A Warwickshire Lad

VIII

But baby years pass. When Will Shakespeare is six, he hears that he is to go to school. But not to nod over a hornbook at the petty school-not John Shakespeare's son! Little Will Shakespeare is entered at King's New College, which is a grammar-school.

But, dear me! Dear me! It was a dreary place and irksome. At first small Will sat among his kind awed. When Schoolmaster breathed Will breathed, but when Schoolmaster glanced frowningly up from under overhanging brows like penthouse roofs, then the heart of Will Shakespeare quaked within him.

But that was while he was six. At seven, when the elements of Latin grammar confronted him, Will had already found grammar-school an excellent place to plead aching tooth or heavy head to stay away from. At eight, a dreary traveling for him to cover did his "Sententiae Pueriles" prove, and idle paths more pleasing.

At nine, he had learned to know many things not listed at grammar-school. For instance, he knew one Bardolph of the brazen, fiery nose, the tapster at the tavern. It was Bardolph who drew him out from under the knee and belaboring fists of one Thomas Chettle, another grammar-school boy, who had him down, behind High Cross in the Rother Market.

[Illustration: "For instance, he knew one Bardolph ... the tapster at the tavern"]

"In the devil's name," said Bardolph, setting him on his feet, "with your nose all gore an' never an eye you can open-what do you mean, boy, to be letting the like of that come over you?" "That" meant Thomas Chettle, his fists squared, and as red as any fighting turkey, held off at arm's-length by Bardolph.

"Come over me!" cries Will, with a rush at Thomas, head down, for all his being held off by Bardolph's other hand. "Who says he has come over me?"

Now the matter stood thus. The day before, Will Shakespeare had followed a company of strolling mountebanks about town instead of going to school. And Thomas Chettle had told Schoolmaster, and he had told Father. When Will reached home the evening before, Dad was telling as much to Mother and blaming her for it. "An' Chettle's lad admits Will had ever rather see the swords an' hear a drum than look upon his lessons--"

This Father was saying as Will sidled in. Will heard him say it. And so Thomas Chettle had to answer for it.

"Come over me!" says Will to Bardolph who is holding him off and contemplating him, a battered wreck. "Come over me!" spitting blood and drawing a sleeve across his gory countenance, "I'd like to see him do it!" Will Shakespeare was not one to know when he was beaten.