Free Shakespeare: A Life by Park Honan Page B

appear in any of his known
actions, attitudes, or allusions. If he consciously made light of his
sister Joan, in later times, by calling a hawk 'Old Joan' in 2 Henry IV ,
or by playing on a name common for upstarts and servants (as in
'greasy Joan' or 'I can make any Joan a lady'), he kept his sister
close to him in such references; and he was not likely to have
forgotten the constables at Stratford, including his father, when
conjuring up Dull, Elbow, or Dogberry and the watch in Much Ado .
He had every reason to be amused and complacent in boyhood as his
father's heir apparent. His ease or boredom in early schooling can
only have left his mind free. In a town various in work, the comic
human spectacle was instructive. But there would also be the profound
enquiring force of his disillusionment --
Othello's occupation's gone!
    ( 111. iii. 362)
    What happens when our preconceived notions of life are abruptly
changed, or when trust in a beloved person is shattered by experience?
His father had risen to a bailiff's robes, and then after being exposed
for usury and illegal dealing, neglected his role as an alderman
until the council would have no more of him. What do the furred
honours or rank, office, and reputation conceal?
Through tattered rags small vices do appear;
Robes and furred gowns hides all.
    ( Lear , 1608 quarto, xx. 158-9)
    -41-

In densely peopled Henley Street, an alderman's actions would in any
case be judged by gossip, and his refusal to attend halls would be
known. John Shakespeare had abandoned the 'Brotherhode'. The evidence
would suggest that William was alert to his father's daily work, and
well aware of his brogging. The neighbourhood cannot have been blind
to an alderman's behaviour, and gossip and William's own eyes and ears
would have told him about his father's setback. Yet many an idolized
father has been found to have feet of clay, and for the sensitive
young the act of growing up is perhaps inherently disillusioning.
William is likely to have felt the strongest loyalty, sympathy, and
love for his father, while being aware of depressed circumstances. At
13 he was being changed by one of the great experiences of Tudor life,
inasmuch as he was going to a grammar school, and his education would
have carried his mind away from his family's troubles with debts and
credit. John Shakespeare's downfall is a matter of record
nevertheless, and the household at Henley Street was affected by it.
    -42-

4
TO GRAMMAR SCHOOL
Sweet smoke of rhetoric! ( Don Armado, Love's Labour's Lost )
    A classroom
    John Shakespeare knew his advantages well enough to take large risks
in the early 1570s, and he won local notoriety as an entrepreneur.
Once he was accused of illegally sharing in a joint purchase of 200 tods
(5,600 lb.) of wool. Even before applying for a coat of arms, he must
have looked with immense hope to his son and heir. As a deputy
bailiff, he was unlikely to have sent William to any school but the
borough one, the only grammar school for miles around. This was the
King's New School on Church Street -- scriveners refer to it as the
'free scole' or ' Kynges ffree Schoole' . Its registers are
missing, but Nicholas Rowe writes in 1709 that 'Mr. John Shakespear'
was a 'considerable Dealer in Wool' who bred William 'for some time at a
FreeSchool' -- and, though he was not always reliable, we have no
reason to discredit Rowe's words in this instance. 1 Much more direct, certain evidence that William was in grammar school
comes from his plays. The Latin authors he recalls are mainly those
he would have studied in class -- the 'grammar gods' -- and since the
school was open to sons of burgesses, he would have been enrolled in
1571, when he was 7.
    Stratford
classes before William's time, and down to the present day, have met
in what borough records call 'the chapel!' -- that is within the
chapel precincts, either inside or close to the Gild hall. That hall
was the