I will argue that 1582 was the year Shakespeare became Shakespeare. His coming of age didn’t take place in a vacuum, nor in some idealized, pastoral-watercolor vision of Merry Olde England. The Stratford-upon-Avon of the Bard’s youth was one of social turmoil and religious oppression. King Henry VIII had split with the Roman Catholic Church so that he might divorce his first wife and leave a male heir. He failed, and his daughter “Bloody” Mary I forced England back to Catholicism by burning hundreds of Protestants at the stake. On Mary’s death, Henry’s second daughter took the throne as Elizabeth I, returned the country to Protestantism, and established a network of spies and informants to enforce the state religion.
Eighteen-year-old William Shakespeare had a love / hate relationship with Latin.
He loved the language. Even the repetitive declension of demonstratives — hic haec hoc, huius huius huius — brought vague memories to his mind of the sweet smell of incense, wise men bearing strange Eastern unguents, and the taste of wine. But he hated teaching the lessons. As a student, he had always struggled with the tongue, and now keeping one step ahead of the older boys was a tail-chasing proposition. He still felt, in only his second term, more like one of the pupils than an assistant schoolmaster, or “usher,” which was what he was.
William’s students sat along the walls of the King’s New School of Stratford-upon-Avon. It was the third day of the Michaelmas term — a nominal distinction, as the pale, bug-eyed little moppets attended school nearly year-round, six days a week from six a.m. to six p.m., less a half day on Thursday. On their “day off” they were expected to go to church and Sunday school.
The class was diving into Lyly’s A Short Introduction to Grammar, the sine qua non of Elizabethan secular education. The three oldest boys held the school’s three precious copies and read together aloud in the singsongy voice that afflicts all readers-together-aloud:
“An Introduction to the Numbers of Nouns. In nouns be two numbers; the singular, and the plural. The singular number speaketh of but one: as, lapis, a stone. The plural number speaketh of more than one: as, lapides, stones.”
“Close the books,” William Shakespeare commanded. A thwap as the students obliged. “Now how many numbers be there in nouns?”
There was an absolutely still silence. No one raised a hand. A few stole glances at their hornbooks. No help there; just a cheat sheet for the English alphabet, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Roman numerals.
“Taught your masters naught in petty school? To read and retain? How many numbers be there in nouns!?”
“Two,” said three or four voices — the older boys.
“Better. Ay. And what is lapis?”
“Stones,” offered an especially pale boy.
“Nay,” said William, “ ’ tis but the singular, stone.”
A wicked laugh from young Richard Wheeler, class ass. “Forgive him, for he is breechless, and knows not the stones of which you speak.”
The reference, to the fact that the pale lad was still wearing a dress, as was the custom for very young boys, and therefore by extension had no “stones” — testicles — was technically an “oath” under the new rules of the King’s School and subject to punishment. But William Shakespeare didn’t countenance giving young boys the whip when he had a sharper tool at his disposal.
“Richard,” William said, “I should strip thee and whip thee for thy stones, wert thou not already naked.”
The other boys laughed with nervous confusion; young Richard was obviously fully clothed.
After a tense pause, William raised an eyebrow high on his high brow.
“I see on you no breeches, yet despite thy dick of a name, I suspect a breach — a vertical one — in thy lap. Gloves, I note you have none, but that of Venus. No ruff, but that which circles thy perfect maidenhead. Ay, I should whip thee, but the gentle whipping of maids is, sadly, frowned upon amongst the better classes. So will I let thy case rest.”
William looked stern as he sat back down on his desk, but he smiled to himself. Only half the boys, he knew, got only half the puns, but they all got the gist: their teacher had just told the class wit that he was a pussy in five different ways.
William moved on. “Continue reading aloud, after ‘Cases of Nouns.’ ”
“Nouns be declined,” went the singsong, “with six cases, singularly and plurally. The nominative, the genitive, the dative, the accusative, the vocative, and the ablative.”
“Richard, what be the cases of nouns?”
“Nouns be declined with six cases, the nominative, the dative, the accusative, and the ablative,” Richard responded.
“Two hast thou forgotten.”
“Nay, I forget not, but speak not for fear of whipping, magister.”
“Why should I whip thee for naming the cases?” asked William, puzzled.
“Two be oaths, magister.”
“Oaths?”
“Ay. The genital and the vocative.” He pronounced the v in “vocative” like an f.
All the boys got that one. The laughter cascaded through the open timbers of the roof like angels in flight.
William looked angry for a moment, then broke his mask and laughed along. “Veritas! The master teaches and the pupil learns, all too well.”
“WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE!”
The booming voice from the doorway stopped the laughter midpeal. All heads in the room turned as one to see a black-robed figure in the doorway, holding a Bible under his arm, his face reddening.
“Did I hear thee professing profanity and vulgarity to my charges?”
William leapt up from the desk with the instinctive fear of a schoolboy for his master. He gave a deep reverence. “Merely teaching Lyly as writ, magister.”
“I do not recall Lyly teaching declensions thus. I would speak with thee. Outside, sirrah. Nunc.”
Snickers from the class; a barely audible fart.
William followed the schoolmaster of the King’s New School out of the class and into the street.
He’d been dreading this.
When William was himself a breechless little moppet, Stratford was an openly Catholic town, and so were the New School’s headmasters. But in the year when William was eleven, public officials were forced to take the Oath of Supremacy, acknowledging the Protestant Church of England as their religion and Elizabeth as its head. Rather than take the oath, William’s schoolmaster, Simon Hunt, left to study for the priesthood at Rheims, a Catholic seminary on the Continent. More than one of his Stratford students went with him.
