wills witnessed by him still extant, and after a very diligent
search none such can be discovered.”
Upon this Lord Penzance comments: “It cannot be doubted that Lord
Campbell was right in this. No young man could have been at work
in an attorney’s office without being called upon continually to
act as a witness, and in many other ways leaving traces of his work
and name.” There is not a single fact or incident in all that is
known of Shakespeare, even by rumor or tradition, which supports
this notion of a clerkship. And after much argument and surmise
which has been indulged in on this subject, we may, I think, safely
put the notion on one side, for no less an authority than Mr. Grant
White says finally that the idea of his having been clerk to an
attorney has been “blown to pieces.”
It is altogether characteristic of Mr. Churton Collins that he,
nevertheless, adopts this exploded myth. “That Shakespeare was in
early life employed as a clerk in an attorney’s office, may be
correct. At Stratford there was by royal charter a Court of Record
sitting every fortnight, with six attorneys, beside the town clerk,
belonging to it, and it is certainly not straining probability to
suppose that the young Shakespeare may have had employment in one
of them. There is, it is true, no tradition to this effect, but
such traditions as we have about Shakespeare’s occupation between
the time of leaving school and going to London are so loose and
baseless that no confidence can be placed in them. It is, to say
the least, more probable that he was in an attorney’s office than
that he was a butcher killing calves ‘in a high style,’ and making
speeches over them.”
This is a charming specimen of Stratfordian argument. There is, as
we have seen, a very old tradition that Shakespeare was a butcher’s
apprentice. John Dowdall, who made a tour in Warwickshire in 1693,
testifies to it as coming from the old clerk who showed him over
the church, and it is unhesitatingly accepted as true by Mr.
Halliwell-Phillipps. (Vol I, p. 11, and see Vol. II, p. 71, 72.)
Mr. Sidney Lee sees nothing improbable in it, and it is supported
by Aubrey, who must have written his account some time before 1680,
when his manuscript was completed. Of the attorney’s clerk
hypothesis, on the other hand, there is not the faintest vestige of
a tradition. It has been evolved out of the fertile imaginations
of embarrassed Stratfordians, seeking for some explanation of the
Stratford rustic’s marvellous acquaintance with law and legal terms
and legal life. But Mr. Churton Collins has not the least
hesitation in throwing over the tradition which has the warrant of
antiquity and setting up in its stead this ridiculous invention,
for which not only is there no shred of positive evidence, but
which, as Lord Campbell and Lord Penzance point out, is really put
out of court by the negative evidence, since “no young man could
have been at work in an attorney’s office without being called upon
continually to act as a witness, and in many other ways leaving
traces of his work and name.” And as Mr. Edwards further points
out, since the day when Lord Campbell’s book was published (between
forty and fifty years ago), “every old deed or will, to say nothing
of other legal papers, dated during the period of William
Shakespeare’s youth, has been scrutinized over half a dozen shires,
and not one signature of the young man has been found.”
Moreover, if Shakespeare had served as clerk in an attorney’s
office it is clear that he must have so served for a considerable
period in order to have gained (if indeed it is credible that he
could have so gained) his remarkable knowledge of law. Can we then
for a moment believe that, if this had been so, tradition would
have been absolutely silent on the matter? That Dowdall’s old
clerk, over eighty years of age, should have never heard of it
(though he was sure enough about the butcher’s apprentice), and
that all the other ancient witnesses should be in similar