s baptism, but there is certainly no evidence of this
fact.

The family name was variously spelled, the dramatist himself not always
spelling it in the same way. While in the baptismal record the name is
spelled "Shakspeare," in several authentic autographs of the dramatist
it reads "Shakspere," and in the first edition of his works it is
printed "Shakespeare."

Halliwell tells us, that there are not less than thirty-four ways in
which the various members of the Shakespeare family wrote the name,
and in the council-book of the corporation of Stratford, where it is
introduced one hundred and sixty-six times during the period that
the dramatist's father was a member of the municipal body, there are
fourteen different spellings. The modern "Shakespeare" is not among
them.

Shakespeare's father, while an alderman at Stratford, appears to have
been unable to write his name, but as at that time nine men out of
ten were content to make their mark for a signature, the fact is not
specially to his discredit.

The traditions and other sources of information about the occupation
of Shakespeare's father differ. He is described as a butcher, a
woolstapler, and a glover, and it is not impossible that he may have
been all of these simultaneously or at different times, or that if
he could not properly be called any one of them, the nature of his
occupation was such as to make it easy to understand how the various
traditions sprang up. He was a landed proprietor and cultivator of his
own land even before his marriage, and he received with his wife, who
was Mary Arden, daughter of a country gentleman, the estate of Asbies,
56 acres in extent. William was the third child. The two older than he
were daughters, and both probably died in infancy. After him was born
three sons and a daughter. For ten or twelve years at least, after
Shakespeare's birth his father continued to be in easy circumstances. In
the year 1568 he was the high bailiff or chief magistrate of Stratford,
and for many years afterwards he held the position of alderman as he
had done for three years before. To the completion of his tenth year,
therefore, it is natural to suppose that William Shakespeare would get
the best education that Stratford could afford. The free school of the
town was open to all boys and like all the grammar-schools of that time,
was under the direction of men who, as graduates of the universities,
were qualified to diffuse that sound scholarship