| Cryptographic Shakespeare |
| Cryptographic Shakespeare |
Twain's Views More Briefly
From Is Shakespeare Dead??????
By Mark Twain
Chapter IX
Did Francis Bacon write Shakespeare's Works? Nobody knows.
We cannot say we KNOW a thing when that thing has not been proved. KNOW is too strong a word to use
when the evidence is not final and absolutely conclusive. We can infer, if we want to, like those slaves. . . . No, I will
not write that word, it is not kind, it is not courteous. The upholders of the Stratford-Shakespeare superstition call
US the hardest names they can think of, and they keep doing it all the time; very well, if they like to descend to that
level, let them do it, but I will not so undignify myself as to follow them. I cannot call them harsh names; the most I
can do is to indicate them by terms reflecting my disapproval; and this without malice, without venom.
To resume. What I was about to say was, those thugs have built their entire superstition upon INFERENCES,
not upon known and established facts. It is a weak method, and poor, and I am glad to be able to say our side never
resorts to it while there is anything else to resort to.
But when we must, we must; and we have now arrived at a place of that sort. . . . Since the Stratford
Shakespeare couldn't have written the Works, we infer that somebody did. Who was it, then? This requires some
more inferring.
Ordinarily when an unsigned poem sweeps across the continent like a tidal wave whose roar and boom and
thunder are made up of admiration, delight, and applause, a dozen obscure people rise up and claim the authorship.
Why a dozen, instead of only one or two? One reason is, because there are a dozen that are recognizably competent
to do that poem. Do you remember "Beautiful Snow"? Do you remember "Rock Me to Sleep, Mother, Rock Me to
Sleep"? Do you remember "Backward, turn, backward, O Time, in thy flight! Make me a child again just for tonight"?
I remember them very well. Their authorship was claimed by most of the grown-up people who were alive at the
time, and every claimant had one plausible argument in his favor, at least--to wit, he could have done the authoring;
he was competent.
Have the Works been claimed by a dozen? They haven't. There was good reason. The world knows there was
but one man on the planet at the time who was competent--not a dozen, and not two. A long time ago the dwellers
in a far country used now and then to find a procession of prodigious footprints stretching across the
plain--footprints that were three miles apart, each footprint a third of a mile long and a furlong deep, and with
forests and villages mashed to mush in it. Was there any doubt as to who made that mighty trail? Were there a
dozen claimants? Where there two? No--the people knew who it was that had been along there: there was only one
Hercules.
There has been only one Shakespeare. There couldn't be two; certainly there couldn't be two at the same time. It
takes ages to bring forth a Shakespeare, and some more ages to match him. This one was not matched before his
time; nor during his time; and hasn't been matched since. The prospect of matching him in our time is not bright.
The Baconians claim that the Stratford Shakespeare was not qualified to write the Works, and that Francis Bacon
was. They claim that Bacon possessed the stupendous equipment--both natural and acquired--for the miracle; and
that no other Englishman of his day possessed the like; or, indeed, anything closely approaching it.
Macaulay, in his Essay, has much to say about the splendor and horizonless magnitude of that equipment. Also,
he has synopsized Bacon's history--a thing which cannot be done for the Stratford Shakespeare, for he hasn't any
history to synopsize. Bacon's history is open to the world, from his boyhood to his death in old age--a history
consisting of known facts, displayed in minute and multitudinous detail; FACTS, not guesses and conjectures and
might-have-beens.
Whereby it appears that he was born of a race of statesmen, and had a Lord Chancellor for his father, and a
mother who was "distinguished both as a linguist and a theologian: she corresponded in Greek with Bishop Jewell,
and translated his APOLOGIA from the Latin so correctly that neither he nor Archbishop Parker could suggest a
single alteration." It is the atmosphere we are reared in that determines how our inclinations and aspirations shall
tend. The atmosphere furnished by the parents to the son in this present case was an atmosphere saturated with
learning; with thinkings and ponderings upon deep subjects; and with polite culture. It had its natural effect.
