Let’s be very clear from the start: At first sight, Stratford-upon-Avon doesn’t make it easy for visitors to fall in love with the cosy little town in the very centre of England. Especially, when one tries to encounter its beauty in the middle of a cold, freezing night, desperately waiting for a bus to appear out of the mist, the only option you have to be taken back home to the remote place you’re staying in.
There are two important things to know about public transport in Stratford; facets that might not appear to the foreign eye right away and two things that make falling in love with Stratford so horribly difficult: First, there are only few, hourly buses operating anyway. But second, even those hourly buses tend to arrive late at any time of the day. There it is, the obvious reason that makes loving Stratford so hard for someone who has just arrived from a bustling capital, where literally any train connection is just seconds away!
But once you have managed to leave behind your wild urban expectations and slowly adapted your biological clock to what is famously known as “living in the countryside”, you can truly have an amazing time in Stratford – something I surely had over the past three days. This cosy little town is not only an amazing place to reverently trod on the paths of Shakespeare. It also has beautifully restored Elizabethan houses in store, functions as the unexpected place to be for modern theatre fanatics and gives you a nice opportunity to learn slow down from busy London city life.
The best way to get to know a new place, and I’m sure many of you will agree with me on that, is to go for a proper guided tour first. Hence, I didn’t hesitate a second before starting it all off by following a lovely elderly local through Stratford, learning about Shakespeare and everything else that should be known about this place.
Stratford-upon-Avon got its name from the “street near the ford on the river Avon” when it was first mentioned in the 12th century, decades before Shakespeare even appeared on the Midlands’ stage. Long before that, Romans were known to pass through the very special place next to the river Avon as well, pulling their carriages all the way to a saline that is now thought to have been in the town’s vicinity. If you want to learn about modern-day Stratford, however, it’s best to go no further back than early medieval times. Even today, as our tour guide explained, most of the streets remain as they were during Elizabethan times, only the houses left and right of them have changed their faces of bricks and mortar.
For many decades after its foundation, Stratford stayed a jolly little market place, barely mentioned beyond its own walls. And quite definitely, things would still be that way if it hadn’t been for one handsome lad being born on a fateful April day in the year of 1564: Of course, this is the moment I must draw your attention to William Shakespeare, the most famous British playwright of all times and still the town’s biggest "cash cow". Literally every shop name bears some reference to either his plays or his life, not a single souvenir could live without his face on it and even the city council comes up with millions of ways to pay tribute to his omnipresent name: On lamp posts, on letters and many dozen spots more.
He truly is the one big cash cow in towns, and everyone tries to hop onboard the mad Shakespearean train of popularity: Pubs call themselves the “place Shakespeare had his regular pint in” or churches take pride in apparently being the “venue Shakespeare said his prayers in”. Probably, if you looked carefully enough, some place also claims to be the original place of “Shakespeare’s very own toilet” (though I haven’t found that very spot yet, against all efforts made!).
All these places bear just one small fallacy: There is hardly anything known about how Shakespeare enjoyed his life in Stratford, and the few confirmed facts are mainly assembled around the historical sites held and marketed by the official Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. As the name indicates, the civil charity was launched in an urge to seize foreign hands off the playwright’s place of birth: Standing prominently on Stratford’s main street, the Tudor-style family house was once intended to be dismantled and moved overseas, as a wealthy American business man was about to purchase it from the last known owners. It required celebrities like Charles Dickens to speak out first before eventually, Shakespeare’s birthplace was made to remain on English grounds.
Today, the restored birthplace forms the informative centre of a whole row of well-preserved Shakespearean places, most of which I tried to explore within just 48 hours: Besides the ”must-do” birthplace, Hathaway’s Cottage (the remote farmhouse his wife grew up in), The New Place (the grounds on which Shakespeare built his later destroyed own estate upon returning rich and wealthy from London), Nash’s House (just next door, where Shakespeare’s granddaughter Elizabeth lived with her husband Thomas Nash) and Hall’s Croft (the house of renowned doctor Hall, husband of Shakespeare’s oldest daughter) are equally recommendable.
Additionally, it was also worth the time to give Shakespeare’s former school a short stop-over: The Guildhall, as it was and is known, once belonged to a catholic group of knights who were forced to leave British lands when the protestant part of the Tudor-family regained power. Their remnants, namely an array of splendid premises, were soon turned into Stratford’s school and town council, both becoming integral parts to Shakespeare’s biography.
In the former, young William first encountered well-known theatre groups of his time and quite possibly discovered his love for poetry and everything written. In the latter, it was father Shakespeare playing a dominant role as mayor of town and influential member of the council, before found guilty of evading taxes. With the amily fortune plummeting it was this fateful twist in the Shakespeare family’s proud history that eventually turned young William into the famous playwright he is known as today: The failure of his middle-class, glovemaking father forced his eldest son to generate an income himself. It made him drop out of school at the age of 15, marry farmer daughter Anne (who, scandalously, was already pregnant at the point of marriage) and, at some point, brought William in touch with the first drama groups, which he toured with and started writing his famous plays for. Long story short: A Stratfordian star was born!
But every good story, every beautiful town needs one last dark spot to its white armour. One that is not hard to find when mysterious William Shakespeare is always hovering over the place: Aged 52, the most successful writer of all times tragically dies on his very birthday. He is, likewise tragically and with great sorrow, buried not in the shadow of, but literally in Trinity Curch, the town's main parish.
Questions about why his grave was planted right in front of the altar instead of in the proper graveyard are still hugely debated among experts. The self-chosen verse upon his tombstone might give an interesting indication: "Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare, To dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones."
It is not only this curse that hints at Shakespeare’s intention: Afraid of future generations commissioning the burning of his bones (a quite conventional Tudor-ritual, thought to form our modern term “bon(e)fire”), he probably chose a safer place than being exposed to his fellow Christians in the graveyard.
But again, there is an appalling twist to this last verse in Shakespeare’s very own drama of life: The strong curse doesn’t seem to have worked. Only recently, forensic examinations found Shakespeare’s skeleton still in shape – except for the fact that his skull seems to have gone missing. But where might it have gone; which streets is it roaming today? This remains just another mystery in Shakespeare’s most mysterious life – and yet another bizarre story, annually drawing a total of four million visitors into the picturesque alleys of Stratford-upon-Avon.
Kommentar schreiben