Mr.Sidney Lee sees nothing improbable in it,and it is supported by Aubrey,who must have written his account some time before 1680,when his manu was completed.Of the attorney's clerk hypothesis,on the other hand,there is not the faintest vestige of a tradition.It has been evolved out of the fertile imaginations of embarrassed Stratfordians,seeking for some explanation of the Stratford rustic's marvellous acquaintance with law and legal terms and legal life.But Mr.Churton Collins has not the least hesitation in throwing over the tradition which has the warrant of antiquity and setting up in its stead this ridiculous invention,for which not only is there no shred of positive evidence,but which,as Lord Campbell and Lord Penzance point out,is really put out of court by the negative evidence,since "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."And as Mr.Edwards further points out,since the day when Lord Campbell's book was published (between forty and fifty years ago),"every old deed or will,to say nothing of other legal papers,dated during the period of William Shakespeare's youth,has been scrutinized over half a dozen shires,and not one signature of the young man has been found."Moreover,if Shakespeare had served as clerk in an attorney's office it is clear that he must have so served for a considerable period in order to have gained (if indeed it is credible that he could have so gained)his remarkable knowledge of law.Can we then for a moment believe that,if this had been so,tradition would have been absolutely silent on the matter?That Dowdall's old clerk,over eighty years of age,should have never heard of it (though he was sure enough about the butcher's apprentice),and that all the other ancient witnesses should be in similar ignorance!
But such are the methods of Stratfordian controversy.Tradition is to be scouted when it is found inconvenient,but cited as irrefragable truth when it suits the case.Shakespeare of Stratford was the author of the Plays and Poems,but the author of the Plays and Poems could not have been a butcher's apprentice.
Away,therefore,with tradition.But the author of the Plays and Poems must have had a very large and a very accurate knowledge of the law.Therefore,Shakespeare of Stratford must have been an attorney's clerk!The method is simplicity itself.By similar reasoning Shakespeare has been made a country schoolmaster,a soldier,a physician,a printer,and a good many other things beside,according to the inclination and the exigencies of the commentator.It would not be in the least surprising to find that he was studying Latin as a schoolmaster and law in an attorney's office at the same time.
