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. Greenwood deems it "highly probable" that Will had four or five years of education at a Latin school, Will has as much of "grounding" in Latin, I think, as would account for all the knowledge of the Roman tongue which he displays. His amount of teaching at school would carry and tempt even a boy who was merely clever, and loved to read romantic tales and comic plays, into Ovid and Plautus-- English books being to him not very accessible.
Here I may speak from my own memories, for though utterly idle where set school tasks were concerned, I tried very early to worry the sense out of Aristophanes--because he was said to contain good reading.
To this amount of taste and curiosity, nowise unexampled in an ordinary clever boy, add GENIUS, and I feel no difficulty as to Will's "learning," such as, at best, it was. "The Stratfordian," says Mr. Greenwood, "will ingeminate 'Genius! Genius!'" {55a} I DO say "Genius," and stand by it. The ordinary clever boy, in the supposed circumstances, could read and admire his Ovid (though Shakespeare used cribs also), the man of genius could write Venus and Adonis.
Had I to maintain the Baconian hypothesis, I would not weigh heavily on bookless Will's rusticity and patois. Accepting Ben Jonson's account of his "excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility . . . ," accepting the tradition of his lively wit; admitting that he had some Latin and literature, I would find in him a sufficiently plausible mask for that immense Unknown with a strange taste for furbishing up older plays. I would merely deny to Will his GENIUS, and hand THAT over to Bacon--or Bungay. Believe me, Mr. Greenwood, this is your easiest way!--perhaps this IS your way?--the plot of the unscrupulous Will, and of your astute Bungay, might thus more conceivably escape detection from the pack of envious playwrights.
According to "all tradition," says Mr. Greenwood, Shakespeare was taken from school at the age of thirteen. Those late long-