Of the age at which boys went to school the same writer says: "For the time of their entrance with us, in our country schools, it is commonly about seven or eight years old: six is very soon. If any begin so early, they are rather sent to the school to keep them from troubling the house at home, and from danger, and shrewd turns, than for any great hope and desire their friends have that they should learn anything in effect."
Seven, as we have seen, was the earliest age at which boys could be admitted to the Stratford School.
SCHOOL MORALS.
Schoolboys in that olden time appear to have been much like those nowadays. They sometimes played truant. Jack Falstaff, in the First Part of Henry IV. (ii. 4. 450) asks: "Shall the blessed sun of heaven prove a micher and eat blackberries?" Micher, meacher, or moocher is now obsolete, though the practice it suggests is not; but a contemporary dictionary of Provincial Words and Phrases gives this definition of the word: "Moocher—a truant; a blackberry moucher. A boy who plays truant to pick blackberries."
Idle pupils in those days often "made shift to escape correction" by methods not unlike those known in our modern schools. Boys who had faithfully prepared their lessons would "prompt" others who had been less diligent.
WALK ON THE BANKS OF THE AVON
One of these fellows, named Willis, born in the same year with Shakespeare, has recorded his youthful experience at school in a diary written later in life which is still extant. He tells how, after being often helped in this fashion, "it fell out on a day that one of the eldest scholars and one of the highest form fell out with" him "upon occasion of some boys' play abroad," and refused to "prompt" him as aforetime. He feared that he might "fall under the rod," but, gathering his wits together, managed to recite his lesson creditably; and "so" he says, "the evil intended to me by my fellow-scholar turned to my great good."
How William liked going to school we do not know, but if we are to judge from his references to schoolboys and schooldays he had little taste for it. In As You Like It (ii. 7. 145) we have the familiar picture of
... "the whining schoolboy, with his satchel