Shakespeare's Home Razed To The Ground and Utterly Destroyed

Shakespeare's England

From a passage by Mark Twain:

"That beauty which is England is alone; it has no duplicate. It is made up of very simple details, just grass, and trees, and shrubs, and roads, and hedges, and gardens, and houses, and churches, and castles, and here and there a ruin, and over all a mellow dreamland of history. But it's beauty is incomparable and all it's own".

From: Shakespeareland:

It is a happy circumstance that the small town which may be described as the heart of England should be set in such rich but homely scenery as that of "leafy Warwickshire". It would not, perhaps, be easy to determine who first applied the epithet "leafy" to the county, but it is so happily descriptive, that one rarely thinks of the name of Warwickshire without the addition; and so, also, it is difficult to think of Stratford-upon-Avon without thinking of it as Shakespeare's Stratford. Citizens of the place may be able to think of it as a kind of town entity, but for others it is a background to one of the worlds greatest men, to the supreme poet and dramatist whose genius commands the homage of the whole civilised world. It is a background full of beauty and of deep interest, a little conventionalized, maybe, from being a show-place. Few can be those people "with souls so dead", to use Sir Walter Scott's familiar phrase, as to be unmoved by wandering about spots associated with the greatly admired great.

The majority of visitors from afar reach Stratford-upon-Avon by railway, and the entries from the railway stations are perhaps those which give the least favourable first impression of the town. Especially is this the case with that from the Great Western Station, on the Alcester Road, leaving which, we find ourselves in a broad road, with the large general Hospital on our left, then new red-brick villas, and then flat-fronted, low, unpicturesque houses and shops rising from the foot walk. We have to pass along a road of strangely varying width, and might go right across the town from west to east - the one road having five names, Alcester Road, Greenhill Street, Wood Street, Bridge Street, and Bridge Foot - and come out on Clopton Bridge over the Avon without having any idea that we had passed through anything more than a quiet, comfortable market town of a kind not uncommon in the English Midlands.

A glance at the shop windows, with their in-numerable picture-postcards and varied souvenirs, would have shown that the town was other than it seemed. A little way on our left we should have passed the central shrine of this centre of many shrines - the birthplace of William Shakespeare - while a glance to the right down the High Street, which branches off at the point where the narrowest part of our highway of Wood Street becomes the broad Bridge Street, would give glimpses of some more of the older buildings of the town. When our traveller, whom we have presumed to be ignorant of the significance of Stratford, came to Clopton Bridge, looking downstream he would see a striking building by the waterside - a building of red brick and white stone, a building of high-pitched green-slated roof and many turrets and small gables. Such a building, in such a town, would surely pique our traveller's curiosity, and he would find on enquiry that it is the Shakespeare Memorial. Beyond, further down the river, he would see the spire of Stratford Church rising from amid trees - the church in which Shakespeare is buried - and he would surely wish at one to linger in and about the town that had at a first glance appeared to have little that was especially attractive.

Clopton Bridge itself may well detain us. It is a fine stone structure of many arches, with low parapets, over which we have delightful scenes up and down the course of the soft-flowing Avon, the windings of which give us but short views of the water, while the low-lying meadows are backed by the greenery of Warwickshire's ever-present trees. Looking downstream, towards the Memorial and Church, we see the old bridge is close-neighboured by another one of red brick, built for carrying a disused railway, and said to be one of the earliest of our railway bridges, a fact which may lessen our impatience at its obstructing the view downstream, and also for obstructing our view of the fine old bridge when we look upstream from the playing-fields on the left bank of the Avon.

Here it may be said that an old-time Stratford clergyman derived the name of Avon from a "British word, aufona, with them signifying as much as fluvius with us". The river was spanned by an old wooden bridge, across which unsupported tradition says that Queen Matilda led her troops; but this was removed by one of Stratford's more notable citizens and replaced by the current stone bridge, iron plates on which record its building and its repairing and widening in the early part of the last century. Until the widening there stood on it a stone pillar with the following sufficient story: "Sir Hugh Clopton, Knight, Lord Mayor of London, built this bridge at his own proper expense in the reign of King Henry ye Seventh".

