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SHAKESPEARE
THE LIFE
Although the amount of factual knowledge available about Shakespeare
is surprisingly large for one of his station in life, many find it a little
disappointing, for it is mostly gleaned from documents of an official
character. Dates of baptisms, marriages, deaths, and burials; wills,
conveyances, legal processes, and payments by the court--these are the
dusty details. There is, however, a fair number of contemporary allusions
to him as a writer, and these add a reasonable amount of flesh and blood to
the biographical skeleton.
Early life in Stratford.
The parish register of Holy Trinity Church, Stratford upon Avon,
Warwickshire, shows that he was baptized there on April 26, 1564; his
birthday is traditionally celebrated on April 23. His father, John
Shakespeare, was a burgess of the borough, who in 1565 was chosen an
alderman and in 1568 bailiff (the position corresponding to mayor, before
the grant of a further charter to Stratford in 1664). He was engaged in
various kinds of trade and appears to have suffered some fluctuations in
prosperity. His wife, Mary Arden, of Wilmcote, Warwickshire, came from an
ancient family and was the heiress to some land.
Stratford enjoyed a grammar school of good quality, and the education
there was free, the schoolmaster's salary being paid by the borough. No
lists of the pupils who were at the school in the 16th century have
survived, but it would be absurd to suppose the bailiff of the town did not
send his son there. The boy's education would consist mostly of Latin
studies-learning to read, write, and speak the language fairly well and
studying some of the classical historians, moralists, and poets.
Shakespeare did not go on to the university, and indeed it is unlikely that
the tedious round of logic, rhetoric, and other studies then followed there
would have interested him.
Instead, at the age of 18 he married. Where and exactly when are not
known, but the bishop registry at Worcester preserves a bond dated November
28, 1582, and executed by two yeomen of Stratford, named Sandells and
Richardson, as a security to the bishop for the issue of a license for the
marriage of William Shakespeare and "Anne Hathaway of Stratford," upon the
consent of her friends and upon once asking of the banns. (Anne died in
1623, seven years after Shakespeare. There is good evidence to associate
her with a family of Hathaway who inhabited a beautiful farmhouse, now much
visited, two miles from Stratford.) The next date of interest is found in
the records of the Stratford church, where a daughter, named Susanna, born
to William Shakespeare, was baptized on May 26, 1583. On February 2, 1585,
twins were baptized, Hamlet and Judith. (The boy Hamlet, Shakespeare's only
son, died 11 years later.)
How Shakespeare spent the next eight years or so, until his name
begins to appear in London theatre records, is not known. There are stories-
-given currency long after his death--of stea |