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The school that Shakespeare may have attended is still open today. I say "may have attended" because no actual record remains. Boys of Stratford have been attending the King Edward VI school for hundreds of years. Since it was the only school in town at the time, if William attended school this is where he would have been educated.
We met with Mr. Biddle, who teaches in the very room in which Shakespeare may have been taught. He is the kind of teacher I would have loved to have had when I was in grade school. We when we arrived he was sitting at the head of the class at a funny looking little desk, that looked a bit like a throne. It is difficult to describe, but we took a picture for the photo gallery to show you.
We learned what education was like when Shakespeare was a boy. Talk about grueling! In just one room, schoolboys spent up to 12 hours a day learning, mostly in Latin, and there was no time for sports or after school clubs. If someone so much as talked out of turn they could expect a rather brutal whack with a switch. Mr. Biddle even described a scene from a Shakespeare play that may be inspired by his time in this very room. There is a teacher in the play, The Merry Wives of Windsor, who shares the name with a former teacher at the school during Shakespeare's time.
Shakespeare's education would have ended in this room. He did not go on to become one of the university wits like other writers of the time.
Of course, kids today don't receive the same kind of education that Shakespeare did and this school has grown immensely in size. The thing that amazed me the most was that this is still a working classroom! I keep seeing how the past connects to the present. As we sat at the desks and looked out the windows, I thought about all of the writers, doctors, and others who attended school here for hundreds of years. Many of them have carved into the wooden desks. I wondered at whose desk I was sitting.
Die dulci fruere (Latin for have a good day),
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