William Shakespeare by S.L. Bensusan — Read

We find Shakespeare, just out of his teens, travelling on the road to London, and it is worth while to see what equipment and what resources he is taking to the metropolis. It is safe to assume that he has no money, and that his local reputation is not one of the very best, though the worst to be urged against him is that he has loved not wisely but too well -- and this fault has not been too clearly substantiated -- and that he has ignored the game laws, as so many men had done before, have done since, and will do as long as these laws exist.

The early life of a truly imaginative man had been passed in the most beautiful surroundings that rural England can provide, and by reason, perhaps, of the lack of restrictions, had helped him to enlarge his experiences and develop all the facets of a luminous mind. The expression is chosen deliberately. Man's mind is like a diamond, and experience is the lapidary. Every action, every stroke of good fortune or of bad, leaves its definite mark; every association does the same. As a boy Shakespeare lived in close touch with Nature. His father's business would have brought him into contact with farmers, given him the freedom of their fields, taught him the significance of the seasons. Even now, when glimpses of Elizabethan England are few and far between, we are touched by the supreme peace that still broods over land on which the old-time houses, with their thatched roofs or well-worn tiles, their ingle nooks, their dormer windows, their oak rafters and their many gables, tell of a time when the jerry-builder was not and the suburban villa had not yet come into being. It was an age of beauty, and the walks round Stratford remain beautiful to this hour, despite the growth of villadom and the advent of the railway line.