“This fellow might be in’s time a buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries.”  Act v.  Sc. 1.

The general reader supposes, we believe, and very naturally, that here “statutes” means laws, Acts of Parliament concerning real estate.  But, as Mr. Rushton remarks, (Malone having explained the term before him,) “The statutes referred to by Hamlet are, doubtless, statutes merchant and statutes staple.”  And “a statute merchant (so called from the 13th Edward I., De mercatoribus) was a bond acknowledged before one of the clerks of the statutes merchant, and the mayor, etc., etc.  A statute staple, properly so called, was a bond of record, acknowledged before the mayor of the staple,” etc., etc.

Here we again have a law-term apparently so out of the ken of an unprofessional writer, that it would seem to favor the Attorney and Solicitor theory.  But let us see if the knowledge which its use implies was confined to Shakespeare among the dramatists of his time.

In Fletcher’s “Noble Gentleman,” a comedy, first performed in 1625, we find a lady, sorely pushed for ready cash, crying out,—­

  “Take up at any use:  give bond, or land,
  Or mighty statutes, able by their strength
  To tie up my Samson, were he now alive.” 
  Act i.  Sc. 1.

And in Middleton’s “Family of Love,” (where, by the way, the Free-Love folk of our own day may find their peculiar notions set forth and made the basis of the action, though the play was printed two hundred and fifty years ago,) we find a female free-loveyer thus teaching a mercantile brother of the family, that, although she has a sisterly disregard for some worldly restraints, she yet keeps an eye on the main chance:—­

“Tut, you are master Dryfab, the merchant; your skill is greater in cony-skins and woolpacks than in gentlemen.  His lands be in statutes:  you merchants were wont to be merchant staplers; but now gentlemen have gotten up the trade; for there is not one gentleman amongst twenty but his lands be engaged in twenty statutes staple.”

Act i.  Sc. 3.

And in the very first speech of the first scene of the same play, the husband of this virtuous and careful dame says of the same “Gerardine,” (who, as he is poor and a gentleman, it need hardly be said, is about the only honest man in the piece,)—­“His lands be in statutes.”  And that poor debauchee, Robert Greene, who knew no more of law than he might have derived from such limited, though authentic information as to its powers over gentlemen who made debts without the intention of paying them, as he may have received at frequent unsolicited interviews with a sergeant or a bum-bailiff, has this passage in his “Quip for an Upstart Courtier,” 1592:—­

“The mercer he followeth the young upstart gentleman that hath no government of himself and feedeth his humour to go brave; he shall not want silks, sattins, velvets to pranke abroad in his pompe; but with this proviso, that he must bind over his land in a statute merchant or staple; and so at last forfeit all unto the merciless mercer, and leave himself never a foot of land in England.”