Shakespeare’s Schooling Shakespeare’s Schooling Author Emily Stark Editor Kate McPherson Copy Editor Leah Hamby Senior Encoder Leah Hamby Encoding and Metadata LEMDO Team Copyright Holder (Content) Kate McPherson Copyright Holder (XML and interface) University of Victoria Early Modern England Encyclopedia EMEE

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.

 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globablink Research Internship

Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a

 University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform

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Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Emily Stark, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines

This document uses Canadian English spelling

 Document Types All documents in LEMDO are either born-digital documents or primary documents. Within those two general categories, LEMDO offers additional ways to categorize a file. Born-digital Born-digital documents are anything other than primary texts Critical Critical material, such as a general introduction or a textual introduction. Responsibilities Responsibilities Author A person, family, or organization responsible for creating a work that is primarily textual in content, regardless of media type (e.g., printed text, spoken word, electronic text, tactile text) or genre (e.g., poems, novels, screenplays, blogs). Use also for persons, etc., creating a new work by paraphrasing, rewriting, or adapting works by another creator such that the modification has substantially changed the nature and content of the original or changed the medium of expression. LEMDO uses the term author in two contexts: (1) to indicate the author of a primary work or document (such as Hamlet), and (2) to indicate the author of a secondary text (such as the Critical Introduction to <title level="m">Hamlet, by David Bevington). Editor A person, family, or organization contributing to a resource by revising or elucidating the content, e.g., adding an introduction, notes, or other critical matter. An editor may also prepare a resource for production, publication, or distribution. For major revisions, adaptations, etc., that substantially change the nature and content of the original work, resulting in a new work, see author. LEMDO uses the general term editor only in edition metadata and only to indicate when a person is responsible for editing all parts of an edition. Otherwise, use the more granular terms to describe the precise nature of the editorial role. Copy Editor LEMDO uses the term owner for the person who checks facts, quotations, and citations; may make formatting changes; may convert from one citation style to another; may suggest wording changes; and enforces conformity with the project style guide. Markup Editor A person or organization performing the coding of SGML, HTML, or XML markup of metadata, text, etc. Gloss needed. Copyright Holder A person or organization to whom copy and legal rights have been granted or transferred for the intellectual content of a work. The copyright holder, although not necessarily the creator of the work, usually has the exclusive right to benefit financially from the sale and use of the work to which the associated copyright protection applies. Normally the editor is the copyright holder for an LEMDO edition. EMEE Keywords Culture Learn about the customs, beliefs, and daily lives of people in early modern England. Daily Life Education Gender Boys Education Classical Literature Greek Latin Literacy Literature and the Arts Ovid (43 BCE–17/18 CE) Rhetoric Published file. Updated metadata proofed Review of article finished. changed title from Shakespeare’s Birthplace to Shakespeares Schooling and updated sourceDesc. Make corrections in file. Created file. Michael Best Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

 Leah Hamby Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

 Navarra Houldin Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

 Janelle Jenstad Janelle Jenstad

Janelle Jenstad is a Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of The Map of Early Modern London, and Director of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Beatrice Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools (Routledge). She has edited John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Elizabethan Theatre, Early Modern Literary Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, Renaissance and Reformation, and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She contributed chapters to Approaches to Teaching Othello (MLA); Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives (MLA); Institutional Culture in Early Modern England (Brill); Shakespeare, Language, and the Stage (Arden); Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate); New Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter); Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana); Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge); and Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (Routledge). For more details, see janellejenstad.com.

 Kate McPherson Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

 Emily Stark Emily Stark

Emily Stark was an Honors student at Utah Valley University.

 LEMDO Team The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors. University of Victoria https://www.uvic.ca/
Shakespeare’s Early Schooling

Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
 And shining morning face, creeping like snail
 Unwillingly to school. (As You Like It 2.7.145-147)

Shakespeare would probably have begun his schooling at age four or five in his hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon’s petty school. There, boys (and perhaps a few girls) were taught to read and write, in addition to basic arithmetic and foundational Christian principles. Petty schools often used a tool called a hornbook in these initial lessons. It featured a wooden paddle with printed sheet of paper or inscribed parchment attached that showed the alphabet and some vowel combinations; the paper or parchment was covered by a thin, mainly transparent sheet of animal horn to protect it.

