On Monday, Alice and I went to Stratford-upon-Avon, where Shakespeare is from. We had just done Canterbury, so I needed to add this to my literary pilgrimage checklist.
When we arrived, we had lunch at the White Swan, a hotel and restaurant that is the oldest building in the town. It was once called the Kings Head, and at that time Shakespeare actually would eat there.
From there we went to his birthplace, a cute old house that includes the bed that his mother, Mary Arden, probably gave birth to him on. The beds were much smaller because warmth was important (the walls were not ventilated and only tapestries hung on the walls kept out the cold). They were also shorter because in Tudor times, most people would sleep sitting up. First, they didn't want to look dead so Satan would take them away. Second, sitting in this position made it easier to breathe with the smoke from the fire. I've been sleeping in a sitting position for a little while because I've been coughing, so Alice said I'm like a Tudor. Yeah, exactly, I'm doing it on purpose. I'm a little confused about the smoke thing because of what another tour guide said. At this time, an 8pm curfew was introduced, and people would cover their fires with a cover-plate. Interesting fact: this plate was what the word "curfew" comes from.
We walked on to the Nash House and New Place. This is where Shakespeare lived after he retired. When he was there, he planted a mulberry tree. The house ended up being left to his offspring and stayed in the family for a while, but then some guy got it (still a very long time ago) and was pissed about all the tourists coming so he chopped down the tree. A-hole. A new mulberry tree is there now, and it was supposedly grown from a cutting of the original. We took pictures with it anyway. This might be sort of like Mary Arden's house, another "tourist destination." The thing is, it was found out later that this wasn't actually her house, but some guy pretended it was because it was more impressive than the original. But people still go to it now, anyway. Morons.
We walked through the town and saw lots of cute things set up for tourists. A lot of shops and cafes had puns in their names, which I LOVED. There was the As Your Like it Cafe where you could get "William's Shakes," the Othello Bar (not a pun, but I <3 Othello), the Much Ado About Toys store, and Cordelia, a shop likely named after the character in King Lear. There was also this little jester statue that had quotes all around the base about jesters and jesting, like the line in Hamlet about Yorick before Ophelia's funeral.
We passed the Swan Theater where the Royal Shakespeare Company performs (the same company that did the production of The Taming of the Shrew that I saw) and walked down the River Avon to Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare and his wife, Anne Hathaway, are buried. This was really cool. Like, I was two feat from Shakespeare. Well, his bones, anyway.
We still had some time to spare so we took a cab to Anne Hathaway's cottage. It was very pretty and very old; it had been lived in by yeomen for years so most of it hadn't been changed. Inside was the courting bench that Shakespeare probably proposed to Anne Hathaway on. Cool, but not really that romantic, considering she was already knocked up when they got married. So it was probably more of a, "Crap, I guess I gotta make an honest woman out of you now, huh?" kind of thing.
We also passed the Black Swan, popularly known as the Dirty Duck, a tavern frequented by local actors since the 1700s. We didn't end up eating there, but instead went back to the White Swan for tea.
It was a super-fun day and I got to be a giddy nerd about everything and it was perfectly OK. Alice and I were really dorky and got a few things from the various gift shops. Of course, I fell for the puns. I got a magnet (no pun) that had a quote from The Merry Wives of Windsor, which I've never read, but the quote is great: "There is money. Spend it, spend it; spend more." I also bought a pen that says "I once did hold it ... a baseness to write fair," from Hamlet. And, my absolute favorite that I couldn't resist: an eraser that says "Out, damned spot!" Hahaha.
No comments:
Post a Comment