To the Avon we shall return. Going eastward again by Bridge Foot and Bridge Street, that we may visit the shrine associated with the memory of one who is not only Stratford's, but England's most famous son, we pass up the wide Bridge Street, and find the way forks on either side of plain white, many-windowed bank premises. The left road is Wood Street, by which we came from the railway station. The right is Henley Street, a short thoroughfare, two-thirds of the way along which we reach a neat and very picturesque timbered and gabled house rising, as most of the houses do in these older Stratford ways, straight from the street. This is "The Birthplace". On either side of it is now garden ground, preserved open that the shrine may be less liable to any danger from fire, from which the town thrice suffered severely during the lifetime of Shakespeare. On the last of these occasions - July. 1614 - no fewer than fifty four dwelling-houses were destroyed, so that it is no doubt largely to those fires we owe it that there are not more of the Tudor buildings standing. Fortunately, among those spared are those most interesting.

To gain admittance to the house the necessary ticket must be obtained at the cottage immediately to the east, the office of the Trustees and Guardians of Shakespeare's Birthplace. Though brick-fronted and much altered, this cottage was standing in the poet's time, his neighbours there resident being of the name of Horneby.

The Birthplace itself is one of the chief shrines of the town, a place annually visited by many thousands of people from all over the world. From it's small rooms, it's tiny irregular staircase, we may easily imagine how comfortable citizens lived in the spacious days of great Elizabeth; in the fine collection of documents and books, signatures, mementoes, and curios, we get glimpses more directly personal to Shakespeare himself, his family, and the people whom he knew. Upstairs we are in the very room in which, on April 23rd, 1564, the poet first saw the light. Here generations of visitors scrawled their names, in accordance with a bad old habit to which Thomas Carlyle, Sir Walter Scott, and Charles Dickens fell victims. Now the autograph record of those who visit the house is duly kept in a visitor's book provided for the purpose.

It is not possible for anyone gifted with imagination to be in these rooms unmoved - rooms in which the poet was born, in which he passed what we may well believe was a happy childhood, from which he went to the Grammar School about a quarter of a mile off, and from which he went a-courting a mile across the fields to Shottery. Of intimate knowledge of Shakespeare's personality we may have but little, of the story of his life much may be surmise, but, here, at least, we can feel that we see rooms much as he saw them, though in place of the simple furnishings of Tudor times we have in some of the rooms the omnium gatherum of a museum. It is a museum full of interest to the student of Shakespeareana, and tempts the visitor to linger over the sight of copies of books which the poet himself might have read, over his and other old signatures to legal documents, over the celebrated "Ely" portrait of Shakespeare, over pictures, plans, and other relics of bygone Stratford-upon-Avon.

Little as we know of the details of Shakespeare's life story, the history of his birthplace, from possessor to possessor, is fortunately complete from the time of his birth up to the purchase of the house by the nation in 1847. It is true that there have not been wanting theorists who have sought to prove that his birth did not actually take place here, but circumstantial evidence strongly supports the belief that it did. Here his father, John Shakespeare, lived, and here carried on his business of wood stapler and glover. The immediate surroundings have changed with improving conditions, for in the sixteenth century the elder Shakespeare was fined for keeping a muck-heap outside his street door! Now Henley Street is a neat and pleasant thoroughfare, though modernity is marked by a motor garage a little to the west, and passing along the street on a Saturday evening I have noticed, if not an ancient, certainly a fish-like smell from a fried-fish shop nearly opposite the Birthplace, while from the end of Henley Street have come the strains of a Salvation Army hymn. Even in Stratford men cannot live on sentiment.

