me do creditable things in those ancient days; and several white-
headed engineers; and several roustabouts and mates; and several
deck-hands who used to heave the lead for me and send up on the
still night air the “six–feet–SCANT!” that made me shudder, and
the “M-a-r-k–twain!” that took the shudder away, and presently the
darling “By the d-e-e-p–four!” that lifted me to heaven for joy.
{1} They know about me, and can tell. And so do printers, from
St. Louis to New York; and so do newspaper reporters, from Nevada
to San Francisco. And so do the police. If Shakespeare had really
been celebrated, like me, Stratford could have told things about
him; and if my experience goes for anything, they’d have done it.
CHAPTER VII
If I had under my superintendence a controversy appointed to decide
whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare or not, I believe I would
place before the debaters only the one question, WAS SHAKESPEARE
EVER A PRACTICING LAWYER? and leave everything else out.
It is maintained that the man who wrote the plays was not merely
myriad-minded, but also myriad-accomplished: that he not only knew
some thousands of things about human life in all its shades and
grades, and about the hundred arts and trades and crafts and
professions which men busy themselves in, but that he could TALK
about the men and their grades and trades accurately, making no
mistakes. Maybe it is so, but have the experts spoken, or is it
only Tom, Dick, and Harry? Does the exhibit stand upon wide, and
loose, and eloquent generalizing–which is not evidence, and not
proof–or upon details, particulars, statistics, illustrations,
demonstrations?
Experts of unchallengeable authority have testified definitely as
to only one of Shakespeare’s multifarious craft-equipments, so far
as my recollections of Shakespeare-Bacon talk abide with me–his
law-equipment. I do not remember that Wellington or Napoleon ever
examined Shakespeare’s battles and sieges and strategies, and then
decided and established for good and all, that they were militarily
flawless; I do not remember that any Nelson, or Drake or Cook ever
examined his seamanship and said it showed profound and accurate
familiarity with that art; I don’t remember that any king or prince
or duke has ever testified that Shakespeare was letter-perfect in
his handling of royal court-manners and the talk and manners of
aristocracies; I don’t remember that any illustrious Latinist or
Grecian or Frenchman or Spaniard or Italian has proclaimed him a
past-master in those languages; I don’t remember–well, I don’t
remember that there is TESTIMONY–great testimony–imposing
testimony–unanswerable and unattackable testimony as to any of
Shakespeare’s hundred specialties, except one–the law.
Other things change, with time, and the student cannot trace back
with certainty the changes that various trades and their processes
and technicalities have undergone in the long stretch of a century
or two and find out what their processes and technicalities were in
those early days, but with the law it is different: it is mile-
stoned and documented all the way back, and the master of that
wonderful trade, that complex and intricate trade, that awe-
compelling trade, has competent ways of knowing whether
Shakespeare-law is good law or not; and whether his law-court
procedure is correct or not, and whether his legal shop-talk is the
shop-talk of a veteran practitioner or only a machine-made
counterfeit of it gathered from books and from occasional
loiterings in Westminster.
Richard H. Dana served two years before the mast, and had every
experience that falls to the lot of the sailor before the mast of
our day. His sailor-talk flows from his pen with the sure touch
and the ease and confidence of a person who has LIVED what he is
talking about, not gathered it from books and random listenings.
Hear him:
Having hove short, cast off the gaskets, and made the bunt of each
sail fast by the jigger, with a man on each yard, at the word the
whole canvas of the ship was loosed, and with the greatest rapidity
possible everything was sheeted home and hoisted up, the anchor
tripped and cat-headed, and the ship under headway.
Again:
The royal yards were all crossed at once, and royals and sky-sails
set, and, as we had the wind free, the booms were run out, and all