But Stratford was still a Catholic town, so it hired yet another Catholic schoolmaster, John Cottom. He was William’s teacher for three years, and allowed William to stay in school even when the Shakespeare family could no longer pay his tuition. And when William, despite all aptitude, couldn’t afford to go to Oxford or Cambridge, John Cottom had given William a position as his assistant, teaching Latin to the younger students.
But during the past summer, word arrived in Stratford that John’s brother, Thomas Cottom — yet another who had gone to Rheims to study for the priesthood, and had returned to preach in secret amongst faithful English Catholics — had been arrested and taken to the Tower of London for imprisonment and torture. Then, in the short break before the current term, William heard that John Cottom had vanished from Stratford in the middle of the night. Rumors flew through Stratford like spooked ravens. Some said Cottom had gone to London to plead for his brother’s life; some that he had gone to Rheims; some that he had fled to his family’s lands in Lancashire; some that he himself had been taken to the Tower; some that he was already dead.
Three days before classes resumed, William received a brief letter from the new schoolmaster, Alexander Aspinall: William was to return for the new term as expected. It was the second day of class, and Aspinall had yet to make an appearance . . . until now.
The smell of roasting meat, fresh-cut hay, and human waste walloped William in the face as he emerged into the late morning air. It was coolish for autumn in Stratford — which is to say, bitterly cold. The puddles in the muddy street were turning toward slush. Fog hung nearly as low as the top of the Guild Hall Chapel next door, where the school had begun its day in the dark, with morning services. A fishmonger walked past missing all but one visible tooth, proffering “eelsh, bash, and shalmon.” William couldn’t help but note that the fishmonger — twenty-one or twenty-two, Irish, he guessed, with large pale green eyes and black hair — aside from being near toothless, was exceedingly attractive. In fact, he ruminated, there must be certain advantages —
“So: you are Will,” rasped an impatient, rheumy voice.
William turned to face Alexander Aspinall.
“No Will I, magister. I am small of purse and stature, and therefore make amends with a rich and lofty name. So: my name is William.”
Aspinall closed his black cassock over a staid white shirt, sheltering from an icy blade of cold wind from the north. He looked William over.
“William, then,” he said at last. “John Cottom spoke well of you.”
“I knew not that you were acquainted,” William replied.
“He left a letter to his replacement. Most eloquent.”
“He was an excellent schoolmaster,” William said warily, but with some relief. If John had found the time to leave such a letter, he at least hadn’t been suddenly snatched away to the Tower.
“But he was a papist, they say,” Aspinall ventured.
“I know not.”
“Do you not?” asked Aspinall with a flash in his eyes. “His brother was, ’tis certain, along with many students and masters of the King’s School past.” Aspinall opened the cover of his Bible and referred to papers tucked inside. “Simon Hunt, Thomas Jenkins, Robert Debdale . . .”
William was beginning to calm down. He answered coolly, “A man may be many things that his brother — or his schoolmaster — is not.”
“Yet Thomas’s faith was wicked. And his brother John, ’twould seem by his sudden absence, shares in his guilt.”
“Of the righteousness of Thomas Cottom’s faith, or John’s, or indeed the faith of any man, only God might know of a certainty.”
Aspinall frowned. His gaze bored into William like a thumbscrew. Then he drew in a breath, still regarding William curiously. “Indeed. Well spoken, William. The soul of a man finds purchase with God only by private piety, not by the baubles of priests, nor by the gold of St. Peter’s coffers, nor by the display of the bloody Roman crucifix. So the new faith teaches our princes; so our sovereign Queen teaches us; and so shall we teach our pupils. I neither know nor care what philosophy my predecessors loosed in this our school that brought the Crown’s displeasure upon Stratford, but no lasciviousness nor other popery will abide here while I am master. Neither would I have even the suspicion of recusancy fall upon my new usher, lest it fall thence on me.”
William fought back his rising spleen and said, “Ay, magister.”
“Therefore, thou shalt cease thy instruction in stones and cases, the genital, the fuckative, and all other such privy parts of speech in my school; or thou shalt find thyself pondering, at thy soon-arrived last, how best to distribute the four parts of thy personal estate unto the dismembers of thy family. Comprehendisne?”
“Ay, magister.”
Alexander Aspinall harrumphed, then opened the door leading back into the schoolhouse. William entered and Aspinall followed. Clothing rustled as pupils turned to watch William return from his censure. As he strode to the master’s desk, he felt the eyes of both students and master heating his back from the inside like peat fire. From the desk, he picked up the open copy of Lyly’s grammar. With a glance at Aspinall, who stood watching from the doorway, William closed the book and set it gingerly on the desk.
“Satis Linguae Latinae hodie. Enough of that. Let us move on to matters of less controversy.” He quickly took up another, much larger book from the desk, and opened it to the marked page.
“Where stood we in the Gospels yesterday? Ah, Matthew, chapter one, verse eighteen.” He cleared his throat and read in Latin: “Christi autem generatio sic erat cum esset desponsata mater eius Maria Ioseph antequam convenirent inventa est in utero habens de Spiritu Sancto.” (Which two decades later would be translated for the King James version thus: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: when as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.”)
He dropped the book onto the desk; it landed with a thump like Anne Boleyn’s head into the basket.
“Disputate,” William barked. “Discuss.”
Several hands shot up. William acknowledged one.
“How came Mary with the child of the Holy Ghost?” asked an older boy who understood the Latin well.
“And what means convenirent, ‘they came together’?” asked a younger boy who did not.
William cast a studiously blank look toward the door, but it was already closing with a slam; Alexander Aspinall was gone.