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 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 the 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 ignorance!
But such are the methods of Stratfordian controversy.
Tradition is to be scouted when it is found inconvenient, but
cited as irrefragable truth when it suits the case. Shakespeare
of Stratford was the author of the Plays and Poems, but the
author of the Plays and Poems could not have been a butcher’s
apprentice. Anyway, therefore, with tradition. But the author
of the Plays and Poems MUST have had a very large and a very
accurate knowledge of the law. Therefore, Shakespeare of
Stratford must have been an attorney’s clerk! The method is
simplicity itself. By similar reasoning Shakespeare has been
made a country schoolmaster, a soldier, a physician, a printer,
and a good many other things besides, according to the
inclination and the exigencies of the commentator. It would not
be in the least surprising to find that he was studying Latin as
a schoolmaster and law in an attorney’s office at the same time.
However, we must do Mr. Collins the justice of saying that
he has fully recognized, what is indeed tolerable obvious, that
Shakespeare must have had a sound legal training. “It may, of
course, be urged,” he writes, “that Shakespeare’s knowledge of
medicine, and particularly that branch of it which related to
morbid psychology, is equally remarkable, and that no one has
ever contended that he was a physician. (Here Mr. Collins is
wrong; that contention also has been put forward.) It may be
urged that his acquaintance with the technicalities of other
crafts and callings, notably of marine and military affairs, was
also extraordinary, and yet no one has suspected him of being a
sailor or a soldier. (Wrong again. Why, even Messrs. Garnett
and Gosse “suspect” that he was a soldier!) This may be
conceded, but the concession hardly furnishes an analogy. To
these and all other subjects he recurs occasionally, and in
season, but with reminiscences of the law his memory, as is
abundantly clear, was simply saturated. In season and out of
season now in manifest, now in recondite application, he presses
it into the service of expression and illustration. At least a
third of his myriad metaphors are derived from it. It would
indeed be difficult to find a single act in any of his dramas,
nay, in some of them, a single scene, the diction and imagery of
which are not colored by it. Much of his law may have been
acquired from three books easily accessible to him–namely,
Tottell’s PRECEDENTS (1572), Pulton’s STATUTES (1578), and
Fraunce’s LAWIER’S LOGIKE (1588), works with which he certainly
seems to have been familiar; but much of it could only have come
from one who had an intimate acquaintance with legal proceedings.
We quite agree with Mr. Castle that Shakespeare’s legal knowledge
is not what could have been picked up in an attorney’s office,
but could only have been learned by an actual attendance at the
Courts, at a Pleader’s Chambers, and on circuit, or by
associating intimately with members of the Bench and Bar.”
This is excellent. But what is Mr. Collins’s explanation?
“Perhaps the simplest solution of the problem is to accept the