Identifier: americanaunivers14newy (find matches)
Title: The Americana; a universal reference library, comprising the arts and sciences, literature, history, biography, geography, commerce, etc., of the world
Year: 1908 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Encyclopedias and dictionaries
Publisher: New York : Scientific American Compiling Dept.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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the Stratford GrammarSchool, an ancient institution which, after beingclosed for some years on account of the disso-lution of the local Guild, on whose revenuesit was dependent, by Henry VIII. in 1547, wasre-established by Edward VI. in 1553 as TheKings New School of Stratford-upon-Avon.The masters of the school in the poets boyhoodwere university men of good scholarship. Thestudies were mainly Latin, with writing andarithmetic, and possibly a little Greek, whichwas sometimes taught in the grammar schoolsat that time. Ben Jonson credits Shakespearewith small Latin and less Greek ; and we maybe quite certain that the boy had no regularschooling except wdiat he got at Stratford. Itis evident from his works that he had not thelearning which a few of the critics have as-cribed to him. His quotations from Latin lit-erature are such as a schoolboy might makefrom Virgil, Ovid, and the other authors hehad studied; and his allusions to classical his-tory and mythology are mostly from the same
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WILLIAM siL\ki-:sii-:.\in:. SHAKESPEARE sources, or from the familiar stock in Englislibooks of the period. The historical materialsof his plays are evidently from a very limitednumber of English authorities, like HolinshedsChronicles and Norths Plutarch; and inthe use of these he often makes mistakes ofwhich an average scholar could never be guilty. It should be understood that the notionthat Shakespeare was a learned man is of com-paratively modern date. In the references tothe dramatist in the literature of his day andfor a century after his death (as carefully col-lected by the New Shakspere Society of Lon-don) there is no hint of it, while expressionsof the contrary opinion are frequent. JohnHales of Eton, writing before 1633, and re-ferring to a conversation concerning Shake-speare in which Sir John Suckling, Sir WilliamDavenant, Ben Jonson, and he himself wereengaged, says that, hearing Ben frequently re-proaching him (Shakespeare) with the want oflearning and ignorance of the

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