The harshest European winter for over one hundred years and there I was in a short-sleeved blouse in Warwickshire.
Stratford to be totally accurate and staying at the Greensleeves Guest House just over the bridge to the north of the town.
In the afternoon of the first day of my stay I visited the church and its surrounds that enshrine Shakespeare’s final resting place. Alone in the church I spoke to him, and I have no doubt he listened. How else could he know so much if it wasn’t by listening and observing people, even people like me? His presence was palpable. ‘Why’, I asked, ‘did you have yourself buried ten feet under the ground, standing up and facing east?’
He didn’t reply.
Well, I didn’t know the answer, so how could he reply.
And, of course, we don’t know if this story is indeed true. It may be apocryphal. He would love the ambiguity.
Royal Shakespeare Theatre
We do know that we have his legacy: thirty-four plays written fully, or in part, by his own gnarly hand. I have participated as actor or director (sometimes both) in eighteen of them, a goodly batch and far more than most have the privilege of engaging in, so I guess there’s no excuse. If it’s there to know I should know it. I’ve also made a number of works based on his plays – a mute show called Inexplicable Dumbshows and Noise which was based on the mousetrap scene from Hamlet, a 20 minute version of Love’s Labour’s Lost which retained all the characters and plot idiosyncrasies, a thirty minute festival piece entitled We Cry constructed from a single line from The Tempest – when we are born we cry we are come to this great stage of fools, and The Dirty Bits From ‘Hamlet’‘ an exploration of Hamlet’s erotic life as evidenced in the text and invariably ignored by one and all.
And, of course, Bruce Goodman’s fabulous EarthDance.
So, I’ve paid my dues.
But what of that?
There’s providence in the fall of a sparrow … the readiness is all … let be.
And like most of life, when there’s a gap we try to fill it, we busk it, or we simply make stuff up.
He did.
After leaving the silent church I walked beside the Avon for what must have been a mile, crossed over on a small wooden bridge, and walked back on the field side of the river.
Holy Trinity Church, Stratford ~ Shakespeare’s final resting place (if you don’t count my head)
It was fourish in the late afternoon of a crisp winter’s day, and mist was beginning to rise on the river. As I ambled my way back to the Jam Factory long-cultivated flat paddocks hedged my left flank. At least a dozen fishermen and fisherwomen sat on low, backless deckchairs with long rods out over the water and thermos flasks in wicker picnic baskets.
They ignored me, intent on the water and the many reflections.
I was enraptured.
This was Shakespeare’s England and the last play I had been in before leaving home was Peter Whelan’s The Herbal Bed, a play set in Stratford and plotted around a scandal involving Shakespeare’s daughter Susannah.
Hall’s Croft ~ home of Susannah and Dr John Hall
In the distance I heard the regular discharge of a shotgun, the reason for which I never discovered but which, even today, causes a sense of disquiet.
Who was killing what?
Shakespeare would have known. Jealous husband, ducks, the odd fox, clay pigeons?
The experience was simply beautiful.
The Birthplace
I did the touristy things – the birthplace, the cottage, John Hall’s house – I walked for miles, saw ten RSC productions and was welcomed like a long-lost chum at rehearsals.
I was even offered work … but not Ophelia.
The RSC wasn’t quite ready for that – assuming that I was.
I stole pansies from the garden outside the birthplace … ‘that’s for thoughts, pray you love, remember’ … and pressed them in my diaries.
I have one remaining ~ for someone special.
An offer has been made.
And it was all fabulous but really only a shadow of what exists in Stratford where even when the poorest actor struts and frets their hour upon Shakespeare’s bright green sward and ‘mouths’ his words, it’s an experience to be treasured forever.
The Avon ~ with protected swans
I walked the Bard of Avon’s River in harmony with myself – a rare event. I spoke with myself in silent text sitting on his statue, I kissed black-faced Hamlet (and dreamed it was Ophelia – my ‘cold maid’), caressed the forehead of the nigger Dane and spoke ‘to be or not to be’ in its entirety in the quiet dark of The Jam Factory.
The Gower Statue
Later I did the same on stage at The Globe, but it simply wasn’t the same.
It doesn’t exist of course, this Stratford-upon-Avon.
No more than Middle-Earth or Discworld, Erewhon, The Yellow Brick Road, Llareggub or Hogwarts actually exist.
Only the non-existence of my beloved Stratford is far more profound.
Hic et ubique.
‘Hamlet’, one of four figures surrounding the base of the Gower statue, he’s there along with Falstaff, Prince Hal, and Lady M.
dykiegirl 