Passing out at the back door of the house, we are in a garden, the guardians of which have made it a peculiarly interesting one by planting in it representatives of all flowers and trees named by the poet in his works. Here, during a September visit, I have found "the pale primrose" in full bloom, and here, earlier in the summer, are to be seen a beautiful display of those "oldfashioned flowers" and herbs which flourish unfadingly in the words of Ophelia and of Perdita:

"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance: pray you, love, remember: and there is pansies, that's for thoughts.... There's fennel for you and columbines: there's a rue for you: and here's some for me: we may call it herb of grace o' Sundays: O, you must wear your rue with a difference. There's a daisy: I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died".

For you there's rosemary, and rue, these keep

Seeming and savour all the winter long....

Here's flowers for you;

Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram;

The marigold that goes to bed wi' the sun,

And with him rises weeping:... daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and take

The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,

But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,

Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,

That die unmarried ere they can behold

Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady

Most incident to maids; bold oxlips, and

The crown-imperial; lilies of all kinds,

The flower-de-luce being one.

All these flowers of the poet's - flowers to which he has attached epithets now familiar as themselves - will be found in the neat little garden at the back of the Birthplace. Passing through it in to Henley Street again, we retrace our way to the bank building, and thence, following the route which the schoolboy Shakespeare must have passed, sometimes perhaps -

with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school -

we go in to the short High Street, at the further end at which we see projecting the simple ugliness of the Town Hall, and beyond the grand old Guild Chapel.

Before getting so far, however, there are places to arrest our attention. Just short of the Town Hall on our right - those with a sense of humour will in passing have observed smilingly the Shakespeare Restaurant, kept by one Bacon! - is a projecting timbered building worthy of more than a momentary glance. It is a beautiful specimen of a Tudor dwelling, with its richly carved timbers, its bulging upper floors. This is known as Harvard House, because it was the home of Katherine Rogers, the mother of John Harvard, founder of the famous Harvard College at Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is an interesting fact that as Shakespeare had gone, according to tradition, from Stratford to Southwark, so Katherine Rogers, his neighbour in Warwickshire, should have married a Southwark man. It suggests that there may have been some special reason for drawing the Stratfordians who went to London to the town at the southern end of London Bridge. This attractive old house, architecturally one of the gems of Stratford, has recently and most fittingly been converted into a rendezvous for the American visitors who form a goodly proportion of those who make the pilgrimage to Stratford. Picturesque outside, the interior, with its old-world furnishings, is also well worthy of inspection.

Nearly opposite to the Rogers-Harvard house is the undistinguished, not to say wholly unworthy, Town Hall, built a hundred and fifty years ago, and illustrating the beginning of one of the least pleasing periods in English architecture. On the northern end, facing up High Street, is the statue presented by David Garrick at the conclusion of the famous "Shakespeare Jubilee" of 1769. Within the Hall are some interesting pictures, including Gainsborough's portrait of Garrick.

Next door to the Town Hall is the Shakespeare Hotel, part of which is the "Five Gables", a picturesque timbered building, the lower portion of which consists of shops. The rooms in this hotel have long been notable as being named, frequently with peculiar felicity, after Shakespeare's plays. Thus the bar - parlour is "Measure for Measure", the coffee-room is "As You Like It", and so on.

With that lavishness in the naming of streets which cannot fail to strike a visitor, we find that High Street ended at the Town Hall, and already we are in Chapel Street, with the handsome stone tower of the old Guild Chapel a short way ahead. A little beyond the "Five Gables", and also on the left, at the corner of Chapel Street and Chapel Lane, we reach the site of "New Place", the house which Shakespeare purchased in his prosperity, and in which he died on April 23rd, 1616. The house passed immediately before reaching it, New Place Museum, is known as Nash's House from having been the home of the first husband of Shakespeare's granddaughter, Elizabeth Hall - Thomas Nash, who is not to be confounded with the Elizabethan writer of the same name.

