Family life in Shakespeare's England

Family Life in Shakespeare's England provides a detailed and fascinating picture of a typical busy market town in late Tudor and early Stuart England, and places William Shakespeare and his family in their true context. At the end of the sixteenth century the population of the Borough of Stratford was about 2,000; several hundred more dwelt in the outlying hamlets which made up the parish of Old Stratford. Unlike Shakespeare, most of the ordinary people of Stratford, from the wealthy innkeepers and merchants to the humble labourers and almsfolk, spent their whole lives in the town or its immediate environs. Using the evidence of wills and inventories Jeanne Jones has built up a detailed picture of everyday life in the town, with chapters on where and how people lived, what they did for a living, their material possessions, beliefs and attitudes, and marriage, families and friends.