What we know about Shakespeare

The facts that we know with absolute certainty about William Shakespeare can be given in a few paragraphs. It is not strange that we know so little about one of the greatest men that the world has produced. His age was not one of biographical writing. Newspapers and magazines did not exist. Encyclopaedias,dictionaries of names and volumes of Who Is Who ¹had not been heard of. Few letters were written and less were kept. Yet we know about Shakespeare as much as² we do about most of the writers of his time, and even of many who lived much later.

The playwright's father, John Shakespeare, moved to Stratford-on-Avon³ about 1550 and became a dealer in corn, meat, wool and leather. He probably dealt besides in all things that farmers about the village produced. He seems to have been a good man of business ⁴,though he could not write. His wife, the writer's mother,Mary Arden, was the daughter of a rich farmer in the village of Wilmcote. He gave his daughter a house, with some land and a good sum of money.

John Shakespeare and his wife were living in a house in Hanley Street when their children were born. It was a house two storeys high⁵ with small windows cut in the roof. In general appearance it remains much the same as it looked in l 556. Simple and ordinary-looking, it is still the most famous house in England and one of the most famous in the world.

Men and women from all parts of the earth have visited Stratford to see it. Stories and poems have been written about it. For here, in a small room on the second floor, William Shakespeare was born.

How little we know of Shakespeare, compared with poets of the 19th century, is shown by the fact that we are not certain of the exact date on which the greatest of all poets was born. But most probably he was born on April 23,1564. He died also on this date, April 23, in 1616.

Of the poet's early years we know next to nothing⁶. It is a mistake, however, to think that he had no education. There was in Stratford a free Grammar School ⁷to which the boy was sent. Here he studied mainly Latin, for education then in England consisted almost entirely of classics.

His friend of later years, Ben Jonson⁸, said that Shakespeare had "small Latin and less Greek",but that is not quite true. We cannot compare his knowledge with that of Jonson, who was educated in a college, but the Stratford boy understood both Latin and French well and knew the Bible thoroughly. It is clear, too, that by nature he was a boy of remarkable power of observation⁹. He was educated more by people and the world of Nature about him than by books and formal teaching.

Shakespeare left the Grammar School when he was thirteen years old and never went to school again. About this time his father's money difficulties began. Another pair of hands was needed at home and William was the oldest son. Just what he did¹⁰, however, between his fourteenth and eighteenth years we cannot say. Probably he helped his father in his business. We know nothing about his work, his reading and the events that were developing his mind during those five years, but we must remember that he was just a boy living in a small town before the age of newspapers, far from people of education and culture. During this period as little is known of him as of Cromwell¹¹ during the same period; as little, but no less.

When William was only eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway ['hæθəweɪ], the daughter of a farmer from a village not far from Stratford. Anne was nine years older than William and the marriage was not happy. On May 26,1583, their daughter Susanna [sʊ'zænə] was born. Two years later, two sons were born to Shakespeare, and soon after the young husband and father left his native town for London.

(to be continued)