chambers and the Courts at Westminster, nothing short
of employment in some career involving constant contact with legal
questions and general legal work would be requisite. But a continuous
employment involves the element of time, and time was just what the
manager of two theaters had not at his disposal. In what portion of
Shakespeare's (i.e., Shakspere's) career would it be possible to point
out that time could be found for the interposition of a legal employment
in the chambers or offices of practicing lawyers?"

Stratfordians, as is well known, casting about for some possible
explanation of Shakespeare's extraordinary knowledge of law, have made
the suggestion that Shakespeare might, conceivably, have been a clerk in
an attorney's office before he came to London. Mr. Collier wrote to Lord
Campbell to ask his opinion as to the probability of this being true.
His answer was as follows: "You require us to believe implicitly a
fact, of which, if true, positive and irrefragable evidence in his own
handwriting might have been forthcoming to establish it. Not having been
actually enrolled as an attorney, neither the records of the local court
at Stratford nor of the superior Court at Westminster would present
his name as being concerned in any suit as an attorney, but it might
reasonably have been expected that there would be deeds or wills
witnessed by him still extant, and after a very diligent search none
such can be discovered."

Upon this Lord Penzance commends: "It cannot be doubted that Lord
Campbell was right in this. No young man could have been at work in
an attorney's office without being called upon continually to act as a
witness, and in many other ways leaving traces of his work and
name." There is not a single fact or incident in all that is known of
Shakespeare, even by rumor or tradition, which supports this notion of
a clerkship. And after much argument and surmise which has been indulged
in on this subject, we may, I think, safely put the notion on one side,
for no less an authority than Mr. Grant White says finally that the idea
of his having been clerk to an attorney has been "blown to pieces."

It is altogether characteristic of Mr. Churton Collins that he,
nevertheless, adopts this exploded myth. "That Shakespeare was in early
life employed as a clerk in an attorney's office may be correct. At
Stratford there was by royal charter a Court of Record sitting every
fortnight, with six attorneys, besi