SHAKESPEARE’S EDUCATION
Shakespeare’s likely attended the King’s New School, a one room space on the second floor of the local guild hall, a former Catholic institution rehabilitated and renamed after the Reformation. Appalling as it may seem to some, the purpose of Elizabethan Era schools was not to prepare common students for the workplace. ( Children of the Aristocracy received private tutoring and connections; Guild apprenticeships provided for the rest. Girls need not apply.) Rather, young men were educated to think clearly, act morally, and support the monarchy.
The standard text was Lily’s Latin and Latin is what they studied all day, every day, year round, from six in the morning until 5:30 or 6 pm, with an hour break around lunch time. Even during their break, students were required to converse in Latin. One may suppose that notes passed between the boys-- “Magister est irrumator”-- obeyed the rules as well.
Each session, led by a senior master student, began with a reading from the Bible. On Mondays, there might be questions about the previous days’ sermon. And then the memorization would begin. Younger students would translate Latin phrases and lessons from Aesop and Cato into English and then back again. These phrases would be memorized and recited, and accuracy in translation was extremely important. A good translation would receive praise from the teacher. A bad one got one’s bottom whipped.
As they progressed, the passages became longer and more complex. From the Bible to Mantuan to Erasmus to Terrence to Plautus the memorization, translation, and analysis continued. Praise and beatings progressed accordingly for about three years.
In the upper class (that is, year four), logic and rhetoric guided students through the arts of literature and composition. Again, classic authors provided instruction: Cicero for prose, Horace and Ovid for verse. As the subjects became more demanding so did the memorization. At 12 lines a day, it took students almost two years to master Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
And then there were Tropes. In contemporary English a trope is defined as almost a cliche, a common and overused rhetorical device or scheme. But since contemporary rhetorical devices consist primarily of hyperbole and shouting, the old ones are worth exploring (see link below). Many remain familiar and useful despite their reputation: alliteration, metaphors, similes, irony, puns (and, Wow, did Shakespeare like that last one.) According to Sister Miriam Joseph’s Shakespeare’s Use of the Arts of Language, there are over 200 of them. These devices, while often pleasant on the ear or in the minds eye, are design to emphasize a particular point. They aren’t just ornaments of speech, but subtle techniques used to persuade.
Eventually, students used what they had learned to write their own Epistles. In Latin, of course. And translate them to English and back to Latin. Then take their hard wrought prose and convert it to the penny pinching form of verse. It was brutally exacting work. All this, some 450 years before the internet.
There was one school practice that Shakespeare probably enjoyed. Educators of the time believed that an effective tool for mastering Latin was to have the boys perform classic plays. The acting bug bit early, but circumstances delayed its full effect.
Shakespeare never completed grammar school. Scholars believe he left to help out with his father’s glover and wool-trading businesses. But the family, behind on taxes, was struck with hards times. A University education was beyond his reach, possibly for the better. It certainly didn’t help when he got Anne Hathaway, eight years older than him, pregnant.
Next: The Streets of London
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