The site of the house and the garden are fenced from the road by a low wall, surmounted by an ornate iron railing, in the decoration of which the initials "W. S." and the poet's and town arms are included. The railings are somewhat uglified by being picked out with gilding. A little way down Chapel Lane, at the foot of which is the Memorial, is the entrance to the pleasant and well-kept garden attached to New Place. Here a mulberry stump is described as scion of that tree long associated with Shakespeare. Hare to be seen are a pillar from the ancient Town Hall, a sculpture from before the old Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall, and a large stone on which are engraved verses in honour of the poet by Richard Jago. The mulberry tree planted by the poet attracted so much attention on the part of visitors when interest in Shakespeare awakened in the eighteenth century, that the un-Reverend Mr. Gastrell, who then owned New Place, "damned himself to everlasting fame" by cutting it down; and he carried his despicable vandalism further still when, a few years later, in consequence of a quarrel with the Corporation in the matter of rates, he had New Place demolished, after which he fittingly retired altogether from the town of Stratford. The mulberry tree was acquired by a local tradesman, who made of it many momentoes for Shakespeare lovers - indeed, he is accused of having made far more souvenirs than the genuine timber could have supplied. Drinking at the great Festival from a cup made of the famous tree, Garrick sang his own words:

Behold this fair goblet, 't was carved from the tree

Which, O my sweet Shakespeare, was planted by thee;

As a relic I kiss it, and bow at the shrine,

What comes from thy hand must be ever divine.

All shall yield to the mulberry tree,

Bend to thee,

Blessed mulberry;

Matchless was he

Who planted thee;

And thou, like him, immortal be!

Of Gastrell an indignant writer said many years ago: "The rabid old gentleman who destroyed Shakespeare's mulberry tree, and in an impotent fit of bilious rage pulled the poet's last abode to the ground, quited Stratford amidst the general execration of it's inhabitants. This wild mischief could only have been the work of eccentricity on the very verge of madness. We pity the poor wretch capable of an act so unfeeling and senseless; for though it was, we know, the constant visible presence of the Deity which hallowed the bulwarks of Sion, and fortified her walls with salvation, ten thousand vivid recollections sanctify the deserted dwellings of the truly great, endear their earthy abodes, and hallow their relics to the hearts and imaginations of posterity."

New Place, which had been originally built by Sir Hugh Clopton in the time of Henry the Seventh, was purchased, altered, and given its lasting fame by William Shakespeare in 1597. Before becoming the property of Mr. Gastrell, of infamous memory, it had returned to the possession of the Clopton family, and under the famous mulberry another Sir Hugh entertained Garrick, Macklin, and other notables in 1742.

When Shakespeare's daughter, Susannah Hall, was still living at new place - she died there in 1649 - there came the troubles of the Civil War, and hither Queen Henrietta Maria came on her way to join Charles the First at Oxford in 1643, and she made her stay at New Place, as being presumably the chief residence of the town. Prince Rupert, too, was here, and for a time the quiet town was a centre of military activity, with about 5000 troops quartered in it. A year earlier the town must have been in a fine flutter of excitement, with the Battle of Edgehill taking place less than a dozen miles away. One historian says: "At this period the Queen took up her abode for about three weeks at New Place, Stratford, while Mrs. Shakespeare resided there." The writer was evidently confusing the poet's wife and his daughter, for Mrs. Shakespeare had died twenty years before. Stratford did not go unscathed in these troubled times, for one of the Clopton Bridge arches was destroyed, and the old Town Hall was blown up - a pillar from it, as has been said, is to be seen in the New Place garden.

Divided by the width of a turning from the site of New Place is the beautiful old Guild Chapel of the Holy Cross, and immediately beyond it is a long range of fine timbered buildings, comprising the Guild Hall, the Grammar School, and almshouses for twenty four old people. Somewhat plain inside, it's ancient mural paintings obliterated, it is as fine specimen of fifteenth-century architecture that the old Chapel claims attention. From its tower at morning and evening during the winter is still heard the clanging of the curfew bell. Here it is supposed that Shakespeare attended public worship, as there used to be a pew in the Chapel attached to New Place.

