 acres of meadow--O fie, that must not be; you must always put pratum before pastura. Remember the old verse as long as you live, and you'll never do amiss. Messuagium, toftum, etc. Dashwell shall gi't you in writing. ... Then here's--all, and all manner of commons thereunto belonging, in quodam loke vocate le peak juxta Podex Diaboli, anglice the Devil's Breech.--Well, sir, I understand ye. I'll e'en take these parcels home with me, and put 'em into due order, and so we'll proceed. I suppose, Mr. Trupenny, you'll submit to me, as for form and false Latin? TRUPENNY. Aye, sir, and reason good. Form and false Latin, Mr. Docket? Why, if it had not been for that, we need not ha' come to London. Our curate might a made the jointure well enough, but only for form and false Latin. (II.ii.36-55)
Trupenny is a mere amateur, probably proficient in writing but with no legal instruction, and Docket can easily recognize the flaws in the draft. Some are obvious mistakes: as he notes, the expression "advowson appurtenant" must be corrected and include "appendant" instead of "appurtenant," but he also declares that he understands the error, a common one in legal discourse. (30) Others are merely a matter of style and formula, concerning the proper collocation of items (meadow, listed before pasture). Then he declares his preference for false Latin and promises a list of terms such as "messuagiun" and "toftum." In several respects, Docket's mention of false Latin may seem odd. The term refers to English words, such as messuage or toft, that were Latinized in legal discourse. This practice was frowned upon by those who wanted to preserve the purity of original Latin. (31) but was deemed admissible in the composition of legal documents. (32) The survival of Latin in English law can, in fact, be regarded as evidence of a remarkable contradiction in the thinking of common lawyers since the Reformation and more particularly in the seventeenth century, during and after the Interregnum. Latin was regarded both as a hindrance to the right of the common man to understand legal discourse and as an instrument for the transmission of popish ideas. Already in Elizabeth's time there were proposals in favor of the exclusive use of English in legal transactions, in the same manner as it was used in religion. More official proposals to oust Latin were made by levelers and other radical parties during the Commonwealth; but they met the stern opposition of the common lawyers, who argued that common law was deeply rooted in Latin and Anglo-French and could not maintain its purity without them. The survival of these languages could thus be adduced by Royalist sympathizers during the Restoration as evidence of the contradictions inherent in the position held by the dissenting opposition, something that would have added poignancy at a time when royal policy evinced the existence of political alliances between the English and the French monarchs. Yet, the permanence of law Latin, especially of false Latin, that is. of a language that could not be understood by even the most proficient in classic Latin, can be interpreted as confirmation that legal practice remained an exclusive field, in the hands of the likes of Docket.
With the corrections suggested by Docket, Truppeny's draft evinces the babellic nature of legal discourse, starting with proper English ("all manner of commons thereunto belonging"), but continuing with a mixture of Frenchified and Latinized words that clearly recalls the language of Ruggle's play. (33) The result is largely incomprehensible to the layman; but restricting it to the category of mere gibberish, as Truman does in the excerpt below, can only confirm his own shortcomings and cannot effectively counteract the effects that such "gibberish" may create. Truman reports to his friend Ned Goodfield his conversation with Docket regarding his debt, and explains how he had to submit to Docket's arguments:
TRUMAN. Oh, Ned! Thereby hangs a tale. You must know then, in an evil hour, I owe him 6000 pounds which my father heretofore borrowed, partly to marry a daughter, and partly on other occasions. For this debt he mortgaged five hundred a year, which mortgage has been now forfeited about four year, and he, in the devil's name, has entered. Since my father's death, Ned, I have been very sensible of this loss, it being (betwixt you and I) the best half of my estate. In fine, I have been several times with him to take in this mortgage and get him to release the estate. I have offered him to that end to pay down 3000 pounds with the interest due, and a judgment from myself and two substantial citizens for the other three. GOODFIELD. And so he replies that you offer him to his loss, and that he has eleven points of the law against ye, does he not? TRUMAN: Much to that purpose. But in his gibberish he tells me, nul tort nul disseisin: I must not complain of wrong, he has but what the law gives him, and executio iuris non habet iniuriam. (I.i.110-26)
