added thereto a wider and more intimate knowledge of the world’s
great literatures, ancient and modern, than was possessed by any
other man of his time–for he was going to make brilliant and easy
and admiration-compelling use of these splendid treasures the
moment he got to London. And according to the surmisers, that is
what he did. Yes, although there was no one in Stratford able to
teach him these things, and no library in the little village to dig
them out of. His father could not read, and even the surmisers
surmise that he did not keep a library.
It is surmised by the biographers that the young Shakespeare got
his vast knowledge of the law and his familiar and accurate
acquaintance with the manners and customs and shop-talk of lawyers
through being for a time the CLERK OF A STRATFORD COURT; just as a
bright lad like me, reared in a village on the banks of the
Mississippi, might become perfect in knowledge of the Behring
Strait whale-fishery and the shop-talk of the veteran exercisers of
that adventure-bristling trade through catching catfish with a
“trot-line” Sundays. But the surmise is damaged by the fact that
there is no evidence–and not even tradition–that the young
Shakespeare was ever clerk of a law court.
It is further surmised that the young Shakespeare accumulated his
law-treasures in the first years of his sojourn in London, through
“amusing himself” by learning book-law in his garret and by picking
up lawyer-talk and the rest of it through loitering about the law-
courts and listening. But it is only surmise; there is no EVIDENCE
that he ever did either of those things. They are merely a couple
of chunks of plaster of paris.
There is a legend that he got his bread and butter by holding
horses in front of the London theatres, mornings and afternoons.
Maybe he did. If he did, it seriously shortened his law-study
hours and his recreation-time in the courts. In those very days he
was writing great plays, and needed all the time he could get. The
horse-holding legend ought to be strangled; it too formidably
increases the historian’s difficulty in accounting for the young
Shakespeare’s erudition–an erudition which he was acquiring, hunk
by hunk and chunk by chunk every day in those strenuous times, and
emptying each day’s catch into next day’s imperishable drama.
He had to acquire a knowledge of war at the same time; and a
knowledge of soldier-people and sailor-people and their ways and
talk; also a knowledge of some foreign lands and their languages:
for he was daily emptying fluent streams of these various
knowledges, too, into his dramas. How did he acquire these rich
assets?
In the usual way: by surmise. It is SURMISED that he travelled in
Italy and Germany and around, and qualified himself to put their
scenic and social aspects upon paper; that he perfected himself in
French, Italian and Spanish on the road; that he went in
Leicester’s expedition to the Low Countries, as soldier or sutler
or something, for several months or years–or whatever length of
time a surmiser needs in his business–and thus became familiar
with soldiership and soldier-ways and soldier-talk, and generalship
and general-ways and general-talk, and seamanship and sailor-ways
and sailor-talk.
Maybe he did all these things, but I would like to know who held
the horses in the meantime; and who studied the books in the
garret; and who frollicked in the law-courts for recreation. Also,
who did the call-boying and the play-acting.
For he became a call-boy; and as early as ’93 he became a
“vagabond”–the law’s ungentle term for an unlisted actor; and in
’94 a “regular” and properly and officially listed member of that
(in those days) lightly-valued and not much respected profession.
Right soon thereafter he became a stockholder in two theatres, and
manager of them. Thenceforward he was a busy and flourishing
business man, and was raking in money with both hands for twenty
years. Then in a noble frenzy of poetic inspiration he wrote his
one poem–his only poem, his darling–and laid him down and died:
Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare:
Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones