What Shakespeare Studied when at School.
Mr. William J. Rolfe, the Shakespearian student, has written most entertainingly of the Avon bard's school days. "The training in an English free day school in the time of Elizabeth," he writes, "depended much on the attainments of the master, and these varied greatly, bad teachers being the rule and good ones the exception. In many towns the office of schoolmaster was conferred on 'an ancient citizen of no great learning.' Sometimes a quack conjuring doctor had the position, like Pinch in the Comedy of Errors." What did William study in the grammar-school? Not much except arithmetic and Latin, with perhaps a little Greek and a mere smattering of other branches.
The Latin grammar used was certainly Lily's, the standard manual of the time, as long before and after. In The Taming of the Shrew (I., 1, 167) a passage from Terence is quoted in the modified form in which it appears in this grammar.
This fact, slight as it is, seems to have its bearing on the Baconian controversy. "Can we imagine," asks Mr. Rolfe, "the sage of St. Albans, familiar as he was with classical literature, going to his old Latin grammar for a quotation from Terence, and not to the original works of that famous playwright?"
We often hear people speak of "good old times," as if present times were worse. But good old school times of the sort described here were certainly not better than present times.