Docket's arguments are reinforced by axiomatic maxims, despite the fact that injury ("iniuria") and, to a certain extent, extortion ("tort"), are indeed involved in Docket's practice, if not in strictly legal terms, at least morally. Remarkably, these maxims were regarded at the time as illustrative of the strictures of the law, and of the common law in particular, (34) and as justification for the existence of the chancery, the court of equity, as the place where damages caused by the strict application of the common law could be redressed. At a time when the courts of common law and equity were striving for dominance--the former having been mainly in the hands of Puritan sympathizers, the latter of Royalists--Docket's arguments place him clearly on one side, and as a victimizer of the other. What makes this scene even more remarkable is that Truman, who stands for the other side, could have countered Docket's arguments. He is presented in the Dramatis Personae as "a young gentleman of the Temple" and could, in principle, have received some instruction on the basic notions of equity law. His silence in this matter proves, however, that he was one among the many young gentlemen that took up residence at the Inns of Court as a way to engage in the fashionable life of London's Court and Town, rather than to seek a future as a lawyer. In this respect he is no match against Docket.
It is obvious, therefore, that Docket's mastery of the law grants him considerable power. To those such as Truman, who have suffered the effects of his practice, he is of the kind that must be avoided, even feared. To those who hope to profit from his practice, on the other hand, Docket's ability to display his knowledge can lead to confidence and full submission. This is particularly the case with regard to Madam Goodfield. In principle, the terms of their relationship are strictly business oriented:
MADAM GOODFIELD. To conclude, sir, I am entrusted of all hands to come to you ... to take care with you that my daughter be well feoffed in something; for the truth is, Mr. Docket, her father, honest Justice Goodfield, before he died, set her a very good portion, namely 5000 pounds, which you know requires a good jointure. DOCKET. For that, madam, let me alone; but will you have it by way of uses, feoffment, bargain and sale, lease and release, fine and recovery, or how? The usual way is by way of settlement to certain uses, but then I must know the names of your feoffees in trust; and here, madam, there needs no livery nor attornment. MADAM GOODFIELD. For my part, I understand not a word you say. But here's your fee, Mr. Docket. (I.iii.101-14)
From a purely legal perspective, the situation is quite straightforward. Madam Goodfield wants her daughter, who has inherited a fairly substantial portion of the family wealth, to secure that wealth after her marriage. In common law, marriage entailed the gift of all of the wife's goods and chattels to her husband, so that he remained the sole owner, but she was granted some security: the husband could not dispose of her property without her consent, and if the husband predeceased her she was entitled to dower, a third of the husband's estate for the remainder of her life. However, dower could guarantee the quantity, not the quality of the estate at her disposal. It also left the widow in the hands of the rightful heir of the whole estate (by law, the eldest son). Over time, these conditions led to the prevalence of jointure as an alternative to dowry. Jointure permitted the establishment in deed of conditions whereby wives could maintain control over clearly defined property, and it offered an almost unprecedented opportunity for financial security and independence. This would explain the growing popularity of jointures throughout the seventeenth century, and would justify Madam Goodfield's request. (35)
In this context, the alternatives offered by Docket to Madam Goodfield's request should raise no legal objections, strictly speaking. They are all sanctioned by law, and could indeed be applicable to Betty's jointure. However, to someone in the 1670s sufficiently well-versed in the recent history of English law, both the items listed and the manner in which they are presented might raise some suspicions. Although feoffments were the most ancient and respected method of conveyance of land property, they required a highly ritualized ceremony before a number of witnesses. Fine and recovery were based on elaborate fictitious legal actions and, like lease and release, were originally devised in order to avoid legal restraints presented by either common-law tradition or specific statutes. (36) Originally, all these procedures depended on the good faith of witnesses, or sought to avoid the enrollment of the conveyance and therefore contributed to the absence of legal documents attesting to the nature and conditions of the transaction. Tradition made all these practices legally binding, but they also encouraged fraud, and were frowned upon by the Crown. In this respect, early modern legal history can be viewed as a continuous series of attempts by the Crown to restrict them by means of statute law--with limited success. As