THE STRATFORD GRAMMAR SCHOOL

The Stratford Grammar School, as we have already seen (page 38 above), was an ancient institution in Shakespeare's day, having been originally founded in the first half of the 15th century by the Guild, and, after the dissolution of that body, created by royal charter, in June, 1553, "The King's New School of Stratford-upon-Avon." The charter describes it as "a certain free grammar school, to consist of one master and teacher, hereafter for ever to endure." The master was to be appointed by the Earl of Warwick, and was to receive twenty pounds a year from the income of certain lands given by the King for that purpose. A part of the expenses of the school is to this day paid from the same royal endowment.

The school-house stood, as it still does, close beside the Guild Chapel, the school-rooms on the second story being originally reached by an outside staircase, roofed with tile, which was demolished about fifty years ago. The building was old and out of repair in Shakespeare's boyhood. In 1568 it was partially renovated, and while the work was going on the school was transferred to the adjoining chapel, as it may have been under similar circumstances on more than one former occasion. This probably suggested Shakespeare's comparison of Malvolio to "a pedant that keeps a school i' the church" (Twelfth Night, iii. 2. 80). In 1595 the holding of school in church or chapel was forbidden by statute.

The training in an English free day-school in the time of Elizabeth depended much on the attainments of the master, and these varied greatly, bad teachers being the rule and good ones the exception. "It is a general plague and complaint of the whole land," writes Henry Peacham in the 17th century, "for, for one discreet and able teacher, you shall find twenty ignorant and careless; who (among so many fertile and delicate wits as England affordeth), whereas they make one scholar, they mar ten." Roger Ascham, some years earlier, had written in the same strain. 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 (v. 1. 237), whom Antipholus of Ephesus describes thus:—

Pinch is not called a schoolmaster in the text of the play, but in the stage-direction of the earliest edition (1623) he is described, on his entrance, as "a schoole-master call'd Pinch."

In old times the village pedagogue often had the reputation of being a conjurer; that is, of one who could exorcise evil spirits—perhaps because he was the one man in the village, except the priest, who could speak Latin, the only language supposed to be "understanded of devils."

A certain master of St. Alban's School in the middle of the 16th century declared that "by no entreaty would he teach any scholar he had, further than his father had learned before them," arguing that, if educated beyond that point, they would "prove saucy rogues and control their fathers."

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):—

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.

The alphabet was prefaced by a cross, whence it came to be called the Christ Cross row,[4] corrupted into "criss-cross-row" or contracted into "cross-row"; as in Richard III. (i. 1. 55), where Clarence says:—

Shenstone alludes to the horn-book in The School-mistress:—

Possibly, the boy William, instead of a horn-book, had an "A-B-C book," which often contained a catechism, in addition to the elementary reading matter. To this we have an allusion in King John, i. 1. 196:—

"Absey" is one of many old spellings for "A-B-C"—abece, apece, apecy, apsie, absee, abcee, abeesee, etc.

It was not a long walk that our seven-year-old boy had to take in going to school. Turning the corner of Henley Street, where his father lives (compare the map, page 42 above), he passes into the High Street, on which (though the street changes its name twice before we get there) the Guildhall is situated. The adjoining Guild Chapel is separated only by a narrow lane from the "great house," as it was called, the handsomest in all Stratford.

The child, as he passes that grand mansion, little dreams that, some twenty-five years later, he will buy it for his own residence.

The school-room probably looks much the same to-day as it did when William studied there, the modern plastered ceiling which hid the oak roof of the olden time having been removed. The wainscoted walls, with the small windows high above the floor, are evidently ancient. An old desk, which may have been the master's, and a few rude forms, or benches, are now the only furniture; for the school was long since removed to ampler and more convenient quarters. A desk, said with no authority whatever to have been used by Shakespeare, is preserved in the Henley Street house.

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.

His first lessons in Latin were probably from two well-known books of the time, the Accidence and the SententiÆ Pueriles. The examination of Master Page by the Welsh parson and schoolmaster, Sir Hugh Evans, in The Merry Wives of Windsor (iv. 1) is taken almost verbally from the Accidence. Mrs. Page, accompanied by her son and the illiterate Dame Quickly, meets Sir Hugh in the street, and this dialogue ensues:—

The SententiÆ Pueriles was a collection of brief sentences from many authors, including moral and religious passages intended for the use of the boys on Saints' days.

The Latin Grammar studied by William was certainly Lilly's, the standard manual of the time, as long before and after. The first edition was published in 1513, and one was issued as late as 1817, or more than three hundred years afterward. 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.

There are certain people, by the way, who believe that Shakespeare's plays were written by Francis Bacon. Can we imagine 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?

