We don’t have much information about his family but, we do have information regarding his maternal grandfathers. The poet’s paternal grandfather was Richard Shakespeare, a farmer in Snitterfield, a village four miles northeast of Stratford. He had three sons named Henry, John (William’s father), and Thomas. Richard was a tenant of Robert Arden, father in law of John. Richard died in late 1560 and issued his property to William’s dad, John. John Shakespeare became an alderman in 1565. In 1568 he was elected mayor

William Shakespeare was lucky to survive to adulthood in sixteenth-century England because the plague ravaged Stratford during the hot summer months. Mary and John Shakespeare became parents for

BLESTE BE THE MAN THAT SPARES THES STONES,

AND CRVST BE HE THAT MOVES MY BONES.

GOOD FRIEND, FOR ISIS SAKE FORBREARE

Shakespeare probably began his education at the age of six or seven at the Stratford Grammar School, which is still standing only a short distance from his house on Henley Street and is in the care of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Although we have no record of Shakespeare attending the school, due to the official position held by William’s father, it seems likely that he would have decided to educate young William at the school which was under the care of Stratford’s governing body. Shakespeare learned his reading and writing skills from an ABC, or horn-book. It included the alphabet in small letters and capitals, with combinations of the five vowels with b, c, and d, and the Lord’s Prayer in English. Scholars believe that

Gilbert, was christened on October 13, 1566. Records show that Gilbert survived the plague and reached adulthood. Gilbert seems to have had a long and successful career as a tradesman and local government, and he died in Stratford on February 3, 1612. In 1569, another child came into the lives of John and Mary Shakespeare, and was named after their first daughter, Joan. Joan Shakespeare died in 1646, and she lived to be seventy-seven years old -- outliving William and all her other siblings by decades. A fourth daughter came into the lives of John and Mary S

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