Grammar School

After about two years in petty school, Shakespeare would have advanced to the grammar school at about age seven, where he would have studied the beginnings of Latin grammar. From about ages seven to nine, boys learned Latin grammar and vocabulary. They progressed to translation and composition from ages ten to fourteen. The experience was apparently worth writing about later. Shakespeare takes time in The Merry Wives of Windsor to make fun of boys learning Latin, with the uneducated Mistress Quickly mistaking the grammatical word genitive as slang for female genitalia: Evans: What is your genitive case plural, William?... William: Genitivo, horum, harum, horum Quickly: Vengeance of Jenny’s case. Fie on her! Never name her child, if she be a whore. (4.1.58-64) Shakespeare would have begun to read plays in grammar school, especially the plays of Plautus, the most admired writer of Latin comedy. Much of The Comedy of Errors is based on a Plautus play entitled Menaechmi, which translates as the twin brothers. Shakespeare would have also studied the Roman poet Ovid, whose elegantly retold myths feature strongly in plays such as Titus Andronicus, where the tragic tale of Procne and Philomel appears, as well as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which uses the story of Pyramus and Thisbe to great comic effect.

Shakespeare would also have been introduced to rhetoric and some logic through the writings of Cicero, a great Roman orator who lived at the time of Marc Antony and Julius Caesar, and who is briefly mentioned in the play Julius Caesar. The young man would have also studied Roman history and philosophy and perhaps some rudimentary Greek. Although boys normally attended grammar school until age 15 or 16, Shakespeare may have been forced to leave school as early as 1577, at age 13, because of his father’s documented financial difficulties that were severe enough that John Shakespeare lost his place as a leading civic official due to debt.

Shakespeare at King Edwards’s School, Stratford-upon-Avon

There are no records of Shakespeare’s activities during his boyhood, although his father’s property and legal records indicate that the family continued to live in Stratford. Although no enrollment registers survive, Shakespeare, as the son of a public official like John Shakesepeare, likely attended King Edward’s School. The school, which was founded in 1482 and still enrolls pupils ages 11-18, notes that In the 1570s, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, William Shakespeare was educated in a room in the Upper Guildhall. In what is still known as Big School, from the age of seven Shakespeare would have been taught Latin, Rhetoric, and perhaps Greek. Lessons began with prayers at six o’clock in the morning during summer, and continued until five o’clock in the afternoon. In winter, although boys were expected to bring their own candles, the poor light meant a shorter day lasting from seven o’clock. The standards at the Stratford grammar school seem to have been higher than average; existing records indicate that all the masters of the school held university degrees during the time in which Shakespeare would have been attending, which was not the case for all grammar schoools.

Boys who completed grammar school and who had the financial means could go on to attend university at Oxford or Cambridge, but there is no record of Shakespeare attending university.

Shakespeare’s Religious Education

Although scholars lack clear evidence about the nature of Shakespeare’s religious faith, the official religion of the Stratford community was the Church of England. Under the 1559 Act of Uniformity, which restored the English prayer book after the Catholic period under Mary I, the English interpretation of Christianity was Protestant. However, English people held a range of beliefs, particularlu regarding the nature of Communion. Shakespeare’s religious education at school would have focused on content from the Homilies, which were the authorized sermons. His local church and his schoolmasters would have used the Geneva Bible, an English translation of the scriptures completed in 1560, and the 1559 Book of Common Prayer, which detailed the rituals and teachings of the Church of England

Key Print Sources Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. W.W. Norton, 2004. Potter, Lois.The Life of William Shakespeare: A Critical Biography. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
Key Online Sources Best, Michael. The Schoolroom. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions, https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/life/school/school.html.. Accessed 17 May 2017. Best, Michael. School at Stratford-upon-Avon. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions, https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/life/school/pettyschool.html. Accessed 17 May 2017.. Best, Michael. Shakespeare at Grammar School. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions, https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/life/school/grammarschool.html.. Accessed 17 May 2017. A History of the School. King Edward IV’s School.https://www.kes.net/about-us/history-of-the-school/.. Accessed 18 Oct. 2017.