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 studdingsail 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 clewlines!" 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:
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 of 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 dialect 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 perhapses, 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 indefinitenesses, 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.