Shakespeare’s School

Submitted by Alan Marsden on Tue, 09/10/2018 - 07:12

I’m currently enjoying the comforts of a plush hotel at considerable expense to the public purse. I’m visiting King Edward VI’s Grammar School in Stratford Upon Avon, colloquially known as Shakespeare’s School. It was here the great bard was taught his Latin and Greek, and the schoolroom he used is still employed for teaching today, though it opens at 11am to the paying public. The Headmaster gave us an interesting private tour before last night’s dinner. The floor still holds the various forms on which the pupils sat, and the Master’s chair has some birch rods conveniently located to its left. Just how tempting this aid to learning proves to the room’s modern teachers, one cannot tell. The adjoining room, the Headmaster explained, is where a young Will may have performed his first acting, assisting the travelling players his father the bailiff had had to approve.

Shakespeare was a genius and his school masters must surely have realised they had before them a pupil soon to be greater than his teacher, an experience I frequently have. His religion is rather ambiguous. Though his plays seldom lack morality, they are often set in Catholic countries where the roles of friars and priests can be filled without causing suspicion. This leads some to think he was a closet Catholic, as were a great many of his contemporaries. If I lived at a time in which the prison population was in part made up of people who worshiped in the wrong way, perhaps I too would be more circumspect in my religious affiliations.

Shakespeare’s most perceptive observation for me is: