The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.1895  Friday, 6 October 2000.

From:           Gregory Machacek <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 6 Oct 2000 09:20:52 -0400
Subject:        Help Tracking Down a Passage

I wonder if members of the list could help me track down a critical
passage I recall reading but can't seem to put my finger on again.  It
was a comment about occupations/professions that readers through the
ages have been sure Shakespeare practiced.  The passage either took the
form of a simple list--"Various readers have claimed that Shakespeare
must have been a lawyer, a soldier, a sailor . . . "--or a slightly more
complex list: "Lawyers who have read him have been sure that he
practiced law, soldiers that he was a military man, sailors that he had
spent time on the sea . .  ."  The point that the author of the passage
was making, if I recall correctly, had to do with Shakespeare's
vocabulary:  that his command of even the technical terminology of
various walks of life was so great as to give the impression that he
must have been a practitioner of all of those fields.

My sense is that the passage I'm looking for appears in some basic
resource on Shakespeare.  I thought, for instance, that it might be from
the general introduction to one of the complete works editions, but I've
looked there to no avail.  Can anyone help?

Thanks in advance.

Gregory Machacek
Marist College

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