Chapter 7

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