into classes,--the various ranks of the nobility, the gentry,
the yeomen, the burgesses, and the common people. But changes from one
class to another were numerous; for many lords were losing their
inheritances by extravagance, while many business men were putting their
profits into land. In spite of persecutions, occasional insurrections,
and the plague which devastated the unsanitary towns, it was a time of
peace and prosperity. The coinage was reformed, roads were improved,
taxes were not burdensome, and life in the country was more comfortable
and secure than it had been. Books and education were spreading.
Numerous grammar schools taught Latin, the universities made provision
for poor students, and there were now many careers besides that of the
church open to the educated man.

Stratford, then a village of some two thousand inhabitants, somewhat off
the main route of traffic, was far more removed from the world than most
towns of similar size in this day of railways, newspapers, and the
telegraph. With the nearby country, it made up an independent community
that attended to its own affairs with great thoroughness. The
corporation, itself the outgrowth of a medieval religious guild,
regulated the affairs of every one with little regard for personal
liberty. It was especially severe on rebellious servants, idle
apprentices, shrewish women, the pigs that ran loose in the streets, and
(after 1605) persons guilty of profanity. Regular church attendance and
fixed hours of work were required. The corporation frequently punished
with fines (the poet's father on one occasion) those who did not clean
the street before their houses; and it was much occupied in regulating
the ale-houses, of which the village possessed some thirty. Like all
towns of this period, Stratford suffered frequently from fire and the
plague. Trade was dependent mainly on the weekly markets and semi-annual
fairs, and Stratford was by no means isolated, being not far from the
great market town of Coventry, near Kenilworth and Warwick, and only
eighty miles from London.

[Page Heading: Sports and Plays]

Shakespeare's England was merry England. At least, it was probably as
near to deserving that adjective as at any time before or since. There
was plenty of time for amusement. There were public bowling-greens and
archery butts in Stratford, though the corporation was very strict in
regard to the hours when these could be used. Every one enjoyed hunting