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It is a common practice, now-a-days, amongst a sort of shifting companions that run through every art and thrive by none, to leave the trade of Noverint, whereto they were born, and busy themselves with the endeavors of art, that could scarcely Latinize their neck-verse, if they should have need; yet English Seneca, read by candlelight, yields many good sentences, as, Blood is a beggar, and so forth; and if you intreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say, handfuls of tragical speeches.
Nash says, "It is a common practice, now-a-days, amongst a sort of shifting companions, etc., to leave the trade of Noverint, whereto they were born, and busy themselves," etc. By the trade of Noverint he meant that of an attorney. And Nash's testimony accords with what we know of the social and literary history of the age.
For, although there have been issued to us of the present generation pamphlets professing to give new particulars of the life of Shakespeare, and tomes with even more pretentious titles, from all these there has been small satisfaction, save to those who can persuade themselves, that, by knowing what Shakespeare might have done, they know what he did, or that the reflex of his daily life is to be found in documents inscribed on parchment, and beginning, "This indenture made," etc., or "Noverint universi per presentes."
If a play filled the house, they did not trouble themselves about the social or professional rank of him who wrote it; and thus came about that "common practice" for "shifting companions" to "leave the trade of Noverint" and "busy themselves with the endeavors of art"; and hence it is that the plays of the period of which we are writing have, in many passages, so strong a tinge of law.
Great critics in a noverint universi Know all men by these presents how to curse ye; Pedants of said and foresaid, and both Frenches, Pedlars, and pokie, may those rev'rend benches Y' aspire to be the stocks, and may ye be No more call'd to the Bar, but pillory; Thither in triumph may ye backward ride To have your ears most justly crucified, And cut so close until there be not leather Enough to stick a pen in left of either; Then will your consciences, your ears, and wit Be like indentures tripartite cut fit.
Ambrose and Jerome on the same matter, ibid., c. 15 and 17, Friedberg, i, p. 1255. Gratian, Causa 30, Quaest. 5, c. 7 Friedberg, i, p. 1106: Feminae dum maritantur, ideo velantur, ut noverint se semper viris suis subditas esse et humiles.
Or shall we rather believe that the son of the High Bailiff of Stratford, whose father was well-to-do in the world, and who was a somewhat clever lad and ambitious withal, was allowed to commence his studies for a profession for which his cleverness fitted him and by which he might reasonably hope to rise at least to moderate wealth and distinction, and that he continued these studies until his father's loss of property, aided, perhaps, by some of those acts of youthful indiscretion which clever lads as well as dull ones sometimes will commit, threw him upon his own resources, and that then, having townsmen, perhaps fellow-students and playfellows, among the actors in London, and having used his pen, as we may be sure he had, for other purposes than engrossing and drawing precedents, he, like so many others of his time, left his trade of Noverint and went up to the metropolis to busy himself with endeavors of art?
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