early as 1535, Henry VIII's Statutes of Uses and Enrollments had attempted to simplify the procedures in the transfer and assignment of property and prevent further fraud by enforcing the registration of all of these activities. (37) However, the statutes did not prevent people from continuing the old practices, or devising new procedures based on them. (38) The resistance to providing written records attesting to the conveyance of property was precisely the matter that justified the proclamation of the Statute of Frauds, which was being discussed in Parliament by the time The Woman Turned Bully premiered. William Holdsworth points out that the new statute had been a matter of parliamentary debate since 1673; and, since its inception, one of its main goals was to assert that "certain conveyances of interests in land" and "declarations or assignments of trust" must be made in writing. (39) Contracts such as those made in consideration of marriage, particularly when a conveyance of property was included, fell clearly within the principles of the new statute.
Docket's final recommendation to Madam Goodfield is probably the one favored by most attorneys in Restoration England, but it is also presented in a rather ambivalent and suspicious manner. He suggests drawing a "settlement to certain uses," which, by way of the Statute of Uses, would make Betty Goodfield the beneficial owner of a certain estate but would leave the use of the estate to another person or, preferably, a group of persons who would hold it in trust for her. A settlement by uses would require "no livery [of seisin] nor attornment," and in this Docket seems to favor an alternative that would simplify matters for the parties involved. In this, he also seems to comply with the spirit of the Statutes of Uses and Frauds. However, his use of the conjunction "but" ("The usual way is by way of settlement to certain uses, but then I must know the names of your feoffees in trust") suggests that he also finds the naming of feoffees an encumbrance and that he would prefer an even simpler resource. There is no specific indication of his plans regarding the drawing of the jointure, but, considering the history of his appropriation of other people's estates, it would not be beyond the point to suspect that the means of simplifying the procedure would be to posit himself as trustee in the settlement. Docket's "for that, madam, let me alone" would thus acquire special significance. It is, first of all, the means to increase Madam Goodfield's confidence in him after she acknowledges her utter ignorance in legal matters; but also, by being left "alone," he ensures that he can devise the means to draw as much profit to himself as possible.
As the play proceeds, however, Docket has no opportunity to further this plan, since, in a surprising but nonetheless significant turn of events, Madam Goodfield's confidence in him evolves into a desire to be married to him. Her desire may seem inconsistent with the image of Docket as an old, covetous usurer that the young characters--as well as the playhouse audiences--so clearly perceived. However, it would be comprehensible if considered as a natural match in terms of what both characters represent in the context of early Restoration ideas. Their union would illustrate the conditions of the alliance between the landed gentry. who remained unsympathetic to the new monarch, and the dissident common lawyers, who had given legal arguments to the trial and execution of the former king. It would also illustrate the way in which, by taking over the wealth of the land despite their evident social shortcomings, this professional minority could raise themselves socially and economically. In this respect, the prospect of Docket's marriage to Madam Goodfield poses the greatest threat to the well-being of the younger generations and places Docket as a veritable enemy of the society that emerged after the Restoration.
THE RERSTORATION COMMON LAWYER IN THE MARGINS
The year in which The Woman Turned Bully was taken to the stage corresponds with a short period of relative political calm; it followed the crisis provoked by the Treaty of Dover and preceded the upheaval provoked by the Popish Plot and the Succession Crisis. It may therefore seem to be a time that does not offer a strong motivation for the revival of Ruggle's characters. It must nonetheless be assumed that the author, and with him the sharers of the Duke's Company, were very much aware of the ideological weight that the Ignoramus figure carried and deemed it convenient to have the plays brought to the stage. Even if commercial interests were the prevalent criteria in determining the stage production of the play--or rather, precisely because these interests were paramount for the company--the Duke's Company must have taken into consideration the response that Ruggle's Ignoramus had elicited from lawyers and law students in the 1610s, and must have weighed out the consequences that a revival might have among their regular patrons, a substantial number of whom came from the neighboring Inns of Court.
