Chapter 3 Summary and Analysis

"The Great Fear" This chapter begins with a brief description of the danger of traveling the roads of England in Shakespeare's time - beggars, musicians, actors, salespeople, everyone needed a license or a letter from a rich patron granting them passage. Otherwise, they were subject to arrest and/or imprisonment. The author offers this as explanation for why Will Shakespeare does not just make his way straight from Stratford to London - he was unlicensed for anything, and would have been in great danger.

The author then offers evidence of where Will Shakespeare spends at least part of the undocumented time between his school days in Stratford and his marriage (see Chapter 4, "Wooing, Wedding and Repenting"). This evidence is a passing comment by one of Shakespeare's earliest biographers, who refers to Will as "a schoolmaster in the country..." The author proposes...