1. Shakespeare notes:
When and when was Shakespeare born?
According to the baptismal register of the Holy Trinity parish church,
in Stratford-upon-avon, William Shakespeare’s birth date entry has been
registered for April 26, 1564. The actual date of Shakespeare's birth is not
known, but, traditionally, April 23, St George's Day, has been Shakespeare's
accepted birthday, and a house on Henley Street in Stratford, owned by William's
father, John, is accepted as Shakespeare's birth place. However, the reality is that
no one really knows when the great dramatist was born.
Describe his upbringing and education:
1. Children in Elizabethan England would usually start attending school in their
fifth year. They would go to a ‘petty school’ (from French petit, ‘small’)
attached to a town’s grammar school, and be taught there by a tutor known
as an abecedarius, whose role, as the name suggests, was primarily to teach
the boys to read. They would move on to the grammar school after two years,
and stay there until age fourteen. It was a long day, beginning at six in the
morning (in summer, seven in winter) and continuing until five in the
afternoon, with breaks for meals and recreation. Sunday was the only day off.
2. Hornbooks: Children would come to petty school with their hornbook – a
wood framed page covered with a transparent sheet made form a piece of
cow’s horn. They were of many different kinds, but typically at the top of the
page would be the letters of the alphabet, large and small, and underneath
would be listed some basic syllables (ab, eb, ib, ba, be, bi, etc), often some
numerals, and the Lord’s Prayer. Hornbooks are referred to twice in the
plays. In Love’s Labour’s Lou, Mote tells Don Armado that Holofernes’
teaches boys the hornbook. And in The Two Noble Kinsmen one of the
countrymen tells the will eat a hornbook ere he fail.
3. The cross-row: In a hornbook, a cross was usually placed at the beginning of
the top row of the alphabet, which accordingly came to be known as the
‘cross-row’. Only very young children, or people acting like them, would be
using a cross-row.
4. After children had mastered their hornbook, they graduated to alphabetic
readers (‘ABC books’) and the question-and-answer dialogues introducing
them to formal Christianity (the Catechism) – the latter, along with some
other prayers, taken from the 1559 Book of Common Prayer.
5. Studying Latin Plays: Among the Latin texts Shakespeare would have studied
in grammar schiils were those by the comic dramatists Terence and Plautus.
In some schools, it is known that the students practiced their Latin by acting
scenes from their plays. Whether this happened in Stratford is a matter of

2. conjecture, but there is no doubt that these authors would have provided
Shakespeare with his first scene of a five-act-play.
6. School-teachers: Who were Shakespeare’s teachers at Stratford grammar
school? They were university graduates, some of whom went on to gain
scholarly reputations in their own night. Students would receive a good
education at their hands.
1569 Walter Roche
1571 Simon Hunt
1575 Thomas Jenkins
1579 john Cottom
Shakespeare was only seven in 1571, so Walter Roche had probably left by
the time he moved up from petty school into Stratford grammar school. Nor
is it likely that he received tuition from John Cottom. WE do not know when
Shakespeare left school, but after 1576 his father was in severe financial
straits, so he may have to leave early to help in the family business, as some
scholars have suggested. Simon Hunt and Thomas Jenkins must have been
his two teachers.
What types of plays did Shakespeare write?
1. Histories: such as Richard II, I Henry Iv, etc.
2. Tragedies: such as Hamlet, King Lear
3. Comedies: such as As You Like It, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night's
Dream, etc.
4. Romance: Romeo and Juliet