In Love's Labour's Lost (iv. 2. 95) Holofernes quotes the "good old Mantuan," as he calls him, the passage being evidently a reminiscence of Shakespeare's schoolboy Latin. The "Mantuan" is not Virgil, as one might at first suppose (and as Mr. Andrew Lang, who is a good scholar, assumes in his pleasant comments on the play in Harper's Magazine for May, 1893), but Baptista Mantuanus, or Giovanni Battista Spagnuoli (or Spagnoli), who got the name Mantuanus from his birthplace.

He died in 1516, less than fifty years before Shakespeare was born, and was the author of sundry Eclogues, which the pedants of that day preferred to Virgil's, and which were much read in schools. The first Eclogue begins with the passage quoted by Holofernes.

A little earlier in the same scene the old pedant gives us a quotation from Lilly's Grammar. Other bits of Latin with which he interlards his talk are taken, with little or no variation, from the SententiÆ Pueriles or similar Elizabethan phrase-books.

THE NEGLECT OF ENGLISH.

No English was taught in the Stratford school then, or for many years after. It is only in our own day that it has begun to receive proper attention in schools of this grade in England, or indeed in our own country.

It is interesting, however, to know that the first English schoolmaster to urge the study of the vernacular tongue was a contemporary of Shakespeare. In 1561 Richard Mulcaster, who had been educated at King's College, Cambridge, and Christ Church, Oxford, was appointed head-master of Merchant-Taylors School in London, which had just been founded as a feeder, or preparatory school, for St. John's College, Oxford. In his Elementarie, published in 1582, he has the following plea for the study of English:—

"But because I take upon me in this Elementarie, besides some friendship to secretaries for the pen, and to correctors for the print, to direct such people as teach children to read and write English, and the reading must needs be such as the writing leads unto, therefore, before I meddle with any particular precept, to direct the reader, I will thoroughly rip up the whole certainty of our English writings so far forth and with such assurance as probability can make me, because it is a thing both proper to my argument and profitable to my country. For our natural tongue being as beneficial unto us for our needful delivery as any other is to the people which use it; and having as pretty and as fair observations in it as any other hath; and being as ready to yield to any rule of art as any other is; why should I not take some pains to find out the right writing of ours as other countrymen have done to find the like in theirs? and so much the rather because it is pretended that the writing thereof is marvellous uncertain, and scant to be recovered from extreme confusion, without some change of as great extremity?

"I mean therefore so to deal in it as I may wipe away that opinion of either uncertainty for confusion or impossibility for direction, that both the natural English may have wherein to rest, and the desirous stranger may have whereby to learn. For the performance whereof, and mine own better direction, I will first examine those means whereby other tongues of most sacred antiquity have been brought to art and form of discipline for their right writing, to the end that, by following their way, I may hit upon their right, and at the least by their precedent devise the like to theirs, where the use of our tongue and the property of our dialect will not yield flat to theirs.

"That done, I will set all the variety of our now writing, and the uncertain force of all our letters, in as much certainty as any writing can be, by these seven precepts:

"1. General rule, which concerneth the property and use of each letter.

"2. Proportion, which reduceth all words of one sound to the same writing.

"3. Composition, which teacheth how to write one word made of more.

"4. Derivation, which examineth the offspring of every original.

"5. Distinction, which bewrayeth the difference of sound and force in letters by some written figure or accent.

"6. Enfranchisement, which directeth the right writing of all incorporate foreign words.

"7. Prerogative, which declareth a reservation wherein common use will continue her precedence in our English writing as she hath done everywhere else, both for the form of the letter, in some places, which likes the pen better; and for the difference in writing, where some particular caveat will check a common rule.

"In all these seven I will so examine the particularities of our tongue, as either nothing shall seem strange at all, or if anything do seem, yet it shall not seem so strange but that either the self same, or the very like unto it, or the more strange than it is, shall appear to be in those things which are more familiar unto us for extraordinary learning than required of us for our ordinary use.

"And forasmuch as the eye will help many to write right by a seen precedent, which either cannot understand or cannot entend to understand the reason of a rule, therefore in the end of this treatise for right writing I purpose to set down a general table of most English words, by way of precedent, to help such plain people as cannot entend the understanding of a rule, which requireth both time and conceit in perceiving, but can easily run to a general table, which is readier to their hand. By the which table I shall also confirm the right of my rules, that they hold throughout, and by multitude of examples help some in precepts."

Thirty years later, in 1612, another teacher followed Mulcaster in advocating the study of English. This was John Brinsley, who, in The Grammar Schoole, writes thus:—

"There seems unto me to be a very main want in all our grammar schools generally, or in the most of them, whereof I have heard some great learned men to complain; that there is no care had in respect to train up scholars so as they may be able to express their minds purely and readily in our own tongue, and to increase in the practice of it, as well as in the Latin and Greek; whereas our chief endeavour should be for it, and that for these reasons:

"1. Because that language which all sorts and conditions of men amongst us are to have most use of, both in speech and writing, is our own native tongue.

