John Shakespeare was fond of these shows, and there is no doubt that his son William was taken to see them before he went to the Stratford Grammar School when he was seven years old. Here the boy is said to have studied Latin, writing, and arithmetic. Judging from the specimens that are still to be seen of William Shakespeare’s penmanship, it was not a great success. One of the great
play-writers of Shakespeare’s time wrote that Will had learned “small Latin and less Greek” at school. But Latin was the chief study in the schools of that time. It was sung and spoken in church, and it was thought necessary for even a farmer’s son to study that language.
When William was thirteen his father was unfortunate in business, and the boy had to leave school to earn his living. There is a legend that he started in to learn the butcher’s trade, but it seems more likely that he worked as a lawyer’s boy and clerk. If all accounts are true, he must have been a mischievous lad, for the story goes that he was once taken up for poaching, or shooting a deer, in the park of one of the great men in the county.
When he was eighteen Will Shakespeare married a farmer’s daughter eight years older than himself. By the time he was twenty-one the young father had three children. Two of these, Hamnet and Judith, were twins. Hamnet died before he grew to manhood, and about all that is known of Judith Shakespeare is that she, like her mother, never learned to read. It was not thought necessary then for farmers’ wives and daughters to read and write.
A lawyer’s clerk with five mouths to feed could hardly find enough to do in Stratford to earn a living, so William Shakespeare went to London to seek his fortune. It is said that he began life in the great city by holding horses in front of one of the theaters, as they did not have hitching-posts in Shakespeare’s days. Then he was promoted to be prompter’s boy. One of his duties was to tell the actors when it was time for them to go on the stage and play their parts.