Shakespeare
Shakespeare
Shakespeare
Education:
William Shakespeare's education would have started at home. His mother, Mary Arden,
would have told him fables and fairy tales during his early youth. Mary was certainly
literate. She acted as the executor of her father’s will. The kinds of stories Mary told him
are referred to much later in Shakespeare’s playsS. His home education would also have
included reading the bible. Shakespeare’s home was just a short walk from the grammar
school, the King’s New School. The school was available to all boys within the borough,
free of charge. The grammar-school's demanding curriculum was geared to teaching pupils
Latin, both spoken and written. The boys studied authors such as Terence, Virgil, and
Horace in their original Latin. In fact, the students were even expected to speak Latin to
each other in the playground or at home. We can see the influence of these Classical writers,
particularly Ovid, in Shakespeare’s poems and plays. While grammar schools focused on
Latin rhetoric, drama was also included. He probably left school at fourteen to undertake
an apprenticeship of seven years until his coming of age.
Family:
He was John and Mary Shakespeare's oldest surviving child; their first two children, both
girls, did not live beyond infancy. Growing up as the big brother of the family, William had
three younger brothers, Gilbert, Richard, and Edmund, and two younger sisters: Anne, who
died at seven, and Joan. Their father, John Shakespeare, was a leatherworker who
specialized in the soft white leather used for gloves and similar items. A prosperous
businessman, he married Mary Arden, of the prominent Arden family. In early 1585, the
couple had twins, Judith and Hamnet, completing the family. In the years ahead, Anne and
the children lived in Stratford while Shakespeare worked in London. Shakespeare's only son,
Hamnet, died in 1596 at the age of 11. His older daughter Susanna later married a well-to-
do Stratford doctor, John Hall. Their daughter Elizabeth, Shakespeare's first grandchild,
was born in 1608. In 1616, just months before his death, Shakespeare's daughter Judith
married Thomas Quiney, a Stratford vintner. The family subsequently died out, leaving no
direct descendants of Shakespeare.