Long Live the Lawyers
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”Henry VI, Part II, IV,2; Dick the Butcher to Jack Cade, leaders of a rebel mob
The next time someone walks up to you at a cocktail party (as so often they do) and pulls out the quote above, proclaiming with a wry smile that the Bard therein advocated the elimination of your profession, counter-grin and tell them the Ham-of-Stratford doesn’t justify the wry.
While on its surface the line seems to indicate the author’s rancor for officers of the court, its use in context reveals quite the contrary. The character who makes this unwholesome suggestion is Dick the Butcher, a cohort in rebellion of Jack Cade. Both characters are virulently anti-intellectual. They kill readers, burn books, and regard women as communal property. Striving for power, they recognize that an undereducated populace is easier to manipulate. The only bar (pun intended) to their coup at that point are the lawyers. Would-be autocrats recognize that, in a system governed by laws, lawyers are the first line of defense against dictatorship and bloodshed. Lawyers of all stripes, if they will to do so, serve as educated guardians of a free and functioning society.
No small responsibility, this. A character named Dick the Butcher considers the eradication of lawyers top priority on his way to the throne. When totalitarians want you gone, you know you’re doing something right.
I love this quote and the conversation that goes with it. I wear it to Shakespeare in the Park every summer on my favorite threadbare t-shirt. I like to wear it when I write too. It’s easy to get cynical after four decades in the legal profession; this quote reminds me to hold onto Shakespeare’s ideal that the work we do might, with all of our might, be shielding people from tyranny.
I’ll hope so until the end.
