's mother seems to have been of an older family.
Neither of them could write. Shakspeare received his education at the free
grammar-school, still a well-endowed institution in the town, where he
learned the "small Latin and less Greek" accorded to him by Ben Jonson at
a later day.

There are guesses, rather than traditions, that he was, after the age of
fifteen, a student in a law-office, that he was for a time at one of the
universities, and also that he was a teacher in the grammar-school. These
are weak inventions to account for the varied learning displayed in his
dramas. His love of Nature and his power to delineate her charms were
certainly fostered by the beautiful rural surroundings of Stratford;
beyond this it is idle to seek to penetrate the obscure processes of his
youth.

MARRIES, AND GOES TO LONDON.--Finding himself one of a numerous and poor
family, to the support of which his father's business was inadequate, he
determined, to shift for himself, and to push his fortunes in the best way
he could.

Whether he regarded matrimony as one element of success we do not know,
but the preliminary bond of marriage between himself and Anne Hathaway,
was signed on the 28th of November, 1582, when he was eighteen years old.
The woman was seven years older than himself; and it is a sad commentary
on the morality of both, that his first child, Susanna, was baptized on
the 25th of May, 1583.

Strolling bands of players, in passing through England, were in the habit
of stopping at Stratford, and setting upon wheels their rude stage with
weather-stained curtains; and these, it should be observed, were the best
dramatic companies of the time, such as the queen's company, and those in
the service of noblemen like Leicester, Warwick, and others. If he did not
see he must have heard of the great pageant in 1575, when Leicester
entertained Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth, which is so charmingly
described by Sir Walter Scott. Young Shakspeare became stage-struck, and
probably joined one of these companies, with other idle young men of the
neighborhood.

Various legends, without sufficient foundation of truth, are related of
him at this time, which indicate that he was of a frolicsome and
mischievous turn: among these is a statement that he was arraigned for
deer-poaching in the park of Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote. A satirical
reference to Sir Thomas in one of his plays,[30] leads us to think that
there is some truth in t