Shakespeare Land

Tuesday, I got to go to Stratford-upon-Avon, or as I grew to think of it, Shakespeare Land.  Although I had been before on a flying trip through, this time I got to see several things I had long wanted to see.  It was a strange, but good trip.

Our wonderful EF tour director, Hadleigh, prepped us for arrival with a detailed lecture about Shakespeare's life.  It sort of kills me how casual the English are with their famous people, even their monarchs.  I love it.  Everybody is like a member of the family, deserving of a nickname and the loving scorn you'd give a cousin or brother who gets into trouble but is still loved.  I guess this is a Southern thing, too, because I totally understand that.  Anyway, he called Shakespeare "Shakey."  Love it.

Our first stop in "Shakey" Land, then, was at Anne Hathaway's Cottage, a place I had not been able to go last time.  It was lovely.  The gardens were just coming into bloom, and had we been there even two weeks later, I think they would have been stunning.  It is always so bizarre to be walking through those rooms and across those floors and realize that someone you read and study, someone so important like Shakespeare, was there, too.  It seems so improbable even though everybody had to live somewhere.  It just doesn't sink in, somehow, that it could actually be here, this place where you're standing at that present moment.

We went from the Cottage to lunch, and then from there on to the Birthplace.  I had been to the Birthplace before, they've done extensive renovations there, adding multimedia at the beginning, and more than ever before, it really did feel like "Shakey" Land.  It was grand, though.  They also had about a million guides inside who were very chatty.  I didn't remember that from last time.  It was nice, but it took a lot of time.

That meant that the last stop in the "park," Holy Trinity Church, was going to be a scramble in the time I had left.  But I was BY GOD GOING TO HOLY TRINITY.  I missed it on the last trip because of a kid and his meds, and this time, I was going to see the grave.  I teach that inscription every year, and to have to stand up in front of another class full of students and have to say, "Yeah....I've been there twice now, and no, I haven't seen it yet," was not going to wash with me.   One of the other teachers on the trip and I booked it across town.

It was amazing and powerfully moving.  Even though I've seen photos of it for years, I don't know.  Standing there in that space before the altar was incredible.  There is a huge bank of stained glass and five graves, one of which is Shakespeare's.  To finally see the resting place and the famous epitaph of the man who wrote all those words that make up so large a part of my life was a very personal thing to me.  It is hard to explain.  It was in many ways something like a holy moment.

Of course, I had one thing left to do....  I needed my own picture of the Black Fool that stands in the middle of town.  How could I, your very own Dancing Fool, not take a picture of that?  I was running so late that I did not have time to line up shots properly and from all the right angles.  I barely had time to point the camera and release the shutter.  I did get a couple of shots, though.  I guess that counts for something.  I really wanted to work that statue, though.  I guess that will have to wait for the next trip.

Yeah.

Right.