As he grew young William received another education - knowledge of the life of the farm and villages which surrounded Stratford. His plays would reveal a first-hand awareness of activities like raising sheep and hunting, knowledge much more real than any of his city-raised contemporary playwrights. His Stratford upbringing also brought him into contact with many different classes of people and their language. In a famous passage from Hamlet Shakespeare says, "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, /Rough-hew them how we will"(V, 2,10-11). No one knew exactly what this phrase meant until a linguistic scholar, 300 years after it was written, overheard two old farm workers talking about making a fence out of tree limbs. One would "rough-hew" or do the initial cut of the branches and the other would "shape" or trim them to fit together. Shakespeare's large vocabulary in his works was primarily the result of his listening to a lot of different kinds of people.

Another part of the teenaged Shakespeare's education took place when he visited the cottage of a local family, the Hathaways. He and the eldest Hathaway daughter, Anne, spent a lot of time together at her family's home, shown here.

This bench in the Hathaway kitchen hardly looks comfortable. Is it any wonder that young Will probably suggested that they go for a walk to find a place they could talk? The result was that Anne, eight years older than Will, got pregnant. The young man did the "right thing" and married before he was 19.

After a hastily arranged wedding ceremony, William, Anne and soon their daughter Susanna moved into the Shakespeare home with Shakespeare's brothers and sisters. Within a few years Will and Anne had twins, Judith and Hamnet. At about this time John Shakespeare suffered business reversals. He was dropped from the Stratford Town council and hounded for debts. He even lost the property he and his wife had received as her dowry. It must have been a difficult time for the young family.