Did shakespeare have to learn passages by heart?

Answer 1

He studied grammar, Latin and a little Greek, and not much else in school.

Answer 2

He studied grammar, Latin and a little Greek, and not much else in school.

Answer 3

He did study Latin and Greek at school, and these involved studying grammar and lots of it. We don't have any other direct evidence of his schooling, but based on what we know about grammar schools in Elizabethan England we can guess that he took a little arithmetic as well. The teaching method was by constant repetition and memorization, which is how Latin grammar was dinned into the boys' heads. This involved not only memorization of grammatic tables (Shakespeare makes fun of this with the schoolmaster in Love's Labour's Lost) but also memorization of passages from Latin authors. Although history was not taught as a subject, one of the Latin authors they studied was Plutarch, whose Lives of the Greeks and Romans taught something about Latin history (and formed the basis of several plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries). If by "R.E." you mean religious education, yes, catechism and religious study was an important part of the curriculum.

Answer 4

I don't know. I'm doing a quiz right now that we got for homework today with that exact question. How strange. How very, very strange.

Answer 5

Absolutely. He was a stage actor and had to learn his lines by heart so he could deliver them in performance.

Answer 6

Yes