What Is Man? and Other Essays
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 Vol. II, pp. 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
marvelous 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 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. Away, 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 tolerably 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 hypothesis that in
early life he was in an attorney’s office (!), that he there contracted
a love for the law which never left him, that as a young man in London
he continued to study or dabble in it for his amusement, to stroll in
leisure hours into the Courts, and to frequent the society of lawyers.
On no other supposition is it possible to explain the attraction which
the law evidently had for him, and his minute and undeviating accuracy
in a subject where no layman who has indulged in such copious and
ostentatious display of legal technicalities has ever yet succeeded in
keeping himself from tripping.”
A lame conclusion. “No other supposition” indeed! Yes, there is
another, and a very obvious supposition—namely, that Shakespeare was
himself a lawyer, well versed in his trade, versed in all the ways of
the courts, and living in close intimacy with judges and members of the
Inns of Court.
One is, of course, thankful that Mr. Collins has appreciated the fact
that Shakespeare must have had a sound legal training, but I may be
forgiven if I do not attach quite so much importance to his
pronouncements on this branch of the subject as to those of Malone,
Lord Campbell, Judge Holmes, Mr. Castle, K.C., Lord Penzance, Mr. Grant
White, and other lawyers, who have expressed their opinion on the
matter of Shakespeare’s legal acquirements....
Here it may, perhaps, be worth while to quote again from Lord
Penzance’s book as to the suggestion that Shakespeare had somehow or
other managed “to acquire a perfect familiarity with legal principles,
and an accurate and ready use of the technical terms and phrases, not
only of the conveyancer’s office, but of the pleader’s chambers and the
Courts at Westminster.” This, as Lord Penzance points out, “would
require nothing short of employment in some career involving _constant
contact_ with legal questions and general legal work.” But “in what
portion of Shakespeare’s career would it be possible to point out that
time could be found for the interposition of a legal employment in the
chambers or offices of practicing lawyers?... It is beyond doubt that
at an early period he was called upon to abandon his attendance at
school and assist his father, and was soon after, at the age of
sixteen, bound apprentice to a trade. While under the obligation of
this bond he could not have pursued any other employment. Then he
leaves Stratford and comes to London. He has to provide himself with
the means of a livelihood, and this he did in some capacity at the
theater. No one doubts that. The holding of horses is scouted by many,
and perhaps with justice, as being unlikely and certainly unproved; but
whatever the nature of his employment was at the theater, there is
hardly room for the belief that it could have been other than
continuous, for his progress there was so rapid. Ere long he had been
taken into the company as an actor, and was soon spoken of as a
‘Johannes Factotum.’ His rapid accumulation of wealth speaks volumes
for the constancy and activity of his services. One fails to see when
there could be a break in the current of his life at this period of it,
giving room or opportunity for legal or indeed any other employment.
‘In 1589,’ says Knight, ‘we have undeniable evidence that he had not
only a casual engagement, was not only a salaried servant, as many
players were, but was a shareholder in the company of the Queen’s
players with other shareholders below him on the list.’ This (1589)
would be within two years after his arrival in London, which is placed
by White and Halliwell- Phillipps about the year 1587. The difficulty
in supposing that, starting with a state of ignorance in 1587, when he
is supposed to have come to London, he was induced to enter upon a
course of most extended study and mental culture, is almost
insuperable. Still it was physically possible, provided always that he
could have had access to the needful books. But this legal training
seems to me to stand on a different footing. It is not only
unaccountable and incredible, but it is actually negatived by the known
facts of his career.” Lord Penzance then refers to the fact that “by
1592 (according to the best authority, Mr. Grant White) several of the
plays had been written. ‘The Comedy of Errors’ in 1589, ‘Love’s
Labour’s Lost’ in 1589, ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona’ in 1589 or 1590,” and
so forth, and then asks, “with this catalogue of dramatic work on
hand... was it possible that he could have taken a leading part in the
management and conduct of two theaters, and if Mr. Phillipps is to be
relied upon, taken his share in the performances of the provincial
tours of his company—and at the same time devoted himself to the study
of the law in all its branches so efficiently as to make himself
complete master of its principles and practice, and saturate his mind
with all its most technical terms?”
I have cited this passage from Lord Penzance’s book, because it lay
before me, and I had already quoted from it on the matter of
Shakespeare’s legal knowledge; but other writers have still better set
forth the insuperable difficulties, as they seem to me, which beset the
idea that Shakespeare might have found time in some unknown period of
early life, amid multifarious other occupations, for the study of
classics, literature, and law, to say nothing of languages and a few
other matters. Lord Penzance further asks his readers: “Did you ever
meet with or hear of an instance in which a young man in this country
gave himself up to legal studies and engaged in legal employments,
which is the only way of becoming familiar with the technicalities of
practice, unless with the view of practicing in that profession? I do
not believe that it would be easy, or indeed possible, to produce an
instance in which the law has been seriously studied in all its
branches, except as a qualification for practice in the legal
profession.”
This testimony is so strong, so direct, so authoritative; and so