Years passed on, and the house in Henley Street grew ever more
noisy with chattering tongues and pattering feet, until little
Will had two sisters and two brothers to keep him company.

Then, although his father and mother could neither of them write
themselves, they decided that their children should be taught, so
William was sent to the Grammar School. He was, I think, fonder
of the blue sky and the slow-flowing river and the deep dark
woods that grew about his home that of the low-roofed schoolroom.
He went perhaps

"A whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school."

But we do not know. And whether he liked school or not, at least
we know that later, when he came to write plays, he made fun of
schoolmasters. He knew "little Latin and less Greek,"* said a
friend in after life, but then that friend was very learned and
might think "little" that which we might take for "a good deal."
Indeed, another old writer says "he understood Latin pretty
well."**

*Ben Jonson.
**John Aubrey.

We know little either of Shakespeare's school hours or play
hours, but once or twice at least he may have seen a play or
pageant. His father went on prospering and was made chief