"2. The purity and elegance of our own language is to be esteemed a chief part of the honour of our nation, which we all ought to advance as much as in us lieth....

"3. Because of those which are for a time trained up in schools, there are very few which proceed in learning, in comparison of them that follow other callings."

Among the means which he recommends "to obtain this benefit of increasing in our English tongue as in the Latin" are "continual practice of English grammatical translations," and "translating and writing English, with some other school exercises."

But, as we have seen, the study of our mother tongue continued to be generally ignored in English schools for nearly three centuries after Mulcaster and Brinsley had thus called attention to its educational value.

SCHOOL LIFE IN SHAKESPEARE'S DAY.

From Brinsley's book we get an idea of the daily life of a grammar-school boy in 1612, which probably did not differ materially from what it was in Shakespeare's boyhood.

In his chapter "Of school times, intermissions, and recreations," Brinsley says: "The school-time should begin at six: all who write Latin to make their exercises which were given overnight, in that hour before seven." To make boys punctual, "so many of them as are there at six, to have their places as they had them by election or the day before: all who come after six, every one to sit as he cometh, and so to continue that day, and until he recover his place again by the election of the form or otherwise.[5] If any cannot be brought by this, them to be noted in the black bill by a special mark, and feel the punishment thereof: and sometimes present correction to be used for terror;" that is, to frighten the rest.

The school work is to go on from six in the morning as follows: "Thus they are to continue until nine.... Then at nine to let them to have a quarter of an hour at least, or more, for intermission, either for breakfast, or else for the necessity of every one, or for honest recreation, or to prepare their exercises against the master's coming in. After, each of them to be in his place in an instant, upon the knocking of the door or some other sign, ... so to continue until eleven of the clock, or somewhat after, to countervail the time of the intermission at nine;" that is, apparently, to make the morning session full five hours.

For the afternoon the schedule is as follows: "To be again all ready and in their places at one, in an instant; to continue until three, or half an hour after; then to have another quarter of an hour or more, as at nine, for drinking and necessities; so to continue till half an hour after five: thereby in that half hour to countervail the time at three; then to end with reading a piece of a chapter, and with singing two staves of a Psalm: lastly, with prayer to be used by the master."

These closing exercises would fill out the time until about six o'clock, making the school day nearly ten hours long, exclusive of the two intermissions at nine and three and the interval of somewhat more than an hour at noon.

It would seem that some objection had been made to the intermissions at nine and three, on the ground that the boys then "do nothing but play"; but Brinsley believed that the boys did their work the better for these brief respites from it. He adds: "It is very requisite also that they should have weekly one part of an afternoon for recreation, as a reward of diligence, obedience, and profiting; and that to be appointed at the master's discretion, either the Thursday, after the usual custom, or according to the best opportunity of the place."

The sports and recreations of the boys are to be carefully looked after. "Clownish sports, or perilous, or yet playing for money, are no way to be admitted."

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.

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

and in Romeo and Juliet (ii. 1. 156) the significant similes:—

Gremio, in The Taming of the Shrew (iii. 2. 149), when asked if he has come from the church, replies: "As willingly as e'er I came from school."

SCHOOL DISCIPLINE.

Sooth to say, the schoolmasters of that time were not likely to be remembered with much favor by their pupils in after years. There is abundant testimony to the severity of their discipline in Ascham, Peacham, and other writers of the 16th century.

Thomas Tusser tells of his youthful experiences at Eton in verses that have been often quoted:

Nicholas Udall was the master of Eton at the time.

Peacham tells of one pedagogue who used to whip his boys of a cold morning "for no other purpose than to get himself a heat." No doubt it warmed the boys too, but it is not recorded that they liked the method.

Some of the grammars of the period have on the title-page the significant woodcut of "an awful man sitting on a high chair, pointing to a book with his right hand, but with a mighty rod in his left." Lilly's Grammar, on the other hand, has the picture of a huge fruit-tree, with little boys in its branches picking the abundant fruit. I hope the urchins did not find this more suggestive of stealing apples than of gathering the rich fruit of the tree of knowledge.

Mr. Sidney Lee remarks: "A repulsive picture of the terrors which the schoolhouse had for a nervous child is drawn in a 'pretie and merry new interlude' entitled 'The Disobedient Child, compiled by Thomas Ingeland, late student in Cambridge,' about 1560. A boy who implores his father not to force him to go to school tells of his companions' sufferings there—how

and a story is repeated of how a scholar was tormented to death by 'his bloody master.' Other accounts show that the playwright has not gone far beyond the fact."

