Can one desire too much of a good thing?
May 25th, 2009 by Zofia
All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts…
As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII, William Shakespeare
If anywhere was going to be the stage, Stratford-Upon-Avon would be it. This quaint little town was the perfect destination for a girl’s weekend away with my two best friends. Having always been a passionate lover of the works of William Shakespeare what better place to visit than the very town that Shakespeare was born, lived and died in!
The first thing that struck me about this town was how many buildings from Shakespeare’s time seemed to still exist. The first thing that struck Rachel and Kirsty was just how many lines from various Shakespeare plays I could recite – can anyone say GEEK!! 
We all arrived in town late on Friday night and basically just settled ourselves into the B&B we chose to stay at and called it a night.
With the B&B being conveniently located right across the road from the backyard of Shakespeare’s birthplace we made that our first port of call after a nice breakfast.
There are 5 houses in Stratford-Upon-Avon with connections to Shakespeare – his birthplace; the family home of his mother, Mary Arden; the family home of his wife, Anne Hathaway; Hall’s Croft, the home Shakespeare’s daughter Susanna and her husband; and Nash’s House, the home Shakespeare was living in until his death. There is a great deal which I highly recommend which is a discounted ticket that allows you entry to all 5 properties. It can be purchased at any of these homes and is valid for multiple visits for an entire year! Great value for money!
Three of the houses are within walking distance of one another within the town but Anne Hathaway’s house and Mary Arden’s farm are a bit further away. These are possible to reach with a bus service though so it is not too much of an issue to get to these houses.
Shakespeare’s birthplace was very well preserved, there were flagstones on the ground floor that were original to Shakespeare’s time in the house – we were literally walking where he walked! The house had a lovely back garden as well which had a few actors dressed in costume reciting Shakespeare to all the visitors to the house. While looking over the garden from an upstairs window one of the actors stood beneath it and began reciting Romeo’s soliloquy about Juliet, from Romeo and Juliet, to Rachel who was closest to the window! Later when we were outside I had the most surreal experience, the same actor who had romanced Rachel through the window now had a hold of my hand and was kneeling in front of me reciting Sonnet 18!
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
He was not a bad looking guy either and if it hadn’t been for the fact he had been romancing my friend 10 minutes earlier, and that there were all these Asian tourists taking photos of this most entertaining entertainment, I might have felt the need to swoon at the romance of it all – take note guys, a romantic Shakespearean gesture is a sure-fire way to impress me As it was, I just went a deep shade of red!
But if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, after finishing his profession of love and kissing my hand, the female actor decided to act like the jealous lover and using a scene I recognised as being an argument between Katherina and Petruchio from The Taming of the Shrew I found myself caught in the middle of a Shakespearean lover’s tiff! I wasn’t really sure what to do, so I just smiled and nodded and tried to go with the flow.
Once we finally decided to leave Shakespeare’s birthplace we went for a stroll around the town in search of something for lunch, settling on fish and chips which we ate in the park near the Royal Shakespeare Company theatre.
The main reason for the decision to visit Stratford-Upon-Avon was to watch the Royal Shakespeare Company perform As You Like It at their home theatre. We booked tickets well in advance but in order to get 3 decently-located seats together we had to book for the Saturday matinee performance. So after lunch we headed off to enjoy the show. As You Like It is one of Shakespeare’s great comedies: full of funny characters, mistaken identities, love lost and then found again. All the usual things that make Shakespeare so great!
After the play finished, and with our heads in a Shakespeare way of thinking we continued our walk around town, this time along the Avon river and literally stumbled across Hall’s Croft just before closing time – another house to cross off the list.
Sunday was a big day as we had three houses to see. We decided to go out to the two houses furthest away and work our way back into town so the first stop was Anne Hathaway’s cottage. The home itself was a very cute thatched-roof cottage but the gardens were amazing and even included an orchard and a sculpture trail. The sculpture trail also had random plaques hiding all over the place with quotes from various Shakespeare plays.
Mary Arden’s farm is a real functioning Tudor-style farm. What that means is that the family that currently live there run the farm as it would have been run in Tudor times, right down to the clothes they wear, the food they eat and so on! Very touristy in that respect I suppose but also very cool if that is really what they want to be doing. The Mary Arden farm was a very large property and was where we stayed for lunch. It seemed to be a popular destination for families to bring their children to picnic and run around on the immense grounds. As we were starting to be pushed for time we headed back into town after we finished lunch in order to pick up our bags from the B&B and locate the final house on our list, Nash’s House and New Place which is the home Shakespeare lived in at the end of his life.
Nash’s House and New Place have an interesting history all of their own and unfortunately the part that Shakespeare lived in for the last 18 year of his life – New Place – was torn down by a subsequent owner of the property in the 18th century who was apparently fed up with all the people who even in those days came knocking on the door to see the home of the great William Shakespeare! All that remains of New Place now is a garden attached to the side of Nash’s house which belonged to Shakespeare’s granddaughter Elizabeth and her husband Thomas Nash.
Sadly, after leaving Nash’s House and New Place it was time to head back to the train station to make our train back to London. I think Shakespeare said it best in his play As You Like It:
I like this place and willingly could waste my time in it
As You Like It, Act II, Scene IV, William Shakespeare
*As a footnote, the title is a line also taken from the Shakespeare play As You Like It, Act IV, Scene I