d always that he could have had access to
the needful books. But this legal training seems to me to stand on a
different footing. It is not only unaccountable and incredible, but it
is actually negatived by the known facts of his career." Lord Penzance
then refers to the fact that "by 1592 (according to the best authority,
Mr. Grant White) several of the plays had been written. 'The Comedy
of Errors' in 1589, 'Love's Labour's Lost' in 1589, 'Two Gentlemen
of Verona' in 1589 or 1590," and so forth, and then asks, "with this
catalogue of dramatic work on hand... was it possible that he could have
taken a leading part in the management and conduct of two theaters,
and if Mr. Phillipps is to be relied upon, taken his share in the
performances of the provincial tours of his company--and at the same
time devoted himself to the study of the law in all its branches so
efficiently as to make himself complete master of its principles and
practice, and saturate his mind with all its most technical terms?"

I have cited this passage from Lord Penzance's book, because it
lay before me, and I had already quoted from it on the matter of
Shakespeare's legal knowledge; but other writers have still better set
forth the insuperable difficulties, as they seem to me, which beset the
idea that Shakespeare might have found them in some unknown period
of early life, amid multifarious other occupations, for the study of
classics, literature, and law, to say nothing of languages and a few
other matters. Lord Penzance further asks his readers: "Did you ever
meet with or hear of an instance in which a young man in this country
gave himself up to legal studies and engaged in legal employments,
which is the only way of becoming familiar with the technicalities of
practice, unless with the view of practicing in that profession? I do
not believe that it would be easy, or indeed possible, to produce
an instance in which the law has been seriously studied in all
its branches, except as a qualification for practice in the legal
profession."

This testimony is so strong, so direct, so authoritative; and so
uncheapened, unwatered by guesses, and surmises, and maybe-so's, and
might-have-beens, and could-have-beens, and must-have-beens, and the
rest of that ton of plaster of Paris out of which the biographers have
built the colossal brontosaur which goes by the Stratford actor's name,
that it quite convinces me that the man who wrote Shakespeare's Works
kn