To contend with the possible reaction of his audiences, Ravenscroft, the author of the compressed adaptation The English Lawyer, chose a rather aggressive stance when his play premiered in 1677. In his epilogue, he claims that the play on which his adaptation is based had "pass'd the censure of King James, and stands Authenticated by his Royal Approbation"; as a consequence, any actions against it would be "Scandalum Magnum; nay, it will be petty Treason, 'twill be Scandalum Magnatum; for you call in question a Monarchs Approbation." (40) The author of The Woman Turned Bully evinced a subtler but more daring attitude: he offered an updated version of the Ignoramus plot and, what is most significant, placed the story not in Bordeaux, as Ruggle and Ravenscroft did, but in the very heart of legal London. In this way, he prompted for an interpretation that featured Docket and Dashwell as satirical portraits of the common lawyer in contemporary London. To counter possible negative responses from those who could find themselves criticized, he must have relied on the support of those represented by the young men of the play. Ned Goodfield is a student from Cambridge, and his friend--and, at the end of the play, brother-in-law--Jack Truman is an Inns of Court man with residence in one of the Temples. Before the civil war, the Inns had been a stronghold of the more radical common lawyers, such as those who expressed their displeasure with the production of Ignoramus. The Interregnum brought about the degradation of legal instruction at the Inns and a relative depopulation of their residents. The Restoration provided an opportunity to take hold of the Inns of Court for their rightful owners, the Royalist gentry. Truman represents the numerous young gentlemen who took up rooms in one of the Inns and stood against the tradition of the common law. People like him would have no real intention of becoming lawyers but rather regarded their residence at the Inns as an opportunity to immerse themselves in London's way of life; if they did want to study law, they would seek the fulfillment of their interest in the more theoretical principles rather than in the practicalities of clerical work in which an attorney such as Docket would find himself immersed. (41) By taking possession of the Inns of Court, where only gentlemen were admitted, they relegated the more practical and mechanical practitioners like Docket, and the sites they still maintained, the Inns of Chancery, to the margins of social acceptability.
CONCLUSION
Like much of the literature in the early modern period, Restoration drama provides abundant derogatory references to the law and its practitioners. With the exception of Ravenscroft's adaptation of Ignoramus, however, no other Restoration play gave these topics the centrality that they have in the anonymous The Woman Turned Bully. The play highlights the resentment with which the common lawyer was considered in the early years of the Restoration, while the concern with the need for containment of an alliance recalls the Restoration, and warns against the threat still posed by common lawyers at the time in which the play was staged. It may safely be assumed that the perspective adopted by the author of The Woman Turned Bully coincided, to a great extent, with that of his intended audience, as, by explicitly asking for the recognition of its literary sources, the play stages and upholds ideas in support of the monarchy. If there were no other substantial representations of the lawyer in contemporary drama, the reasons might perhaps be attributed to a number of circumstantial factors. Predominant among these would be the fact that, by the mid 1670s, students and residents of the Inns of Court still constituted a significant portion of the regular playgoers. Even if some of these potential spectators could see themselves represented in Truman, a satirical image of the lawyer could be perceived as an attack on all lawyers. The need for caution in this matter is borne out by Truman's assertion that "all of the tribe are not like Dashwell and Docket; if they were, here would be no living among 'em. They would infect the town worse than the sickness or pox" (II.i.7-8). Yet, even if the author indicates with this comment that not all lawyers and clerks are represented by these characters, he does not exclude the possibility of there being many like them.
