The masters of the Stratford school at the time when Shakespeare probably attended it were university men of at least fair scholarship and ability, as we infer from the fact that they rapidly gained promotion in the church. Thomas Hunt, who was master during the most important years of William's school course, became vicar of the neighboring village of Luddington. "In the pedantic Holofernes of Love's Labour's Lost, Shakespeare has carefully portrayed the best type of the rural schoolmaster, as in Pinch he has portrayed the worst, and the freshness and fulness of detail imparted to the former portrait may easily lead to the conclusion that its author was drawing upon his own experience." We need not suppose that Holofernes is the exact counterpart of Master Hunt, but the latter was probably, like the former, a thorough scholar.
WHAT SHAKESPEARE LEARNT AT SCHOOL.
We may imagine young William wending his way to the Grammar School for the first time on a May morning in 1571. If he was born on the 23d of April, 1564 (or May 3d, according to our present calendar), he had now reached the age of seven years, at which he could enter the school. The only other requirement for admission, in the case of a Stratford boy, was that he should be able to read; and this he had probably learned at home with the aid of a "horn-book," such as he afterwards referred to in Love's Labour's Lost (v. 1. 49):—
"Yes, yes; he teaches boys the horn-book.
What is a, b, spelt backward with the horn on its head?"
This primer of our forefathers, which continued in common use in England down to the middle of the last century at least, was a single printed leaf, usually set in a frame of wood and covered with a thin plate of transparent horn, from which it got its name. There was generally a handle to hold it by, and through a hole in the handle a cord was put by which the "book" was slung to the girdle of the scholar.
In a book printed in 1731 we read of "a child, in a bodice coat and leading-strings, with a horn-book tied to her side." In 1715 we find mention of the price of a horn-book as twopence; but Shakespeare's probably cost only half as much.
The leaf had at the top the alphabet large and small, with a list of the vowels and a string of easy monosyllables of the ab, eb, ib sort, and a copy of the Lord's Prayer. The matter varied somewhat from time to time.
Here is an exact reproduction of the text of one specimen, from a recent catalogue of a London antiquarian bookseller, who prices it at twelve guineas, or a trifle more than sixty dollars. These old horn-books are now excessively rare, having seldom survived the wear and tear of the nursery.
