Shakespeare’s father is often said (particularly by those who wish to portray William Shakespeare as too deprived of stimulus and education to have written the plays attributed to him) to have been illiterate. Illiteracy was the usual condition in sixteenth-century England, to be sure. According to one estimate at least 70 percent of men and 90 percent of women of the period couldn’t even sign their names. But as one moved up the social scale, literacy rates rose appreciably. Among skilled craftsmen-a category that included John Shakespeare-some 60 percent could read, a clearly respectable proportion.

The conclusion of illiteracy with regard to Shakespeare’s father is based on the knowledge that he signed his surviving papers with a mark. But lots of Elizabethans, particularly those who liked to think themselves busy men, did likewise even when they could read, rather as busy executives might today scribble their initials in the margins of memos. As Samuel Schoenbaum points out, Adrian Quiney, a Stratford contemporary of the Shakespeares, signed all his known Stratford documents with a cross and would certainly be considered illiterate except that we also happen to have an eloquent letter in his own hand written to William Shakespeare in 1598. It is worth bearing in mind that John Shakespeare rose through a series of positions of authority in which an inability to read would have been a tiresome, if not insuperable, handicap. Anyway, as should be obvious, his ability to write or not could have had absolutely no bearing on the capabilities of his children.

Literate or not, John was a popular and respected fellow. In 1556 he took up the first of many municipal positions when he was elected borough ale taster. The job required him to make sure that measures and prices were correctly observed throughout the town-not only by innkeepers but also by butchers and bakers. Two years later he became a constable-a position that then, as now, argued for some physical strength and courage-and the next year became an “affeeror” (or “affurer”), someone who assessed fines for matters not handled by existing statutes. Then he became successively burgess, chamberlain, and alderman, which last entitled him to be addressed as “Master” rather than simply as “Goodman.” Finally, in 1568, he was placed in the highest elective office in town, high bailiff-mayor in all but name. So William Shakespeare was born into a household of quite a lot of importance locally.

One of John’s duties as high bailiff was to approve payment from town funds for performances by visiting troupes of actors. Stratford in the 1570s became a regular stop for touring players, and it is reasonable to suppose that an impressionable young Will saw many plays as he grew up and possibly received some encouragement or made some contact that smoothed his entrance into the London theater later. He would at the very least have seen actors with whom he who would eventually become closely associated.

For four hundred years this was about all that was known of John Shakespeare, but in the 1980s some discoveries at the Public Record Office showed that there was another, rather more dubious side to his character.

“It appears that he hung out with some fairly shady fellows,” says David Thomas. Four times in the 1570s, John was prosecuted (or threatened with prosecution-the records are sometimes a touch unclear) for trading in wool and for money-lending, both highly illegal activities. Usury in particular was considered a “vice most odious and detestable,” in the stark phrasing of the law, and fines could be severe, but John seems to have engaged in it at a seriously committed level. In 1570 he was accused of making loans worth £220 (including interest) to a Walter Mussum. This was a very considerable sum-well over £ 100,000 in today’s money-and Mussum appears not to have been a good risk; at his death his entire estate was worth only £114, much less than John Shakespeare had lent him.

The risk attached to such an undertaking was really quite breathtaking. Anyone found guilty of it would forfeit all the money lent, plus interest, and face a stiff fine and the possibility of imprisonment. The law applied-a little unfairly, it must be said-to any extension of credit. If someone took delivery of, say, wool from you with the understanding that he would repay you later, with a little interest for your trouble, that was considered usury, too. It was this form of usury of which John Shakespeare was probably guilty, for he also traded (or so it would seem) in large quantities of wool. In 1571, for instance, he was accused of acquiring 300 tods-8,400 pounds-of wool. That is a lot of wool and a lot of risk.

We cannot be certain how guilty he was. Informers, as David Thomas points out, sometimes brought actions as a kind of nuisance ploy, hoping that the accused, even if innocent, would agree to an out-of-court settlement rather than face a costly and protracted trial in London, and one of John Shakespeare’s accusers did have a record of bringing such malicious suits.

In any case something severely unfavorable seems to have happened in John’s business life for in 1576, when William was twelve, he abruptly withdrew from public affairs and stopped attending meetings. He was listed at one point among nine Stratford residents who were thought to have missed church ser vices “for fear of processe for debtte.” His colleagues repeatedly reduced or excused levies that he was due to pay. They also kept his name on the membership for another ten years in the evident hope that he would make a recovery. He never did.

Shakespeare’s mother, Mary Arden, provides us with a history that is rather more straightforward, if not tremendously vivid or enlightening. She came from a minor branch of a prominent family. Her father farmed, and the family was comfortable, but probably no more than that. She was the mother of eight children: four daughters, of whom only one lived to adulthood, and four sons, all of whom reached their majority but only one of whom, Will, married. Not a great deal is known about any of them apart from Will. Joan, born in 1558, married a local hatter named Hart and lived to be seventy-seven. Gilbert, born in 1566, became a successful haberdasher. Richard was born in 1574 and lived to be not quite forty, and that is all we know of him. Edmund, the youngest, became an actor in London -how successfully and with which company are unknown-and died there at the age of twenty-seven. He is buried in Southwark Cathedral, the only one of the eight siblings not to rest at Holy Trinity in Stratford. Seven of the eight Shakespeare children appear to have been named after close relations or family friends. The exception was William, the inspiration for whose name has always been a small mystery, like nearly everything else about his life.

It is commonly supposed (and frequently written) that Shakespeare enjoyed a good education at the local grammar school, King’s New School, situated in the Guild Hall in Church Street, and he probably did, though in fact we don’t know, as the school records for the period were long ago lost. What is known is that the school was open to any local boy, however dim or deficient, so long as he could read and write-and William Shakespeare patently could do both. King’s was of an unusually high standard and was generously supported by the town. The headmaster enjoyed an annual salary of twenty pounds-roughly twice what was paid in other towns and even more, it is often noted, than the headmaster at Eton got at the time. The three masters at the school in Shakespeare’s day were all Oxford men-again a distinction.

Boys normally attended the school for seven or eight years, beginning at the age of seven. The schoolday was long and characterized by an extreme devotion to tedium. Pupils sat on hard wooden benches from six in the morning to five or six in the evening, with only two short pauses for refreshment, six days a week. (The seventh day was probably given over largely to religious instruction.) For much of the year they can hardly have seen daylight. It is easy to understand the line in As You Like It about a boy “creeping like snail / Unwillingly to school.”