Of Shakespeare’s education we know little, except that for a few years he probably attended the endowed grammar school at Stratford, where he picked up the “small Latin and less Greek” to which his learned friend Ben Jonson refers.  His real teachers, meanwhile, were the men and women and the natural influences which surrounded him.  Stratford is a charming little village in beautiful Warwickshire, and near at hand were the Forest of Arden, the old castles of Warwick and Kenilworth, and the old Roman camps and military roads, to appeal powerfully to the boy’s lively imagination.  Every phase of the natural beauty of this exquisite region is reflected in Shakespeare’s poetry; just as his characters reflect the nobility and the littleness, the gossip, vices, emotions, prejudices, and traditions of the people about him.

    I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus,
    The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool,
    With open mouth swallowing a tailor’s news;
    Who, with his shears and measure in his hand,
    Standing on slippers, which his nimble haste
    Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet,
    Told of a many thousand warlike French
    That were embattailed and ranked in Kent.[145]

Such passages suggest not only genius but also a keen, sympathetic observer, whose eyes see every significant detail.  So with the nurse in Romeo and Juliet, whose endless gossip and vulgarity cannot quite hide a kind heart.  She is simply the reflection of some forgotten nurse with whom Shakespeare had talked by the wayside.

Not only the gossip but also the dreams, the unconscious poetry that sleeps in the heart of the common people, appeal tremendously to Shakespeare’s imagination and are reflected in his greatest plays.  Othello tries to tell a curt soldier’s story of his love; but the account is like a bit of Mandeville’s famous travels, teeming with the fancies that filled men’s heads when the great round world was first brought to their attention by daring explorers.  Here is a bit of folklore, touched by Shakespeare’s exquisite fancy, which shows what one boy listened to before the fire at Halloween: 

                               She comes
    In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
    On the fore-finger of an alderman,
    Drawn with a team of little atomies
    Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep;
    Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners’ legs,
    The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
    The traces of the smallest spider’s web,
    The collars of the moonshine’s watery beams,
    Her whip of cricket’s bone, the lash of film,
    Her waggoner a small grey-coated gnat,
           * * * * *
    Her chariot is an empty hazel nut
    Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub,
    Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers. 
    And in this state she gallops night by night
    Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love;
           * * * * *
    O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees,
    O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream.[146]