title: Is Shakespeare Dead?
author:  Mark Twain 
description: This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1909 edition. Excerpt: ...Chief Justice in 1850, and subsequently became Lord Chancellor. Its weight will, doubtless, be more appreciated by lawyers than by laymen, for only lawyers know how impossible it is for those who have not served an apprenticeship to the law to avoid displaying their ignorance if they venture to employ legal terms and to discuss legal doctrines. "There is nothing so dangerous," wrote Lord Campbell, "as for one not of the craft to tamper with our freemasonry." A layman is certain to betray himself by using some expression which a lawyer would never employ. Mr. Sidney Lee himself supplies us with an example of this. He writes (p. 164): "On February 15, 1609, Shakespeare... obtained judgment from a jury against Addenbroke for the payment of No. 6, and No. 1. 55. od. costs." Now a lawyer would never have spoken of obtaining "judgment from a jury," for it is the function of a jury not to deliver judgment (which is the prerogative of the court), but to find a verdict on the facts. The error is, indeed, a venial one, but it is just one of those little things which at once enable a lawyer to know if the writer is a layman or "one of the craft." But when a layman ventures to plunge deeply into legal subjects, he is naturally apt to make an exhibition of his incompetence. "Let a non-professional man, however acute," writes Lord Campbell again, "presume to talk law, or to draw illustrations from legal science in discussing other subjects, and he will speedily fall into laughable absurdity." And what does the same high authority say about Shakespeare? He had "a deep technical knowledge of the law," and an easy familiarity with "some of the most abstruse proceedings in English jurisprudence." And again: "Whenever he indulges this propensity he uniformly lays...
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  There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your
  philosophy.
  
  
  
  
  
  — Shakespeare
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at
  least respect his talents.
  
  
  
  
  
  — Mark Twain
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER ONE
  
  
  
  
  
  Death surrounded her. She faced it daily, dreamed of it nightly. Lived with it
  always. She knew its sounds, its scents, even its texture. She could look it
  in its dark and clever eye without a flinch. Death was a tricky foe, she knew.
  One flinch, one blink, and it could shift, it could change. It could win.
  
  
  
  
  
  Ten years as a cop hadn’t hardened her toward it. A decade on the force hadn’t
  made her accept it. When she looked death in the eye, it was with the cold
  steel of the warrior.
  
  
  
  
  
  Eve Dallas looked at death now. And she looked at one of her own.
  
  
  
  
  
  Frank Wojinski had been a good cop, solid. Some would have said plodding. He’d
  been affable, she remembe