metaphors are derived from it. It would indeed be difficult to
find a single act in any of his dramas, nay, in some of them, a
single scene, the diction and imagery of which is not colored by
it. Much of his law may have been acquired from three books easily
accessible to him, namely Tottell's Precedents (1572), Pulton's
Statutes (1578), and Fraunce's Lawier's Logike (1588), works with
which he certainly seems to have been familiar; but much of it
could only have come from one who had an intimate acquaintance with
legal proceedings. We quite agree with Mr. Castle that
Shakespeare's legal knowledge is not what could have been picked up
in an attorney's office, but could only have been learned by an
actual attendance at the Courts, at a Pleader's Chambers, and on
circuit, or by associating intimately with members of the Bench and
Bar."

This is excellent. But what is Mr. Collins' explanation. "Perhaps
the simplest solution of the problem is to accept the hypothesis
that in early life he was in an attorney's office (!), that he
there contracted a love for the law which never left him, that as a
young man in London, he continued to study or dabble in it for his
amusement, to stroll in leisure hours into the Courts, and to
frequent the society of lawyers. On no other supposition is it
possible to explain the attraction which the law evidently had for
him, and his minute and undeviating accuracy in a subject where no
layman who has indulged in such copious and ostentatious display of
legal technicalities has ever yet succeeded in keeping himself from
tripping."

A lame conclusion. "No other supposition" indeed! Yes, there is
another, and a very obvious supposition, namely, that Shakespeare