His father, who was of yeoman rank, was probably a dealer in wool
and leather. Aubrey, a gossiping chronicler of the next generation, says
he was a butcher, and some biographers assert that he was a glover. He may
have exercised all these crafts together, but it is more to our purpose to
know that in his best estate he was a property holder and chief burgess of
the town. Shakspeare'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.
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