This connection of the house with the Chapel possibly dated from the time when Sir Hugh Clopton resided there, as he was a great benefactor to the edifice, rebuilding the nave and tower. On the south side of the Chapel is the entrance to the old half-timbered Guild Hall and Grammar School - the latter being above the former. This building is supposed to have been erected about the end of the thirteenth century by Robert de Stratford, presumably for the brethren of the Holy Cross. Shakespeare associations are everywhere about us. In the great schoolroom, with open timbered roof, he is supposed to have received his education; in the Guild Hall below, it has been suggested, he may have been present when companies of stage players are known to have given their performances during the time that his father was Bailiff of the town. In the pleasant enclosure at the back of the Guild Hall we see another timbered building, known as the Pedagogue's House. With these old buildings on either hand, and the ancient Chapel in front of us, we have the corner of Stratford that is perhaps least changed of all since Shakespeare's time, a true coup d'oeil of Tudor England.

That Stratford Grammar School - formed certainly as early as 1424, and re-established by Edward the Sixth in 1553 - was an educational centre of some importance in the time when Shakespeare was a boy, may be gathered from the fact that the headmaster was allowed "wages" of twenty pounds a year, a circumstance which made it likely that the best men available were sure to be obtained for the post, seeing that the ordinary headmaster of the time - as at Eton - had only ten pounds. This being so, it is likely that the poet's education was probably a better one than early theorizer's about his life were inclined to think. An inscription marks the place at which what is supposed to have been Shakespeare's desk stood; and it has been suggested that if - as that snapper-up of unconsidered biographical trifles, John Aubrey, records - Shakespeare was for a time a schoolmaster, it may have been here in the school in which he had been educated. It is a pleasant conjecture, but nothing more. The desk is now at the Birthplace.

Next to the Guild Hall comes a similar but somewhat lower range of half-timbered, red-tiled buildings, the Guild Almshouses, for twelve old men and twelve old women - almshouses which are described as being among the oldest and most interesting in England. The fronts of these picturesque fifteenth-century dwellings were long plastered over; but the care with which Stratford guards it's many ancient relics has been extended to them, and the fine timber framing has been newly and properly made plain. Continuing south - the street has become Church Street from from when we left New Place - we soon turn downwards to the left into what is known as Old Town, where Dr. Hall, the poet's son-in-law, lived, and so reach the second of the chief Shakespearean shrines of Shakespeare's town - the church in which he is buried.

Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, is probably one of the most widely known, by pictorial representation, as it is assuredly one of the most beautiful of our churches. It's tall spire, rising amid trees, as viewed from the meadows on the farther bank of Avon, has been represented in many paintings and in photographs without number. As we approach it from the town it is perhaps less impressive than as seen, in its cathedral-like proportions, from the left bank of the river. The approach from the road is by a short avenue of limes - "a sedate and pleasing shade". Old elms that stood near the porch were cut down in 1871, and their wood was turned into momentoes, as that of "Shakespeare's Mulberry Tree" had been more than a hundred years earlier.