Shakespeare of Stratford was reared in a house which had no use for books, since its owners, his parents, were
without education. This may have had an effect upon the son, but we do not know, because we have no history of
him of an informing sort. There were but few books anywhere, in that day, and only the well-to-do and highly
educated possessed them, they being almost confined to the dead languages. "All the valuable books then extant in
all the vernacular dialects of Europe would hardly have filled a single shelf"--imagine it! The few existing books were
in the Latin tongue mainly. "A person who was ignorant of it was shut out from all acquaintance--not merely with
Cicero and Virgil, but with the most interesting memoirs, state papers, and pamphlets of his own time"--a literature
necessary to the Stratford lad, for his fictitious reputation's sake, since the writer of his Works would begin to use it
wholesale and in a most masterly way before the lad was hardly more than out of his teens and into his twenties.
At fifteen Bacon was sent to the university, and he spent three years there. Thence he went to Paris in the train
of the English Ambassador, and there he mingled daily with the wise, the cultured, the great, and the aristocracy of
fashion, during another three years. A total of six years spent at the sources of knowledge; knowledge both of books
and of men. The three spent at the university were coeval with the second and last three spent by the little Stratford
lad at Stratford school supposedly, and perhapsedly, and maybe, and by inference--with nothing to infer from. The
second three of the Baconian six were "presumably" spent by the Stratford lad as apprentice to a butcher. That is, the
thugs presume it--on no evidence of any kind. Which is their way, when they want a historical fact. Fact and
presumption are, for business purposes, all the same to them. They know the difference, but they also know how to
blink it. They know, too, that while in history-building a fact is better than a presumption, it doesn't take a
presumption long to bloom into a fact when THEY have the handling of it. They know by old experience that when
they get hold of a presumption- tadpole he is not going to STAY tadpole in their history-tank; no, they know how to
develop him into the giant four-legged bullfrog of FACT, and make him sit up on his hams, and puff out his chin,
and look important and insolent and come-to-stay; and assert his genuine simon-pure authenticity with a thundering
bellow that will convince everybody because it is so loud. The thug is aware that loudness convinces sixty persons
where reasoning convinces but one. I wouldn't be a thug, not even if-- but never mind about that, it has nothing to
do with the argument, and it is not noble in spirit besides. If I am better than a thug, is the merit mine? No, it is His.
Then to Him be the praise. That is the right spirit.
They "presume" the lad severed his "presumed" connection with the Stratford school to become apprentice to a
butcher. They also "presume" that the butcher was his father. They don't know. There is no written record of it, nor
any other actual evidence. If it would have helped their case any, they would have apprenticed him to thirty
butchers, to fifty butchers, to a wilderness of butchers--all by their patented method "presumption." If it will help
their case they will do it yet; and if it will further help it, they will "presume" that all those butchers were his father.
And the week after, they will SAY it. Why, it is just like being the past tense of the compound reflexive adverbial
incandescent hypodermic irregular accusative Noun of Multitude; which is father to the expression which the
grammarians call Verb. It is like a whole ancestry, with only one posterity.
To resume. Next, the young Bacon took up the study of law, and mastered that abstruse science. From that day
to the end of his life he was daily in close contact with lawyers and judges; not as a casual onlooker in intervals
between holding horses in front of a theater, but as a practicing lawyer--a great and successful one, a renowned one,
a Launcelot of the bar, the most formidable lance in the high brotherhood of the legal Table Round; he lived in the
law's atmosphere thenceforth, all his years, and by sheer ability forced his way up its difficult steeps to its
supremest summit, the Lord-Chancellorship, leaving behind him no fellow-craftsman qualified to challenge his
divine right to that majestic place.
