One of the most common insults lobbed at non-Stratfordians is the accusation of snobbery;
it is only snobbery, we are told, that leads people to reject
the idea that someone with a country grammar school education could write the plays.
But the real non-Stratfordian argument is deeper than that.
The problem is not that
an Elizabethan grammar school education couldn't be excellent - it certainly could -
but that Shakespeare appears to have knowledge of books and
foreign languages that would not have been taught at the grammar school in Stratford.
We don't know what was on the Stratford school curriculum,
although many claims have been made -
assumptions and extrapolations - to allow it to be
the school that gave the author Shakespeare the education he needed.
But the grammar school of a small town like Stratford is
unlikely to have been of a similar quality - as has been claimed -
as that of a significant town such as Ipswich.
It would have had little or nothing in common with
excellent schools such as Westminster, attended by Ben Jonson,
Merchant Taylor's, attended by Edmund Spenser,
or King's School, Canterbury attended by Christopher Marlowe.
What little we do know about Stratford's grammar school
is that it had a high turnover of schoolmasters,
something that is usually the marker, in our current times, of a failing school.
But even a 'good' grammar school couldn't provide
the education that is apparent from Shakespeare's works.
Standard grammar schools taught the reading and writing of Latin.
Most grammar schools didn't teach English, modern languages, history,
geography, mathematics or music.
Yet Shakespeare has good knowledge of all of these things.
Orthodox scholars say that what he didn't learn from school, he learned from books.
More than 270 textual sources for Shakespeare's works have been identified.
Cheap quarto publications were relatively easy to get hold of - in London at least.
But real books in this era were expensive, treasured possessions.
There were no public libraries.
Some writers took to lodging above
printers' houses in order to have easy access to books -
Gabriel Harvey and Thomas Nashe, for example.
Other writers managed to build private libraries:
Ben Jonson is known to have had at least 113 books,
Gabriel Harvey at least 180,
John Dee 'near 400', and Sir Walter Raleigh -
an extremely wealthy man it should be said - close to 500.
There is no evidence that William Shakspere of Stratford owned any books.
No books are mentioned in his will -
though books were valuable enough to be bequeathed separately.
He bequeaths "the second best bed with the furniture", and
his "broad silver gilt bowl" before listing "all the rest of my goods,
chattels, leases, plates, jewels, and household stuff".
Perhaps books were part of his "goods" or his "household stuff",
listed in a separate inventory that was lodged by his son-in-law, John Hall,
but has not survived.
As we have seen, when a man came to call on Susanna Hall for her husband's books,
she makes no mention of her father's. Unlike
other authors, who wrote their names or left marginal notes in the books they read,
no book has ever come to light which can be confirmed as belonging to Shakspere.
But Shakspere was wealthy enough to buy books,
even though there was no evidence for their existence.
So let's assume for a moment he had access to books.
The problem remains that many key books known to be
sources for Shakespeare's plays were in Italian or French.
Languages for which an assumed but unproven education
at Stratford's grammar school could not equip him.
Important parts of Hamlet -
in particular, the prince's melancholy,
come from the version of the ancient Danish story told, in French,
in François de Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques.
In Henry V, Shakespeare writes a whole scene largely in French.
The source story for Othello, and the plots of
Measure for Measure, were from stories by Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio,
which he can have read in French or the original Italian.
In The Taming of the Shrew,
Hortensio and Petruccio greet each other in two or three lines of pure Italian.
Holofernes in Love's Labour's Lost quotes a well-known Italian proverb
and many other Italian sayings found in specific parts of Italy are
present in works such as Much Ado About Nothing and The Two Gentlemen of Verona,
such as the phrase 'sound as a fish'.
Key details of The Merchant of Venice come only from
the Italian version of Sir Giovanni Fiorentino's Il Pecoroni,
which was not translated into English in Shakespeare's time.
Other plays are sourced from the stories of
the Italian writer Matheo Bandello, again, untranslated.
There is a great deal of evidence supporting the idea that
Shakespeare knew Italian, and indeed Italy, rather well.
So somehow, and not at Stratford Grammar School,
the author learned French and Italian well enough to read French and Italian literature.
Well, you may say, maybe he got to know some French immigrants -
there were certainly many Huguenot refugees in England at
this time who had escaped the purges in France.
And maybe he learnt Italian through someone who had traveled there.
Yet still there are puzzles about
Shakespeare's apparent education that are not easily answered.
The highly respected orthodox scholar Frederick Boas
found evidence that the author had more than a grammar school education.
In Shakespeare and he Universities published in 1923,
he referred to 'the curious fact that Shakespeare shows
familiarity with certain distinctively Cambridge terms'.
Timon of Athens is believed to by some scholars to be co-authored by Thomas Middleton,
but in a scene attributed to Shakespeare, Timon says
to Apemantus: "Hadst thou like us from our first swath 'proceeded'
The sweet degrees that this brief world affords...
They nature did 'commence' in sufferance.""
In the sixteenth century,
a candidate for a degree at Cambridge was required to dispute (called 'The Act')
and if successful was said to 'commence' in his subject.
If going on to a higher degree,
he was said to 'proceed'.
Timon's combination of 'degree', 'commence' and 'proceed'
are all associated with the process of graduation at Cambridge.
In Henry IV Part Two, Falstaff says (in praise of sack,
a type of sherry)
that "Learning is a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil
till sack 'commences' it and sets it in 'act' and use".
Again, his association of 'learning' with 'commence' and
'act' is a specifically Cambridge-University-inspired association.
If the author didn't attend Cambridge University,
one wonders why such terms would be strongly associated with each other in his mind.
He could have heard about the Cambridge graduation process
from people of his acquaintance,
but it's unlikely the terms would have stuck when they had no personal meaning for him.
Of course, these combinations of words might be purely
coincidental, but similar groups of associated words near to each other (collocations)
have been the basis on which other parts of
the Shakespeare canon have been attributed to the hands of co-authors.
Indeed, since we have no indication of the purity of the texts that have come down to us,
and do not know how closely they adhere to the author's original manuscripts,
perhaps these sections are traces of an 'as yet
unidentified' Cambridge-educated co-author or revisionist?
In King Lear, Lear rails at Reagan
"Tis not in thee ... to scant my sizes."
A 'size' was a portion of food and ale to which
a scholar was entitled when he visited the Cambridge buttery for a meal;
the Oxford English Dictionary notes its use with this meaning 'spec[ifically] in Cambridge'.
To be 'scanted of sizes' was a punishment for undergraduates, 'an indignity'
notes Boas 'that might well stir Lear to a transport of rage'.
Again, the author could have heard about
the Cambridge practice of 'scanting sizes' from people of
his acquaintance, or there may be
another (Cambridge-educated) hand in this part of King Lear.
But what about the author's Cambridge-specific use of 'keep' to mean 'lodge' or 'dwell'?
At this time, as the Oxford English Dictionary confirms,
the word was only in use in this manner at Cambridge, and among Cambridge graduates.
Shakespeare uses 'keep' to mean 'lodge' or 'dwell'
in not only King Lear but Hamlet,
As You Like It, Henry VI Part 1 and Part 3,
Love's Labour's Lost, Measure For Measure and The Winter's Tale.
To non-Stratfordians,
Shakespeare's use of Cambridge-specific terms is a peculiarity that requires explanation.
Orthodox scholars since Boas, however,
have simply avoided drawing attention to such things.
Ros BarberDr