These circumstances, however, only confirm the confidence with which both the author and the acting company chose to treat the topic of the corrupt common lawyer in this play. In the specific context of the mid-1670s, the staging of The Woman Turned Bully could be expected to bring some success to the people responsible for its production, despite (or precisely because of) possible controversy; but these people could trust that their support of current royal policy was sufficient guarantee against any reactions against the play. Sadly, although some indirect references to it suggest that there remained some memory of its central characters, there are no direct records of the impact that the play might have had in later years. Moreover, the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis caused the interest of the playwrights and acting companies to shift to new kinds of political assignments, and to new variants of the ignoramus type.
NOTES
I wish to acknowledge the support of the Spanish Ministry of Education, which has provided the necessary funds for my research through its program "Promocion General del Conocimiento" (Project HUM2004-01140/FILO), and of the Junta de Andalucia (Spain) with its program "Incentivos para la Realizacion de Actividades de Caracter Cientifico y Tecnico, 2006-2007."
(1) Mary Lee, the actress who most likely played the title role, refers to it in at least two epilogues--in Elkannah Settle's The Conquest of China by the Tartars (London, 1676) and Thomas Durfey's Madam Fickle (London, 1677); the former premiered in May 1675, the latter in November 1676. There are further possible echoes: see note 24 below.
(2) Gerard Langbaine, An Account of the English Dramatick Poets, 2 vols. (London, 1691; rprt. Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1971), 2: 556; David Erskine Baker et al., Biographia Dramatica; or, A Companion to the Playhouse, 3 vols. (London: Longman, 1812), 3:418; John Genest, Some Account of the English Stage from the Restoration in 1660 to 1830, 10 vols. (Bath: H. E. Carrington, 1832), 1:178.
(3) The play's critique of the rakish gallant has been discussed in detail in Maria Jose Mora, Manuel J. Gomez-Lara, Rafael Portillo, and Juan A. Prieto-Pablos, ed., The Woman Turned Bully (Barcelona: Publicacions Univ. Barcelona, 2007), pp. 39-48. Subsequent references to The Woman Turned Bully are from this edition and will appear parenthetically in the text by act, scene, and line number.
(4) One of many contemporary allusions can be found in the prologue to John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee's The Duke of Guise (London, 1683):
Make London independant of the Crown: A Realm apart; the Kingdom of the Town Let Ignoramus Juries find no Traytors: And Ignoramus Poets scribble Satyrs. And, that your meaning none may fail to scan, Do, what in Coffee-houses you began; Pull down the Master, and Set up the Man. (lines 41-7)
The topic also appears in satirical songs (for example, in "Ignoramus, An Excellent New Song" [London, 1681]). Several pamphlets also featured Titus Oates as Ignoramus (for example, A Dialogue betwixt the Devil and the Ignoramus Doctor [London, 1679] and The Character of an Ignoramus Doctor [London, 1681]).
(5) For my discussion of George Ruggle's play, I am greatly indebted to E. F. J. Tucker, ed., A Critical Edition of Ferdinando Parkhurst's "Ignoramus, the Academical-Lawyer" (New York: Garland, 1987), and Dana Sutton's introduction to George Ruggle, "Ignoramus" (1615): A Hypertext Edition ([Birmingham: Philological Museum, 2000], http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/ruggle/intro.html).
(6) According to Tucker, the premiere was on 8 March 1615, the second royal performance was on 13 May 1615, and the third on 2 May 1616 (Critical, p. xlvi). Sutton excludes the possibility of this third performance (para. 6-7).
(7) Ignoramus: A Comedy ... Written in Latine by R. Ruggles [sic] ... and Translated into English by R. C. (London, 1662). Parkhurst's translation remained in manuscript form until Tucker published his Critical Edition of Ferdinando Parkhurst's "Ignoramus".
