Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare for Children by E. Nesbit

Now, what kind of life did the boy Shakespeare, and the middle class boy of his day, live? Let one of his contemporaries tell us, Francis Seager, in his verse, Schoole of Vertue and booke of good Nourture for chyldren, printed in the year 1557, seven years before Shakespeare was born, and recommended in 1612 by John Brinsley in his Grammar Schoole, p. Though his fame took long to grow, he is now acknowledged to be the King of Literature, the greatest genius the world has yet seen, the pride of England, the bond between her and all the nations who speak and understand her tongue. He saved money, bought New Place, the best house in Stratford, and other properties, made a gentleman of his poor old father, by getting him the grant of a coat of arms, married one of his daughters to a tradesman, and the other to a doctor, of Stratford, died there on April 23, 1616, and was buried in Stratford Church on the 25th, where you can still see the stone over his grave, and the monument with his bust in the chancel. So, probably in 1586 or 1587, Shakespeare went to London, and there gradually prospered, being patronized by Lord Southampton, Lord Pembroke, the Queen, King James, etc. In 1586 his father, who had before been an alderman and a person of some importance in the town, was deeply in debt, and was deprived of his aldermanship. He was baptized on April 26, 1564, and was educated at the Stratford grammar school (where he learned the little Latin and less Greek which Ben Jonson said he knew) at eighteen and a half he married a woman of twenty-six, one Anne Hathaway, probably a husbandman’s daughter, and in February, 1585, before he was twenty-one, he found himself with three children and a wife to keep. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE was the eldest son of John Shakespeare, a glover in Stratford-on-Avon (a small market-town in Warwickshire), and his wife Mary Arden, one of the daughters of a neighbouring farmer.

Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare for Children by E. Nesbit