Life of William Shakespeare less than a quarter of a mile from Shakespeare’s home and within a few yards from where his father sat on the town council. It was free to all male children and the evidence indicates that John Shakespeare sent his sons there for a grammar school education, though no attendance records survive. Shakespeare would have been enrolled when he was 7, in 1571. Classes met every day except Sunday, with a half day off on Thursdays, year-round. The school day typically ran from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a two-hour break for lunch, from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The Plays of William Shakespeare has been able to do little more than transpose his incidents, new name his characters, and paraphrase his sentiments. The reverence due to writings that have long subsisted arises therefore not from any credulous confidence in the superior wisdom of past ages, or gloomy persuasion of the degeneracy of mankind, but is the consequence of acknowledged and indubitable positions, that what has been longest known has been most considered, and what is most considered is best understood. Johnson then introduces Shakespeare: The poet, of whose works I have undertaken the revision, may now begin to assume the dignity of an