We will try to believe, however, that Master Hunt of Stratford was of a milder disposition. Holofernes seems well disposed towards his pupils, and is invited to dine with the father of one of them; and Sir Hugh Evans, in his examination of William Page, has a very kindly manner. It is to be noted, indeed, that in few of Shakespeare's references to school life is there any mention of whipping as a punishment.

Roger Ascham, in his Scholemaster, advocated gentler discipline than was usual in the schools of his day. His book, indeed, owed its origin to his interest in this matter.

In 1563, Ascham, who was then Latin Secretary to Queen Elizabeth, was dining with Sir William Cecil (afterwards Lord Burleigh), when the conversation turned to the subject of education, from news of the running away of some boys from Eton, where there was much beating. Ascham argued that young children were sooner allured by love than driven by beating to obtain good learning. Sir Richard Sackville, father of Thomas Sackville, said nothing at the dinner-table, but he afterwards drew Ascham aside, agreed with his opinions, lamented his own past loss by a harsh schoolmaster, and said, Ascham tells us in the preface to his book: "'Seeing it is but in vain to lament things past, and also wisdom to look to things to come, surely, God willing, if God lend me life, I will make this my mishap some occasion of good hap to little Robert Sackville, my son's son. For whose bringing up I would gladly, if it so please you, use specially your good advice. I hear say you have a son much of his age [Ascham had three little sons]; we will deal thus together. Point you out a schoolmaster who by your order shall teach my son's son and yours, and for all the rest I will provide, yea, though they three do cost me a couple of hundred pounds by year; and besides you shall find me as fast a friend to you and yours as perchance any you have.' Which promise the worthy gentleman surely kept with me until his dying day." The conversation ended with a request that Ascham would "put in some order of writing the chief points of this our talk, concerning the right order of teaching and honesty of living, for the good bringing up of children and young men."

Ascham accordingly wrote The Scholemaster, which was published in 1570 (two years after his death) by his widow, with a dedication to Sir William Cecil.

In the very first page of the book, Ascham, referring to training in "the making of Latins," or writing the language, says: "For the scholar is commonly beat for the making, when the master were more worthy to be beat for the mending or rather marring of the same; the master many times being as ignorant as the child what to say properly and fitly to the matter."

Again he says: "I do gladly agree with all good schoolmasters in these points: to have children brought to good perfectness in learning; to all honesty in manners; to have all faults rightly amended; to have every vice severely corrected; but for the order and way that leadeth rightly to these points we somewhat differ. For commonly, many schoolmasters—some, as I have seen, more, as I have heard tell—be of so crooked a nature, as, when they meet with a hard-witted scholar, they rather break him than bow him, rather mar him than mend him. For when the schoolmaster is angry with some other matter, then will he soonest fall to beat his scholar; and though he himself should be punished for his folly, yet must he beat some scholar for his pleasure, though there be no cause for him to do so, nor yet fault in the scholar to deserve so. These, you will say, be fond [that is, foolish] schoolmasters, and few they be that be found to be such. They be fond, indeed, but surely over many such be found everywhere. But this will I say, that even the wisest of your great beaters do as oft punish nature as they do correct faults. Yea, many times the better nature is sorely punished; for, if one, by quickness of wit, take his lesson readily, another, by hardness of wit, taketh it not so speedily, the first is always commended, the other is commonly punished; when a wise schoolmaster should rather discreetly consider the right disposition of both their natures, and not so much weigh what either of them is able to do now, as what either of them is likely to do hereafter. For this I know, not only by reading of books in my study, but also by experience of life abroad in the world, that those which be commonly the wisest, the best learned, and best men also, when they be old, were never commonly the quickest of wit when they were young."

The result of ordinary school training, with the free use of the rod, as Ascham says, is that boys "carry commonly from the school with them a perpetual hatred of their master and a continual contempt for learning." He adds: "If ten gentlemen be asked why they forget so soon in court that which they were learning so long in school, eight of them, or let me be blamed, will lay the fault on their ill handling by their schoolmasters." The sum of the matter is that "learning should be taught rather by love than fear," and "the schoolhouse should be counted a sanctuary against fear."

But Ascham, like Mulcaster and Brinsley, was far in advance of his age, and it is doubtful whether his wise counsel with regard to methods of discipline met with any greater favor among teachers than theirs concerning the importance of the study of English.

WHEN WILLIAM LEFT SCHOOL.

How long William remained in the Grammar School we do not know, but probably not more than six years, or until he was thirteen. In 1577 his father was beginning to have bad luck in his business, and the boy very likely had to be taken from school for work of some sort.

As Ben Jonson says, Shakespeare had "small Latin and less Greek"—perhaps none—and this was probably due to his leaving the Grammar School before the average age. However that may have been, we may be pretty sure that all the regular schooling he ever had was got there.