Dear Ewrgall
About "The Common Asphodel", you are right. That collection was reprinted in "The Crowning Privilege" (1959), however. Looking across from the keyboard at my copy of the latter, I picked up the wrong date from the title page, for which I apologise.
In fact, several (though, as I noted, not all) of Graves’s glosses are supported by the OED. Certainly, others may well be rather more idiosyncratic.
On legal jokes, these were of course by no means a speciality only of Shakespeare in that period. They can be found in many other writers, too. (I write as a one-time lawyer!)
Good luck with your project!
Clive Watkins
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