QUOTES FROM THE BARD

PLAY: King Lear ACT/SCENE: 1.4 SPEAKER: Fool CONTEXT: FOOL
Mark it, nuncle.
Have more than thou showest,
Speak less than thou knowest,
Lend less than thou owest,
Ride more than thou goest,
Learn more than thou trowest,
Set less than thou throwest,
Leave thy drink and thy whore
And keep in-a-door,
And thou shalt have more
Than two tens to a score
KENT
This is nothing, Fool.
FOOL
Then ’tis like the breath of an unfee’d lawyer. You gave me nothing for ’t.—Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle? DUTCH: Dan is het als het pleidooi van een gratis advocaat: u hebt me
er niets voor betaald. MORE: CITED IN US LAW:
From William Domnarski, Shakespeare in the Law: “In a bankruptcy case in which the lawyers are trying to keep their legal fees from being discharged, “tis like the breath of an unfee’d lawyer” seems to be a great quotation to use to describe what the court characterizes as the “fuming outrage” of the lawyers, especially if we misread “unfee’ d” for “fetid,” hut on examination the quotation does not wash. Shakespeare, knowing lawyers as he did, uses the quotation to describe the emptiness of a lawyer’s advice when he is not being paid for it.” (In Re Samuel Homyak, 40 Bankr. 99, 100 (S.D.N.Y. 1984).
Reference to the proverb: ‘A lawyer will not plead but for a fee’
Schmidt:
Breath= Speech, i.e. pleading Topics: lawyers, cited in law, proverbs and idioms