Why Shakespeare Is Shakespeare: Shakespeare's Education

Manyof the people who have doubts about Shakespeare say that he couldn't havewritten about some of the things he's written about without having donethem.  Simon Schama says that they'reunderestimating the creative imagination.
Schamamay be right.  To some degree at least--and to a bigger degree if you're Shakespeare--you can sound like a lawyer or a doctor, or a concert pianist or a cop, without being one.
Here'show.
Many lovelymiddle-aged men and women in the mystery writing field have to write aboutpolice, private detectives, forensic chemists, or lawyers.  If you're lucky, your sister-in-law is on thejob and your hairdresser's husband reconstructs faces from skulls.  If not, you go out and findsomeone.  You take them to lunch, youask them if you can come on a ride-along, you get them to read your books in draft.  


Andevery moment you are talking to them, you are looking at the way they holdthemselves, the kinds of words they use, the assumptions they make about theworld.  


And if you are the kind of personwho is able, just a touch, to "be no one and everyone," that negative capability to set yourselfaside, then when you come to write yourcharacter, you can do a pretty convincing job of inhabiting their skin.
Shakespeare must have been superlatively good at this kind of self-education.  Shakespeare probably never walked into a barwithout noticing the guy down at the end of the bar, the one with theperpetually not-quite-finished beer and the shabby cuffs, or the laughing manon his second six-pack with the minnows of uncertainty and desperation in hiseyes.  Shakespeare sued lots of people;he knew lawyers.  Shakespeare had afriend who married a woman in the book trade.  Shakespeare knew lots of people, right down to their bones.
Thereare limitations to how well you can do this—maybe not if you're Shakespeare.  We'll get to them later. 
But now, let's talk about magpies and shiny things.