When we read the praises bestowed by Lord Penzance and the other illustrious experts upon the legal condition
and legal aptnesses, brilliances, profundities, and felicities so prodigally displayed in the Plays, and try to fit them to
the historyless Stratford stage-manager, they sound wild, strange, incredible, ludicrous; but when we put them in
the mouth of Bacon they do not sound strange, they seem in their natural and rightful place, they seem at home
there. Please turn back and read them again. Attributed to Shakespeare of Stratford they are meaningless, they are
inebriate extravagancies--intemperate admirations of the dark side of the moon, so to speak; attributed to Bacon,
they are admirations of the golden glories of the moon's front side, the moon at the full--and not intemperate, not
overwrought, but sane and right, and justified. "At ever turn and point at which the author required a metaphor,
simile, or illustration, his mind ever turned FIRST to the law; he seems almost to have THOUGHT in legal phrases;
the commonest legal phrases, the commonest of legal expressions, were ever at the end of his pen." That could
happen to no one but a person whose TRADE was the law; it could not happen to a dabbler in it. Veteran mariners
fill their conversation with sailor-phrases and draw all their similes from the ship and the sea and the storm, but no
mere PASSENGER ever does it, be he of Stratford or elsewhere; or could do it with anything resembling accuracy, if
he were hardy enough to try. Please read again what Lord Campbell and the other great authorities have said about
Bacon when they thought they were saying it about Shakespeare of Stratford.
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 were aloft, active as cats, laying out on the yards and booms, reeving the studding-sail
gear; and sail after sail the captain piled upon her, until she was covered with canvas, her sails looking like a great
white cloud resting upon a black speck.
Once more. A race in the Pacific:
Our antagonist was in her best trim. Being clear of the point, the breeze became stiff, and the royal-masts bent
under our sails, but we would not take them in until we saw three boys spring into the rigging of the CALIFORNIA;
then they were all furled at once, but with orders to our boys to stay aloft at the top-gallant mast-heads and loose
them again at the word. It was my duty to furl the fore-royal; and while standing by to loose it again, I had a fine
view of the scene. From where I stood, the two vessels seemed nothing but spars and sails, while their narrow
decks, far below, slanting over by the force of the wind aloft, appeared hardly capable of supporting the great
fabrics raised upon them. The CALIFORNIA was to windward of us, and had every advantage; yet, while the breeze
was stiff we held our own. As soon as it began to slacken she ranged a little ahead, and the order was given to loose
the royals. In an instant the gaskets were off and the bunt dropped. "Sheet home the fore-royal!"-- "Weather sheet's
home!"--"Lee sheet's home!"--"Hoist away, sir!" is bawled from aloft. "Overhaul your clew-lines!" shouts the mate.
"Aye-aye, sir, all clear!"--"Taut leech! belay! Well the lee brace; haul taut to windward!" and the royals are set.
What would the captain of any sailing-vessel of our time say to that? He would say, "The man that wrote that
didn't learn his trade out of a book, he has BEEN there!" But would this same captain be competent to sit in
judgment upon Shakespeare's seamanship--considering the changes in ships and ship-talk that have necessarily
taken place, unrecorded, unremembered, and lost to history in the last three hundred years? It is my conviction that
Shakespeare's sailor-talk would be Choctaw to him. For instance--from "The Tempest":(For more about
BOTE-SWAINE, hit here.)
MASTER. Boatswain!
BOATSWAIN. Here, master; what cheer?
MASTER. Good, speak to the mariners: fall to 't, yarely, or we run ourselves to ground; bestir, bestir! (ENTER
MARINERS.)
BOATSWAIN. Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare, yare! Take in the topsail. Tend to the master's
whistle. . . . Down with the topmast! yare! lower, lower! Bring her to try wi' the main course. . . . Lay her a-hold,
a-hold! Set her two courses. Off to sea again; lay her off.
That will do, for the present; let us yare a little, now, for a change.
If a man should write a book and in it make one of his characters say, "Here, devil, empty the quoins into the
standing galley and the imposing-stone into the hell-box; assemble the comps around the frisket and let them jeff for
takes and be quick about it," I should recognize a mistake or two in the phrasing, and would know that the writer
was only a printer theoretically, not practically.
I have been a quartz miner in the silver regions--a pretty hard life; I know all the palaver of that business: I
know all about discovery claims and the subordinate claims; I know all about lodes, ledges, outcroppings, dips,
spurs, angles, shafts, drifts, inclines, levels, tunnels, air-shafts, "horses," clay casings, granite casings; quartz mills
and their batteries; arastras, and how to charge them with quicksilver and sulphate of copper; and how to clean
them up, and how to reduce the resulting amalgam in the retorts, and how to cast the bullion into pigs; and finally I
know how to screen tailings, and also how to hunt for something less robust to do, and find it. I know the argot and
the quartz-mining and milling industry familiarly; and so whenever Bret Harte introduces that industry into a story,
the first time one of his miners opens his mouth I recognize from his phrasing that Harte got the phrasing by
listening--like Shakespeare--I mean the Stratford one--not by experience. No one can talk the quartz dialect correctly
without learning it with pick and shovel and drill and fuse.
