"amusing himself" by learning book-law in his garret and by picking
up lawyer-talk and the rest of it through loitering about 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 theatres, 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 travelled 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