Stratford-Upon-Avon
Shakespeare fans experience the thrill of being stalked by the ghost of the world’s most famous bard and characters from his plays in Stratford-upon-Avon, the town where he attended grammar school and roamed the woods on the lookout for rabbits to poach or ripe fruit to steal.
When you’re reading William Shakespeare you except a few ghosts here and there – be it Banquo in Macbeth or Hamlet’s dead father in Hamlet. They flit around in the mist and pop out of the pages of his famous plays, speaking of evil machination and ugly murders and leading the characters and the reader to where the action is. Not surprising then that outside the public library on Henley Street, Stratford (Shakespeare’s place of birth) a ghostly apparition in white stands still on a pedestal marked William Shakespeare. When you decide it is just a statue, he nods his head curtly in greeting causing the air to ring out with the shrieks of startled tourists.
Despite having died almost 400 years back, Shakespeare continues to roam the streets of Stratford on warm summer afternoons as a vision in white or just sonnets recounted by well-versed visitors. And at his house, you may well run into Lady Macbeth sleepwalking through the corridors, Romeo and Juliet meeting in the garden or even Hamlet’s father’s ghost materializing before your eyes. Travel brochures say that this scenic town, set on the beautiful river Avon at the very heart of England, would have been visited by tourists even if the world’s greatest playwright had not been born there in 1564. But he was and so Shakespeare repays his debt to Stratford for giving him education and an acute awareness of nature by making it a shrine on the world map. Those in the literary world who read, love and revere him throng the town to visit the Birthplace, the house where he courted his wife Anne Hathaway, three theatres and a beautiful garden memorial.
Old records tell us that Shakespeare’s Stratford would have been a prosperous place with merchants and tradesmen working under the protective guild of the Holy Trinity that funded the Grammar School where he learnt Latin. Shakespeare spent most of his life in London building a reputation as a playwright and a poet. It is believed that he left Stratford due to a charge of deer poaching brought against him by Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote. His revenge was sweet – Justice Shallow in Henry IV part 2 and The Merry Wives of Windsor is said to be a caricature of Lucy. In London, either by accident or by design, William picked up a job with the capital’s leading theatres, initially working as a jack-of-all-trades. It is said that maybe his acting talent as an extra led him to being engaged by the Earl of Leicester’s company of actors. The company soon made use of Shakespeare’s aptitude with the pen, initially by editing and rewriting other people’s work and then by producing his own plays. One of the first of these was Love’s Labour’s Lost, performed in court for Queen Elizabeth, and the last was The Tempest, written in 1611.
When he had made his fortune, Shakespeare bought a mansion in the town centre at Stratford and eventually retired there. Unhappily, his retirement lasted only six years and he died, just 52, 1616, probably after a convivial evening with fellow writers Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton.
The poet’s reputation grew after his death and gathered pace after the Shakespearian Festival organized by the famous actor David Garrick in 1769. Visitors flocked to see the birthplace and went away with pieces hacked off the poet’s chair, sold as souvenirs. Thankfully, Shakespeare’s heritage has since been safeguarded and now when you enter the Birthplace, you are not allowed to touch artifacts or even take pictures. An assistant, in the parlour explains how his father John, a well respected and prosperous townsman was a Glover and you see an array of gloves laid out, the most precious being the soft animal skin ones that were believed to be a status symbol for the affluent. Upstairs, you enter the bedroom where the bard was born, a double bed with an attached shelf where a servant used to sleep. “People in those times did not believe in privacy,” explains the assistant rolling her eyes. William was the third child and there were to be five more so the house would have been lively and crowded.
In the garden, an animated young Juliet speaks passionately to her wet-nurse. An open air rendition of Romeo and Juliet is in progress. Visitors can enjoy the performance sitting on the benches or just standing under a tree on the sidewalk. Outside a souvenir shop sells fridge magnets of the bard, wallets carrying famous lines from his plays and copies of his works. A visit is incomplete without a town walk to see Garrick Inn, the oldest in town, with its gettied upper storey; the bear museum and the gardens along the Avon with Gower Memorial where characters from the plays surround a statue of Shakespeare. A canal boat serves as a floating restaurant besides a statue of Hermaphroditus, children feed ducks and swans by the riverside and finally an evening stroll along the south bank of Avon shows the sun gently setting behind holy Trinity Church where Shakespeare lies buried. It’s a treasured memory of a romantic town that gave the world some of it most famous stories.
