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.
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least accurate and very witty.