Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare! Everything in Stratford is about Shakespeare! Today we went and checked out the rest of the 5 Shakespeare houses (Yesterday we saw Mary Arden’s house). We went first to Shakespeare’s birthplace/museum dedicated to him. And everything pretty much said, “He probably was here”, “He would have looked at that street”, “He would have put fruit in this bowl”, “he might have sat in that chair” and so on an so forth. A lot of the information about him is really just guesses. We toured around the birthplace home/garden and it was really nice but very old. And of course there were gift shops all along the way. After we saw the birthplace we visited Shakespeare’s grave. It was really wild being so close to him. He is buried in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford. The weird thing is that inside this church there is also a gift shop…kind of off-putting and I don’t really know how much money they make…and we did have to pay to see his grave only 50 pence though. I got some nice photos of the church; the lighting was amazing in there. It did feel a little strange to take a picture of someone’s grave I don’t really know how I feel about it now…weird. Anyway after we saw the gravesite we went to Nash’s house/New Place. New Place is where Shakespeare’s house used to be but it was torn down by the last owner ages ago because he was sick of hearing about Shakespeare and he didn’t want to pay taxes on the house, so what’s left of it is just the foundation walls and a garden. Nash’s house is the house next to where new place would have been and you can look around in there and get a feel of what it would have been like inside New place and there were also items found in New Place after it was torn down that are in display in Nash’s House. After that we saw another house having to do with Shakespeare some way or another, Hall Croft was the name I believe…I’m not sure….ill have to check on that later. The man who gave us information about the house was really funny. He was dressed in purple pants, a crazy tie and a beautiful green and purple scarf…a rather animated fellow. He made the kind of interesting stuff really interesting and the really boring stuff really interesting and he was really excited that we were a theatre group too so he told us to see a whole bunch of shows…that we are already seeing so he was pumped. This house was Shakespeare’s son-in-laws home. He was a doctor and they had all of these freaky old medical tools on display…yikes!! I’m glad I didn’t live back in the day.
After all of those houses we went and saw Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, no not the actress, Shakespeare’s wife. It was about 25 minute walk from the guest house so I didn’t bring my camera so there are no pictures of that (sorry). The house was pretty big the 3rd largest back in the day. Everything in the house was original nothing was replicated at all. There was all the original floors, furniture, bricks, mattresses, plates, even down to the wooden cover for the bread baking fireplace. It was incredible to see it all. And know that Shakespeare probably came to this house tons of times. Outside of the cottage there was a very nice garden and a cool woodland walk that was far too long…it was just a path that they build through the woods, but it was far too cold to be truly enjoyable.
After that we walked back to the guest house hung out for a little while then went to dinner at Pizza Express, a nice pizza place. And then Krystina and I went into a store called “Accessorize” and I bought a really inexpensive ring and a pair of flower earrings. After that we went back to the guest house again and hung out before the show. Then we saw Romeo and Juliette down at the same theatre we saw Don John. It was really good in my opinion. The lighting and the set were great. It was set in the 1940s which is always fun to see but it still had the same Shakespearean language. The acting was really good, some of it dragged a little which was expected after Don John….how can you top that? Well anyway it was cool because all the light cues were done by the characters snapping their fingers or putting on a hat or pulling out their switch blades. Every time someone pulled out a knife it made a sword sound that was kind of corny but it worked…SHNINGGGG. After we saw the show we ate fish and chips at the dirty duck. I stayed a little behind with Steve and Evan and we got to talk to the actors from the show. We met Juliette herself! It was really awesome and they were all so great about meeting us and they were very humble. They were really excited that we were from America too. Over all it was a really great day.
With Love, From Across the Pond,
Leighanne Evelyn.
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