I have been a surface miner--gold--and I know all its mysteries, and the dialects that belongs with them; and
whenever Harte introduces that industry into a story I know by the phrasing of his characters that neither he nor
they have ever served that trade.
I have been a "pocket" miner--a sort of gold mining not findable in any but one little spot in the world, so far as I
know. I know how, with horn and water, to find the trail of a pocket and trace it step by step and stage by stage up
the mountain to its source, and find the compact little nest of yellow metal reposing in its secret home under the
ground. I know the language of that trade, that capricious trade, that fascinating buried-treasure trade, and can catch
any writer who tries to use it without having learned it by the sweat of his brow and the labor of his hands.
I know several other trades and the argot that goes with them; and whenever a person tries to talk the talk
peculiar to any of them without having learned it at its source I can trap him always before he gets far on his road.
And so, as I have already remarked, if I were required to superintend a Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, I
would narrow the matter down to a single question--the only one, so far as the previous controversies have
informed me, concerning which illustrious experts of unimpeachable competency have testified: WAS THE
AUTHOR OF SHAKESPEARE'S WORKS A LAWYER?--a lawyer deeply read and of limitless experience? I would
put aside the guesses and surmises, and perhapes, and might-have-beens, and could-have- beens, and
must-have-beens, and we-are-justified-in-presumings, and the rest of those vague specters and shadows and
indefintenesses, and stand or fall, win or lose, by the verdict rendered by the jury upon that single question. If the
verdict was Yes, I should feel quite convinced that the Stratford Shakespeare, the actor, manager, and trader who
died so obscure, so forgotten, so destitute of even village consequence, that sixty years afterward no fellow-citizen
and friend of his later days remembered to tell anything about him, did not write the Works.
Chapter XIII of THE SHAKESPEARE PROBLEM RESTATED bears the heading "Shakespeare as a Lawyer," and
comprises some fifty pages of expert testimony, with comments thereon, and I will copy the first nine, as being
sufficient all by themselves, as it seems to me, to settle the question which I have conceived to be the master-key to
the Shakespeare-Bacon puzzle.
Shakespeare as a Lawyer [Note 1.]
The Plays and Poems of Shakespeare supply ample evidence that their author not only had a very extensive and
accurate knowledge of law, but that he was well acquainted with the manners and customs of members of the Inns
of Court and with legal life generally.
"While novelists and dramatists are constantly making mistakes as to the laws of marriage, of wills, of inheritance,
to Shakespeare's law, lavishly as he expounds it, there can neither be demurrer, nor bill of exceptions, nor writ of
error." Such was the testimony borne by one of the most distinguished lawyers of the nineteenth century who was
raised to the high office of Lord Chief Justice in 1850, and subsequently became Lord Chancellor. Its weight will,
doubtless, be more appreciated by lawyers than by laymen, for only lawyers know how impossible it is for those
who have not served an apprenticeship to the law to avoid displaying their ignorance if they venture to employ legal
terms and to discuss legal doctrines. "There is nothing so dangerous," wrote Lord Campbell, "as for one not of the
craft to tamper with our freemasonry." A layman is certain to betray himself by using some expression which a
lawyer would never employ. Mr. Sidney Lee himself supplies us with an example of this. He writes (p. 164): "On
February 15, 1609, Shakespeare . . . obtained judgment from a jury against Addenbroke for the payment of No. 6,
and No. 1, 5s. 0d. costs." Now a lawyer would never have spoken of obtaining "judgment from a jury," for it is the
function of a jury not to deliver judgment (which is the prerogative of the court), but to find a verdict on the facts.
The error is, indeed, a venial one, but it is just one of those little things which at once enable a lawyer to know if the
writer is a layman or "one of the craft."
