Life of King Henry the Fifth Author:William Shakespeare General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1919 Original Publisher: The Macmillan company Subjects: Drama / General Drama / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Drama / Shakespeare Literary Criticism / Shakespeare Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be t... more »ypos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: II. SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK In spite of the unique position Shakespeare has so long held in English literature, our knowledge of him is still very meagre. He was born in Stratford-on-Avon, a dignified and attractive old town in Warwickshire, and baptized April 26,1564. As children were usually baptized three days after they were born, April 23 has come to be generally accepted as the date of his birth. His father, John Shakespeare, was, as we know from authentic records, a well-to-do citizen, who was engaged at various times in making gloves, and in trading in wool, meat, leather, and various other commodities. His mother was Mary Arden, the daughter of a wealthy farmer in the neighboring village of Wilmecote, who brought her husband, as dowry, an estate known as Ashbies, consisting of a house and about sixty acres of land, and the reversion of part of an estate at Snitterfield. For some years after his marriage John Shakespeare seems to have prospered, for he held successively various town offices, and finally became bailiff, the highest municipal dignity to which he could attain. So prosperous a man must have sent his son William to the town grammar school, which boys who had learned to read usually entered at the age of seven. From contemporary records we can tell pretty nearly what Shakespeare's course of study here must have been. His first year he probably began Latin grammar, and the second year studied in addition some manual o...« less