The England into which William Shakespeare was born was a rural country dotted with farms and small towns. Ancient forests still covered much of the countryside. There was only one genuine city, London, with a population of about 175,00, about the size of Concord and Walnut Creek combined. The next largest town contained only 25,000 people. Even city folks had an agricultural mentality because most had been raised on farms or in villages.

By the middle of the 1500's when Shakespeare was born the old medieval institution of serfdom, where most people were slaves, legally tied to a large feudal farm or manor, had officially ended. But the attitudes and social restrictions of the Middle Ages remained to a great extent. Most people who lived in the country owned no land of their own and had to work for someone else. Their descendents were, for the most part, condemned to the same limited existence. It was very difficult to escape the trap of social class. Furthermore, most people never traveled further from their birthplace than about 30 miles, the distance they could walk in a couple of days.

English society was a rigid class hierarchy. Historically power and social rank were conferred by ownership of land. The most powerful aristocrats and the monarchy owned enormous tracts of land and depended upon the labor of thousands of tenant farmers. Lesser nobles with hereditary titles also had country estates. Below them a group of gentlemen, often called the gentry, owned property and exercised some influence in the local neighborhood. Finally there were relatively rich farmers who owned small plots of land which they either farmed themselves or rented out to others. In all these cases it was the ownership of land which set this elite apart from the approximately 90% of the population which had to labor for others. Only the landowners could engage in such leisure activities as horseback riding wearing such fine clothes.