But when a layman ventures to plunge deeply into legal subjects, he is naturally apt to make an exhibition of his
incompetence. "Let a non-professional man, however acute," writes Lord Campbell again, "presume to talk law, or
to draw illustrations from legal science in discussing other subjects, and he will speedily fall into laughable
absurdity."
And what does the same high authority say about Shakespeare? He had "a deep technical knowledge of the law,"
and an easy familiarity with "some of the most abstruse proceedings in English jurisprudence." And again:
"Whenever he indulges this propensity he uniformly lays down good law." Of "Henry IV.," Part 2, he says: "If Lord
Eldon could be supposed to have written the play, I do not see how he could be chargeable with having forgotten
any of his law while writing it." Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke speak of "the marvelous intimacy which he
displays with legal terms, his frequent adoption of them in illustration, and his curiously technical knowledge of
their form and force." Malone, himself a lawyer, wrote: "His knowledge of legal terms is not merely such as might
be acquired by the casual observation of even his all-comprehending mind; it has the appearance of technical skill."
Another lawyer and well-known Shakespearean, Richard Grant White, says: "No dramatist of the time, not even
Beaumont, who was the younger son of a judge of the Common Pleas, and who after studying in the Inns of Court
abandoned law for the drama, used legal phrases with Shakespeare's readiness and exactness. And the significance
of this fact is heightened by another, that is only to the language of the law that he exhibits this inclination. The
phrases peculiar to other occupations serve him on rare occasions by way of description, comparison, or illustration,
generally when something in the scene suggests them, but legal phrases flow from his pen as part of his vocabulary
and parcel of his thought. Take the word 'purchase' for instance, which, in ordinary use, means to acquire by giving
value, but applies in law to all legal modes of obtaining property except by inheritance or descent, and in this
peculiar sense the word occurs five times in Shakespeare's thirty-four plays, and only in one single instance in the
fifty-four plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. It has been suggested that it was in attendance upon the courts in London
that he picked up his legal vocabulary. But this supposition not only fails to account for Shakespeare's peculiar
freedom and exactness in the use of that phraseology, it does not even place him in the way of learning those terms
his use of which is most remarkable, which are not such as he would have heard at ordinary proceedings at NISI
PRIUS, but such as refer to the tenure or transfer of real property, 'fine and recovery,' 'statutes merchant,' 'purchase,'
'indenture,' 'tenure,' 'double voucher,' 'fee simple,' 'fee farm,' 'remainder,' 'reversion,' 'forfeiture,' etc. This
conveyancer's jargon could not have been picked up by hanging round the courts of law in London two hundred and
fifty years ago, when suits as to the title of real property were comparatively rare. And besides, Shakespeare uses
his law just as freely in his first plays, written in his first London years, as in those produced at a later period. Just as
exactly, too; for the correctness and propriety with which these terms are introduced have compelled the admiration
of a Chief Justice and a Lord Chancellor."
Senator Davis wrote: "We seem to have something more than a sciolist's temerity of indulgence in the terms of an
unfamiliar art. No legal solecisms will be found. The abstrusest elements of the common law are impressed into a
disciplined service. Over and over again, where such knowledge is unexampled in writers unlearned in the law,
Shakespeare appears in perfect possession of it. In the law of real property, its rules of tenure and descents, its
entails, its fines and recoveries, their vouchers and double vouchers, in the procedure of the Courts, the method of
bringing writs and arrests, the nature of actions, the rules of pleading, the law of escapes and of contempt of court,
in the principles of evidence, both technical and philosophical, in the distinction between the temporal and spiritual
tribunals, in the law of attainder and forfeiture, in the requisites of a valid marriage, in the presumption of
legitimacy, in the learning of the law of prerogative, in the inalienable character of the Crown, this mastership
appears with surprising authority."
To all this testimony (and there is much more which I have not cited) may now be added that of a great lawyer of
our own times, VIZ.: Sir James Plaisted Wilde, Q.C. 1855, created a Baron of the Exchequer in 1860, promoted to the
post of Judge- Ordinary and Judge of the Courts of Probate and Divorce in 1863, and better known to the world as
Lord Penzance, to which dignity he was raised in 1869. Lord Penzance, as all lawyers know, and as the late Mr.
