To smack or not to smack, that is the current question. It is not a question that Shakespeare would have put into the mouth of a character, obviously; it is simply too fatuous a query to have entered the mind of any God-fearing Elizabethan. Young Will would certainly have had his share of cuffs, slaps and smacks from his parents as he loitered about the house, day-dreaming and dawdling at the tasks he was set. In those days you didn’t spare the rod and you didn’t spoil the child.
Actually, this way of rearing children lasted until after the last War – indeed, until the 60s when everything seemed to change. As a child of the 50s, my parents did not question their right to physically check us if we stepped out of line. My father did it very rarely, mainly because spending his spare time on the golf course was pleasanter than disciplining his noisy, argumentative children. I have one vivid recollection of him putting a younger sister over his knee and spanking her, saying emphatically, “I hate lies.” I doubt if my sister even remembers this incident and I only recall it because it was so rare.
