out the law-courts
and listening. But it is only surmise; there is no EVIDENCE that he
ever did either of those things. They are merely a couple of chunks of
plaster of Paris.

There is a legend that he got his bread and butter by holding horses in
front of the London theaters, mornings and afternoons. Maybe he did.
If he did, it seriously shortened his law-study hours and his
recreation-time in the courts. In those very days he was writing great
plays, and needed all the time he could get. The horse-holding legend
ought to be strangled; it too formidably increases the historian's
difficulty in accounting for the young Shakespeare's erudition--an
erudition which he was acquiring, hunk by hunk and chunk by chunk, every
day in those strenuous times, and emptying each day's catch into next
day's imperishable drama.

He had to acquire a knowledge of war at the same time; and a knowledge
of soldier-people and sailor-people and their ways and talk; also a
knowledge of some foreign lands and their languages: for he was daily
emptying fluent streams of these various knowledges, too, into his
dramas. How did he acquire these rich assets?

In the usual way: by surmise. It is SURMISED that he traveled in Italy
and Germany and around, and qualified himself to put their scenic and
social aspects upon paper; that he perfected himself in French, Italian,
and Spanish on the road; that he went in Leicester's expedition to the
Low Countries, as soldier or sutler or something, for several months or
years--or whatever length of time a surmiser needs in his business--and
thus became familiar with soldiership and soldier-ways and soldier-talk
and generalship and general-ways and general-talk, and seamanship and
sailor-ways and sailor-talk.

Maybe he did all these things, but I would like to know who held the
horses in the mean time; and who studied the books in the garret;
and who frolicked in the law-courts for recreation. Also, who did the
call-boying and the play-acting.

For he became a call-boy; and as early as '93 he became a
"vagabond"--the law's ungentle term for an unlisted actor; and in '94
a "regular" and properly and officially listed member of that (in those
days) lightly valued and not much respected profession.

Right soon thereafter he became a stockholder in two theaters, and
manager of them. Thenceforward he was a busy and flourishing business
man, and was raking in money with both hands for twenty years. Then in a