A story at the BBC tells us that young Will Shakespeare may have been, for a few years, a provincial schoolmaster and not a director, producer, actor or writer of plays. It’s here:

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22064636

 

Can you imagine the creator of Hamlet and King Lear on the receiving end of the spit-balls and the giggles of infants in a school room – while his back was turned?  Perhaps he couldn’t either.

 

At any rate, London must have been a relief after a school teacher’s servitude in Hampshire. Did he imagine himself an Anthony or a Caesar while teaching grammar and simple sums?

 

In any case, school boys do creep into a few lines, literally creeping thus into Romeo and Juliet:

 

Love goes toward love, as schoolboys from their books,

But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.

 

And creeping here, from As You Like It:

 

Then, the whining schoolboy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.

 

Are these lines drawn from experience more recent than that of childhood?  Perhaps?