(8) The Index to The London Stage lists only two entries for this play, one for its premiere in December 1677 and another one for a possible revival in 1683 (Ben Ross Schneider Jr., ed. Index to The London Stage, 1660-1800 [Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1979], p. 699). See also William van Lennep, ed., The London Stage, 1660-1800: Part 1: 1660-1700 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1965), pp. 265 and 322.
(9) As Tucker states, "the clearest example of the direct influence of Ruggle's Ignoramus occurs in ... The Woman Turn'd Bully (1675) in the figures of Attorney Docket and his two clerks Dashwel and Spruce" (Intruder into Eden: Representations of the Common Lawyer in English Literature, 1350-1750 [Columbia SC: Camden House, 1984], p. 107).
(10) Sutton, para. 25.
(11) Tucker, "Ruggle's Ignoramus and Humanistic Criticism of the Language of the Common Law," RenQ 30, 3 (Autumn 1977): 341-50. On the context of the confrontation between James I and Chief Justice Edward Coke and their defense of equity and common law respectively, see Mark Fortier, "Equity and Ideas: Coke, Ellesmere, and James I," RenQ 51, 4 (Winter 1998): 1255-81.
(12) John Chamberlain to Dudley Carleton, in Elizabeth McClure Thomson, ed., The Chamberlain Letters: A Selection of the Letters of John Chamberlain concerning Life in England from 1597 to 1626 (New York: Putnam, 1965), pp. 132-3.
(13) "Coke upon Littleton" was a common expression in derogatory comments by Royalist dramatists during the Restoration. See, for example, John Crowne's The Countrey Wit (London, 1675): "Indeed, my Father did all he could to spoil me; he would let me read nothing in his life-time, but Law-Books, Cook upon Littleton, and Books of Reports, and Judges Reports, and I read Reports and Reports so long, till it was reported I was a Fool" (IV.i, p.51).
(14) See Stephen D. White, Sir Edward Coke and "the Grievances of the Commonwealth," 1621-1628 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press. 1979), especially pp. 213-74.
(15) Coke's posthumous contribution was very significant in these events: "Coke's treatises quickly helped preserve the idea of the supremacy of the law and, in 1641, with the triumph of Parliament and the common law over the prerogative courts such as the Star Chamber, the Reports and the Institutes were by and large accepted as an accurate statement of the law that was to prevail" (John Hostettler, Sir Edward Coke: A Force for Freedom [Chichester UK: Barry Rose Law, 1997], p. 153).
(16) C. W. Brooks, Pettyfoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth: The "Lower Branch" of the Legal Profession in Early Modern England (Cambridge UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986), p. 133.
(17) Ibid.
(18) Susan Staves, Married Women's Separate Property in England, 1660-1833 (Cambridge MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1990), pp. 57-8.
(19) Brooks, p. 136.
(20) See Brooks, pp. 152-6.
(21) Englands Troublers Troubled, Or the Just Resolutions of the Plaine-Men of England, Against the Rich and Mightie (1648). pp. 2, 6. See also Christopher Hill, Liberty against the Law: Some Seventeenth-Century Controversies (London: Penguin, 1996). pp. 265-6.
(22) According to William Holdsworth. "the majority of the lawyers belonged to what we may call the constitutional party [and] formed the backbone of the party which came to be called Whig." Those appointed for the highest positions in the courts of justice had the confidence of the chancellor and the king (A History of English Law, 16 vols. [London: Methuen, 1923-66], 6:502).
(23) Paul Raffield, "A Discredited Priesthood: The Failings of Common Lawyers and their Representation in Seventeenth Century Satirical Drama." LawLi 17. 3 (Fall 2005): 365-97.
(24) This scene may have been the basis for further echoes of The Woman Turned Bully in two plays written by Edward Ravenscroft. In The Canterbury Guests (London, 1695) he included the direction "Enter ... Dashwel, with a black Box, and a Rowl of Parchment under his Arm, with Pen and Ink, hanging at his Girdle" (II.iv. p.17). The character who comes in is a country clerk and is, in fact, not called Dashwell but Dash. The erratum suggests that Ravenscroft mistakenly repeated the name of a city attorney in his comedy The London Cuckolds (1682), who in turn was no doubt inspired by the clerk in The Woman Turned Bully.