When you’re reading William Shakespeare you except a few ghosts here and there – be it Banquo in Macbeth or Hamlet’s dead father in Hamlet. They flit around in the mist and pop out of the pages of his famous plays, speaking of evil machination and ugly murders and leading the characters and the reader to where the action is. Not surprising then that outside the public library on Henley Street, Stratford (Shakespeare’s place of birth) a ghostly apparition in white stands still on a pedestal marked William Shakespeare. When you decide it is just a statue, he nods his head curtly in greeting causing the air to ring out with the shrieks of startled tourists.
Despite having died almost 400 years back, Shakespeare continues to roam the streets of Stratford on warm summer afternoons as a vision in white or just sonnets recounted by well-versed visitors. And at his house, you may well run into Lady Macbeth sleepwalking through the corridors, Romeo and Juliet meeting in the garden or even Hamlet’s father’s ghost materializing before your eyes. Travel brochures say that this scenic town, set on the beautiful river Avon at the very heart of England, would have been visited by tourists even if the world’s greatest playwright had not been born there in 1564. But he was and so Shakespeare repays his debt to Stratford for giving him education and an acute awareness of nature by making it a shrine on the world map. Those in the literary world who read, love and revere him throng the town to visit the Birthplace, the house where he courted his wife Anne Hathaway, three theatres and a beautiful garden memorial.
Old records tell us that Shakespeare’s Stratford would have been a prosperous place with merchants and tradesmen working under the protective guild of the Holy Trinity that funded the Grammar School where he learnt Latin. Shakespeare spent most of his life in London building a reputation as a playwright and a poet. It is believed that he left Stratford due to a charge of deer poaching brought against him by Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote. His revenge was sweet – Justice Shallow in Henry IV part 2 and The Merry Wives of Windsor is said to be a caricature of Lucy. In London, either by accident or by design, William picked up a job with the capital’s leading theatres, initially working as a jack-of-all-trades. It is said that maybe his acting talent as an extra led him to being engaged by the Earl of Leicester’s company of actors. The company soon made use of Shakespeare’s aptitude with the pen, initially by editing and rewriting other people’s work and then by producing his own plays. One of the first of these was Love’s Labour’s Lost, performed in court for Queen Elizabeth, and the last was The Tempest, written in 1611.
When he had made his fortune, Shakespeare bought a mansion in the town centre at Stratford and eventually retired there. Unhappily, his retirement lasted only six years and he died, just 52, 1616, probably after a convivial evening with fellow writers Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton.
The poet’s reputation grew after his death and gathered pace after the Shakespearian Festival organized by the famous actor David Garrick in 1769. Visitors flocked to see the birthplace and went away with pieces hacked off the poet’s chair, sold as souvenirs. Thankfully, Shakespeare’s heritage has since been safeguarded and now when you enter the Birthplace, you are not allowed to touch artifacts or even take pictures. An assistant, in the parlour explains how his father John, a well respected and prosperous townsman was a Glover and you see an array of gloves laid out, the most precious being the soft animal skin ones that were believed to be a status symbol for the affluent. Upstairs, you enter the bedroom where the bard was born, a double bed with an attached shelf where a servant used to sleep. “People in those times did not believe in privacy,” explains the assistant rolling her eyes. William was the third child and there were to be five more so the house would have been lively and crowded.
In the garden, an animated young Juliet speaks passionately to her wet-nurse. An open air rendition of Romeo and Juliet is in progress. Visitors can enjoy the performance sitting on the benches or just standing under a tree on the sidewalk. Outside a souvenir shop sells fridge magnets of the bard, wallets carrying famous lines from his plays and copies of his works. A visit is incomplete without a town walk to see Garrick Inn, the oldest in town, with its gettied upper storey; the bear museum and the gardens along the Avon with Gower Memorial where characters from the plays surround a statue of Shakespeare. A canal boat serves as a floating restaurant besides a statue of Hermaphroditus, children feed ducks and swans by the riverside and finally an evening stroll along the south bank of Avon shows the sun gently setting behind holy Trinity Church where Shakespeare lies buried. It’s a treasured memory of a romantic town that gave the world some of it most famous stories.
Copyright© 2010 Rachna Bisht-Rawat. All rights reserved. Reproduction, or re-transmission, in whole, or in part, or in any manner, without prior written consent of the author, is in violation of the copyright law