Shall I Compare You to a Summer's Day?

Friday, April 23rd was St. George's Day (the patron saint of England), as well as William Shakespeare's 446th birthday. It was also Shakespeare's death day, but that's just a strange coincidence. So what is a better way to celebrate such a colossal day than to visit Bill's birthplace, home, and final resting place?

And so on Friday, the entire AHA class caught a bus to Stratford-upon-Avon, where we stayed the night in three adorable B&Bs and spent the weekend enjoying and celebrating Shakespeare.

Our first visit of the day was to Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare and his family are buried. So I saw each of their graves; Shakespeare's grave is marked off with blue tape, so it is easily spotted. On Saturday, the grave would be covered in flowers. On Friday, his actual birthday, one lone bouquet sat on his grave.

As we were walking through the town afterword, we stopped outside of a pub where the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) actors like to frequent. As we were standing there, two people came running out of the pub dressed in Elizabethan costumes, and began to argue. It was a pair of actors doing the scene in Midsummer Night's Dream where Demetrius is chasing after Hermia and Lysander in the woods, and Helena is chasing after Demetrius. Demetrius is yelling at Helena to leave him alone, even threatening to kill her, but Helena persists. It was very exciting, and was the perfect welcome to Stratford!

Here is a clip of that scene:


Our next stop was Shakespeare's birthplace. As it was Shakespeare's birthday, we were allowed to take pictures inside the house; usually photographs are not allowed inside. To celebrate the man's birthday, mead tasting was also occurring outside the house in the gardens. So everyone tried some of the ancient drink. Famous people who have been known to enjoy mead include Shakespeare himself and Hagrid (from Harry Potter). For those unfamiliar with mead, it is described on the bottle as "honey wine". Somebody in the class described it as a mix of honey, wine, and cough syrup. I think I am inclined to agree; I did not particularly enjoy it, but it was for posterity's sake that I tried it!

Next on the agenda, we went to Nash's House and The New Place, which is the house where Shakespeare died. We skipped over much of Shakespeare's life. Anyway, this place has been turned in to an excavation site for 2010. So inside the house was information on the project, as well as the latest finds. This week's exciting find was a Tudor-era brick. How exciting. Out back, half of the gardens had been ripped up and people were hard at work being archeologists. It sounds far more exciting than it looked.

That was all that was on the class agenda, and so at 4:00 we were left to our own devices. I set out with Hannah, Katy, and Whitney to explore the town. We got ice cream (it was a delightfully sunny day), and then we popped in to a store where we purchased St. George's Day flags (white with a red cross, like what the Knights of the Round Table wear in Monty Python's Holy Grail). We walked around the rest of the evening sporting our flags, which got a few honks and waves from other England fans. We stopped for dinner at a pub, where we acquired free St. George's Day crowns. Katy said "they have crowns over there!" And I replied "Crowns?! Like Burger King crowns?!" Katy very excitedly affirmed my question, and we all had to have them.

So, with crowns on our heads and flags in our hands, we set off from the pub to the Courtyard Theatre, full of English pride and obviously American, prepared to see a production of King Lear by the RSC. The show was fabulous, absolutely incredible. The actress playing the fool was in the movie Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix as Harry's neighbor, Mrs. Figg. King Lear is Shakespeare's longest play, and so we did not get out of the theatre until 10:40 or so. So we went straight back to our B&Bs for bed.

In the morning, we came down to breakfast and chatted with our adorable and extremely sweet hostess. B&Bs, by the way, are the best place ever to stay. You're basically glorified guests in somebody's home. After breakfast, the class met up and trekked out to see Anne Hathaway's cottage. No, not the Disney actress, but Shakespeare's wife. The cottage is very cute, and the gardens are fabulous. Standing in the gardens was a ridiculously huge birthday card, which everyone was invited to sign for Old Will. I was very surprised to learn that the cottage belonged to the Hathaway family and housed the family for 16 generations! The family was living in the very same cottage as recently as 1911! The furniture inside the building all belonged to the Hathaway family; two items in particular date back to the Tudor era, and it is believed they once would have belonged to Shakespeare.

After the cottage, we trooped back in to town, where we arrived just in time for the parade. We were standing outside of the grammar school, which is the school where Shakespeare went to school. A procession of boys from the school was making its way out of the school, everyone carrying flowers to Shakespeare's grave. After this procession, the parade began, led by a marching band. The parade was split in two, and it was an obvious class distinction (as pointed out in class today by my Shakespeare professor, who had never noticed this prior to this year): the important dignitaries and upper class folk walked down the street we were on, and once that procession was finished, the "common folk" took a different route, down Sheep Street. Make of that what you will.

After the parade, we wandered about Stratford looking for various other activities and events to attend. Hannah H, Hannah M, Katy, Whitney and myself went down to the river to catch a 50p ferry ride across the river, while listening to a sonnet being read by an RSC actor. We managed to catch the very first sonnet ferry ride of the day, and our actor (a gentleman named Keith Osborn who claims the RSC couldn't afford him for their productions this year) read a sonnet to us.

Here is the first sonnet of the day!


Once across the river, we walked over a bridge back to the side of the river where all of the birthday festivities were taking place. We found a Lute player, which excited Hannah H and myself, as we are PLU Lutes! Later, we saw him accompanying a lady while she sang. It was a little difficult to hear, as there was a drum group banging away across the park, but I recorded a verse of her song anyway:



Other fun festivities which we witnessed during the day were various dancers, everything from Morris dancers (all men), to Elizabethan dancers, to folk dancers. The audience was invited to join in the folk dancing, so Katy, Hannah H and I did join in! We kept finding various scenes from Midsummer Night's Dream being performed around the town, and we watched the most adorable Romeo during the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet.

The entire weekend was extremely fun, and it ended with everyone a bit sunburnt. The excitement did not end in Stratford, however. On our train ride home, a group of us realized that we were sitting in the same car as two of the actors from the previous night's performance of King Lear, including the actress who played the fool! So we politely asked for their autographs and spoke with them for a while. They were very friendly and gracious, and we did our best not to be obnoxious or annoy them too much. It was so exhillerating!

So, happy birthday Big Bill, Happy St. George's Day England, and to all a good night!

Here are three more videos from my day in Stratford: