A Life of William Shakespeare Author:Sidney Lee Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ties grew steadily, and they caused his removal from school at an unusually early age. Probably in 1577, with- when he was thirteen, he was enlisted by his from3... more » father in an effort to restore his decaying for- schooi. tunes. ' I have been told heretofore,' wrote Aubrey, 'by some of the neighbours that when he was a boy he exercised his father's trade,' which, according to the writer, was that of a butcher. It is possible that John's ill-luck at the period compelled him to confine himself to this occupatio'n, which in happier days formed only one branch of his business. His son may have been formally apprenticed to him. An early Stratford tradition describes him as' a butcher's apprentice.'1 ' When he kill'd a calf,' Aubrey proceeds less convincingly, ' he would doe it in a high style and make a speech. There was at that time another butcher's son in this towne, that was held not at all inferior to him for a naturall witt, his acquaintance, and coeta- nean, but dyed young.' At the end of 1582 Shakespeare, when little more than eighteen and a half years old, took a step which The poet's was little calculated to lighten his father's marriage, anxieties. He married. His wife, according to the inscription on her tombstone, was his senior by eight years. Rowe states that she ' was the daughter of one Hathaway, said to have been a substantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford.' On September I, 1581, Richard Hathaway, 'husbandman' of Shottery, a hamlet in the parish of Old 1 Notes of John Duwdall, a tourist in Warwickshire in 1693 (published in 1838). Stratford, made his will, which was proved on July 9, 1582, and is now preserved at Somerset House. Richard s nouse and land, ' two and a half Hathaway virgates,' had been long held in copyhold ofShottery. sperous c...« less