John Shakespeare (c. 1531 – 7 September 1601) was the father of William Shakespeare. He was the son of Richard Shakespeare of Snitterfield, a farmer. He moved to Stratford-upon-Avon and married Mary Arden, with whom he had eight children, five of whom survived into adulthood. He was a well-to-do glover and whittawer (leather worker) by trade, a dealer in hides and wool, and was elected to several municipal offices, serving as an alderman and culminating in a term as bailiff, the chief magistrate of the town council, before he fell on hard times for reasons unknown to historians. His fortunes later revived after the success of his son, and he was granted a coat of arms five years before his death, probably at the instigation and expense of his playwright son, entitling him to use the honorific "gentleman", conventionally designated by the title "Master" or its abbreviations "Mr." or "M." prefixed to his surname.
Read more about John Shakespeare: Career and Municipal Responsibilities, Marriage Into The Local Gentry, Risk Taking and Financial Problems, Personality and Beliefs
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“No such sermons have come to us here out of England, in late years, as those of this preacher,—sermons to kings, and sermons to peasants, and sermons to all intermediate classes. It is in vain that John Bull, or any of his cousins, turns a deaf ear, and pretends not to hear them: nature will not soon be weary of repeating them. There are words less obviously true, more for the ages to hear, perhaps, but none so impossible for this age not to hear.”
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“Cankered heaps of strange-achievèd gold.”
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