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 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_:
_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_ 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 spectres 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.