Last month I payed my first visit to the birthplace of the Bard. When we got off the train we were greeted by Morrison’s and a construction site, which wasn’t quite the image I’d had in mind! However, things got better as we visited his grave in Holy Trinity Church…
…followed by lunch at the Dirty Duck. The curry tasted exactly like something I’ve eaten in Wetherspoons for half the price, but wonderfully gloomy Macbeth quotations adorned the walls so I forgave them. Then on to Shakepeare’s birthplace…
… where we learnt that Elizabethans never lay flat on their backs in bed in case the devil thought them dead and carried them off. Then to Hall’s Croft, with its herb garden and interesting old medical books, and Nash’s House / New Place, where I stole a twig from the clone of Shakespeare’s mulberry tree.
I bought a pocket Sonnets, which I read straight through (the version I had as an undergraduate was so heavy with notes I only got to about Sonnet 14). It reminded me of the pale perfection of Greek architecture, but then the dark lady comes in and turns the world topsy-turvy. I suspect the same woman inspired his Cleopatra.
I’m also reading an ebook about Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare’s Will by Meredith Whitford, so it’s been a very bardly month!
