more, much more: learned law and its intricacies; and the complex
procedure of the law courts; and all about soldiering, and
sailoring, and the manners and customs and ways of royal courts and
aristocratic society; and likewise accumulated in his one head
every kind of knowledge the learned then possessed, and every kind
of humble knowledge possessed by the lowly and the ignorant; and
added thereto a wider and more intimate knowledge of the world's
great literatures, ancient and modern, than was possessed by any
other man of his time--for he was going to make brilliant and easy
and admiration-compelling use of these splendid treasures the
moment he got to London. And according to the surmisers, that is
what he did. Yes, although there was no one in Stratford able to
teach him these things, and no library in the little village to dig
them out of. His father could not read, and even the surmisers
surmise that he did not keep a library.

It is surmised by the biographers that the young Shakespeare got
his vast knowledge of the law and his familiar and accurate
acquaintance with the manners and customs and shop-talk of lawyers
through being for a time the CLERK OF A STRATFORD COURT; just as a
bright lad like me, reared in a village on the banks of the
Mississippi, might become perfect in knowledge of the Behring
Strait whale-fishery and the shop-talk of the veteran exercisers of
that adventure-bristling trade through catching catfish with a
"trot-line" Sundays. But the surmise is damaged by the fact that
there is no evidence--and not even tradition--that the young
Shakespeare was ever clerk of a law court.

It is further surmised that the young Shakespeare accumulated his
law-treasures in the first years of his sojourn in London, through