Shakespeare had ‘small Latine and lesse Greeke’, according to his contemporary, Ben Jonson. This famous judgment can be misleading to those living more than four centuries later. Discover more about Shakespeare’s early education in these two remarkable volumes by T. W. Baldwin, originally published in 1944 by the University of Illinois Press, and available on the Web for the first time as a fully searchable, open-access electronic archive.

Thomas Whitfield Baldwin was an eminent Shakespeare scholar. His immense collection of Elizabethan literature, over 5800 volumes, is preserved by the University of Illinois Rare Book and Special Collections Library.