(25) In legal discourse, these terms refer to the right of a property owner to enter (ingress) and leave (egress) leased property.
(26) Ruggle, Ignoramus (London. 1630), I.iii, p. 26.
(27) Dedication to The Virtuoso, in The Complete Works of Thomas Shadwell, ed. Montague Summers, 6 vols. (London: Fortune. 1927), 3:101-2, 102.
(28) Preface to The Humorists, in Summers, 1:183-9, 184.
(29) In this respect, there are strong connections between Docket and the central character in Matthew Medbourne's Tartuffe. According to A. B. Gardiner, these connections include their common eagerness for land acquisition ("Matthew Medbourne's Tartuffe [London, 1670]: A Satire on Land-Acquisition During the Interregnum," RECTR 9, 1 [Summer 1994]: 1-16).
(30) The confusion is discussed by Thomas Blount, who explains that advowson is a right to clerical benefice, and advowson appendant is that "which depends upon a Mannor, as appurtenant to it" (Nomolexikon: A Law-Dictionary [London, 1670]).
(31) Coke himself objected to the use of these terms (see Tucker, "Ruggle's Ignoramus," pp. 347-8).
(32) "False Latine shall not quash an Indictment, nor abate any Declaration ... Judiciall writs, or a Fine, shall not be impeached for false Latine" (Edward Leigh, A Philologicall Commentary: or. An Illustration of the Most Obvious and Useful Words in the Law, 2d edn. [London, 1658]. p. 137).
(33) See I.v, where Ignoramus reads Rosabella the jointure he has drawn for her.
(34) For a discussion of attitudes toward maxims in the early seventeenth century, see J. W. Tubbs, The Common Law Mind: Medieval and Early Modern Conceptions (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2000), pp. 173-8/.
(35) Staves has argued that jointures ultimately served to secure the interests of male heirs rather than the wives or widows (see chap. 4, "Equitable Jointure," esp. pp. 97-8). But see Maria L. Cioni, Women and Law in Elizabethan England, with Particular Reference to the Court of Chancery(New York: Garland, 1985). pp. 15 and 196-219, where she contends that jointures guaranteed wives unprecedented financial freedom. According to Misty G. Anderson, the popularity that marriage provisos enjoyed in Restoration drama attests to the contractual concept of marriage that evolved after the introduction of jointures (Female Playwrights and Eighteenth-Century Comedy: Negotiating Marriage on the London Stage [London: Palgrave, 2002], pp. 49-52).
(36) See Paul S. Clarkson and Clyde T. Warren, The Law of Property in Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Drama (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press. 1942), pp. 128-9.
(37) See Holdsworth, 4:457.
(38) Clarkson and Warren explain how, after the Statute of Uses, the practice of lease and release was revived, in combination with bargain and sale, so that the conveyance would elude enrollment (pp. 138-9).
(39) The statute was passed in 1677. See Holdsworth, 6:383.
(40) Ravenscroft, The English Lawyer (London, 1678). pp. 68-9.
(41) The distinction between an attorney and a barrister was increasingly remarked in the Restoration. The relationship of the former with the Law would be regarded as inferior to that of the latter, and a recognition of this difference was given by the decision of the Inns of Court not to admit attorneys as residents (see Holdsworth, 6:436-7).
Juan A. Prieto-Pablos is associate professor of English literature at the University of Seville (Spain), where he teaches Renaissance and Restoration verse and drama. His current research deals with comedies written between 1660 and 1700. He has coedited Thomas Shadwell's The Virtuoso (1997) and Epsom Wells (2000), Joseph Arrowsmith's The Reformation (2003), and the anonymous comedy The Woman Turned Bully (2007).
Email this Article
Digg It
del.icio.us