Page:Mr. Sidney Lee and the Baconians.djvu/19

 possess that knowledge. That the author of the plays knew Latin, French and Italian is proved by the fact that the plots and characters of several of his plays are drawn from works in these languages of which also no English translations were then available. But possibly Mr. Lee agrees with the Shakespearean critic Dennis, who wrote, "He who allows Shakespeare had learning, and a learning with the ancients, ought to be looked upon as a detractor from the glory of Great Britain." I am silly enough to believe that "the heights of classic knowledge climbed by Shakespeare were not scaled by any grammar-school prodigy of the sixteenth or any other century in England." (Theobald).

Then Mr. Lee explains the marvellous and accurate law knowledge of Shakspere in the plays by "the many legal processes in which his father was involved, and in part to early intercourse with members of the Inns of Court" [Bacon, probably, among the number]. Let him study the law in Sonnets XLVL and LXXXVIL, and he will, possibly, change his mind. Of the former Lord Campbell said, " Without a considerable knowledge of English forensic procedure, it cannot be fully understood." A certain Mr. Fiske once wrote in the Atlantic Monthly that Shakspere could easily have got all his knowledge of law "from an evening chat with some legal friend at an ale-house." This is quite as probable as Mr. Lee's suggestion.

On page 33 of the Life in which "conjecture" is almost entirely abjured (according to its author), the following passage occurs:—"Shakespeare's friends [at Stratford] may have called the attention of the strolling players [on a visit to Stratford] to the homeless lad, rumours of whose search for employment about the London theatres had doubtless reached Stratford. From such incidents seems to have sprung the opportunity