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 pres