Inderwick, K.C., has testified, was one of the first legal authorities of his day, famous for his "remarkable grasp of
legal principles," and "endowed by nature with a remarkable facility for marshaling facts, and for a clear expression
of his views."
Lord Penzance speaks of Shakespeare's "perfect familiarity" with the with not only the principles, axioms, and
maxims, but the technicalities of English law, a knowledge so perfect and intimate that he was never incorrect and
never at fault. . . . The mode in which this knowledge was pressed into service on all occasions to express his
meaning and illustrate his thoughts was quite unexampled. He seems to have had a special pleasure in his complete
and ready mastership of it in all its branches. As manifested in the plays, this legal knowledge and learning had
therefore a special character which places it on a wholly different footing from the rest of the multifarious
knowledge which is exhibited in page after page of the plays. At every turn and point at which the author required a
metaphor, simile, or illustration, his mind ever turned FIRST to the law. He seems almost to have THOUGHT in
legal phrases, the commonest of legal expressions were ever at the end of his pen in description or illustration. That
he should have descanted in lawyer language when he had a forensic subject in hand, such as Shylock's bond, was to
be expected, but the knowledge of law in 'Shakespeare' was exhibited in a far different manner: it protruded itself on
all occasions, appropriate or inappropriate, and mingled itself with strains of thought widely divergent from forensic
subjects."
Again: "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,
nothing short of employment in some career involving constant contact with legal questions and general legal work
would be requisite. But a continuous employment involves the element of time, and time was just what the manager
of two theaters had not at his disposal. In what portion of Shakespeare's (i.e., Shakspere'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?"
Stratfordians, as is well known, casting about for some possible explanation of Shakespeare's extraordinary
knowledge of law, have made the suggestion that Shakespeare might, conceivably, have been a clerk in an attorney's
office before he came to London. Mr. Collier wrote to Lord Campbell to ask his opinion as to the probability of this
being true. His answer was as follows: "You require us to believe implicitly a fact, of which, if true, positive and
irrefragable evidence in his own handwriting might have been forthcoming to establish it. Not having been actually
enrolled as an attorney, neither the records of the local court at Stratford nor of the superior Court at Westminster
would present his name as being concerned in any suit as an attorney, but it might reasonably have been expected
that there would be deeds or wills witnessed by him still extant, and after a very diligent search none such can be
discovered."
Upon this Lord Penzance commends: "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, besides 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 of 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 pointed 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 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 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 doubt 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 may 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 them 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 uncheapened, unwatered by guesses, and surmises,
and maybe-so's, and might-have-beens, and could-have-beens, and must- have-beens, and the rest of that ton of
plaster of Paris out of which the biographers have built the colossal brontosaur which goes by the Stratford actor's
name, that it quite convinces me that the man who wrote Shakespeare's Works knew all about law and lawyers.
Also, that that man could not have been the Stratford Shakespeare--and WASN'T. [End of Twain quotation] [Note.1].
From Chapter XIII of THE SHAKESPEARE PROBLEM RESTATED. By George G. Greenwood, M.P. John Lane
Company, publishers. The biographers of Shakespeare delight in speculating that other dramatists of the times
co-authored or were themselves solely responsible for many of the plays. They offer the names of Heywood, Jonson,
Middleton, Fletcher, Peele, Greene, Marlowe, Wilkes, Rowley, Hooker, Kyd, Drayton, Dekker, Nash, Queen
Elizabeth, or anyone with the initials "W.S."
But if the detested name of Bacon be mentioned, these "biographers" are at once provoked to frenzied rage.
I will quote James Phinney Baxter The Greatest of Literary Problems (1915):
It was estimated many years ago that ten thousand volumes, large and small, had been written on the
"Shakespeare" Works. This number should have about doubled by this time, and it is true to say that they constitute
such a confusing mass of irreconcilable opinions as to be useless to students, except as a warning against juggling
with glittering theories in literary criticism. This, however, can hardly compensate for the dissemination of so much
fiction, and the imposition of useless toil to overworked librarians and callow students.
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