If Stratford Church was not the burial-place of Shakespeare, it would be worthy of a visit as one of the most beautiful, as it is probably in part one of the most venerable of Midland churches. There was a church here when "Domesday Book" was compiled, but no vestige of that earlier structure remains. Sufficient antiquity is, however, claimed for Holy Trinity, for the tower is supposed to have been erected shortly after the Conquest, and the rest of the fine cruciform edifice to have been built during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Though there are many monuments of interest in the church - notably to members of the ancient Clopton family - it is in its memorials of Shakespeare and his kindred that it is attractive to the great majority of visitors, for the son of the sixteenth-century Bailiff of Stratford has become the town's focal centre, so that it's old benefactor and his family are of comparatively small interest. But of Sir Hugh Clopton, who built the beautiful bridge across the Avon and who owned the"Great House" (later the New Place of Shakespeare), only conjecture can point to his resting-place, and even so it is but few who trouble to enquire as to the good knight's resting-place. It is Shakespeare's grave and monument, and the graves of his people, in which most visitors to the church are interested. These will be found at the eastern end of the beautiful chancel. On the north wall there, near the altar, is the famous half-length figure of Shakespeare himself, with quill in hand, as in the act of writing. It is set, as it were, in an entablature with the poet's arms and crest above, flanked by a couple of boyish figures. This monument, the work Gerard Johnson, was erected some time between the poet's burial in 1616 and the issue of the First Folio edition of his work in 1623, as we learn from a reference made to it in the latter year. From the fact that it was erected soon after his death - and there can be little doubt by members of his family - it may well be accepted as giving us the likeness of Shakespeare nearest to him in the habit as he lived. The figure was coloured, and in 1748 John Ward, grandfather of the Kembles, had the tomb repainted and repaired from the profits of his company's performance of "Othello" at Stratford, thus giving, as it were, a posthumous "benefit" to the great poet. In 1793 Edmund Malone obtained permission to paint the bust white, and white it remained until 1861, when the whitewash was removed, and the old colours, as far as they were traceable, restored. Fortunately an old historian of Stratford had described its original appearance: "The eyes were of a light hazel colour, and the hair and beard auburn. The dress consisted of a scarlet doublet, over which was thrown a loose black gown without sleeves. The upper part of the cushion was of a green colour, and the lower of a green colour, with gilt tassels." Beneath the effigy of the poet is the following inscription:-

IVDICIO PYLIVM, GENIO SOCRATEM, ARTE

MARONEM, TERRA TEGIT, POPVLVS MAERET,

OLYMPVS HABET.

Stay Passenger, why goest thou so fast?

Read, if thou canst, whom envious Death hath plast,

Within this monument; Shakespeare with whome

Quick Nature dide; whose name doth deck ys Tombe

Far more then cost but page to serve his witt.

OBIIT. ANO. DOI. 1616

AETATIS 53. Die 23 AP.

Within the chancel rail is the actual grave of the poet, under a stone inscribed with the famous lines traditionally said to have been penned by Shakespeare himself to prevent the removal of his remains to the charnel house, which was long attached to the church, and contained a vast collection of human fragments. This charnel house was only taken down in 1800. It is also said that to prevent the likelihood of anyone's risking the curse, the grave was dug seventeen feet deep. The lines run:

GOOD FREND FOR IESVS SAKE FORBEARE,

TO DIGG THE DVST ENCLOASED HEARE:

BLESTE BE YE MAN YT SPARES THES STONES,

AND CVRST BE HE YT MOVES MY BONES.

It was not until 1694 that these lines were said to have been written by Shakespeare himself. The tradition, it may be surmised, arose from the use of the words "my bones", for it is not easy to believe that the great poet really did write such doggerel. It may well be that he had expressed horror of the custom, in accordance with which graves were redug, and the bones of their old occupants removed to the charnel house to make room for new tenants, and that his family had his wishes put into the lasting form, in which they are now familiar. Between Shakespeare's grave and the north wall, on which is the monument, is the gravestone of his wife, on which their son-in-law, Dr. Hall, is supposed to have written the Latin memorial lines that follow in inscription: "Here lyeth Shakespeare, who depted this life the 6th day of August 1623 being of the age of 67 yeares". On the other side of Shakespeare's grave are the graves of Susannah Hall (1649), of her husband Dr. John Hall (1635), and of their son-in-law (1647). The inscription placed on Susannah Hall's gravestone is worthy of quotation, because it suggests that, "witty above her sex", she may have inherited some of her great father's qualities, and also because it has been thought that possibly the lines may have been written by her daughter Elizabeth (later Lady Barnard), the last of Shakespeare's direct descendants:

HEERE LYETH YE BODY OF SVSANNA WIFE TO:

Shakespeare's home ground and completely destroyed Rasa

Shakespeare's England

From a passage Mark Twain:

"The nice thing is that England is not duplicated. It is very simple details, only grass and trees and shrubs, and roads, and hedges and gardens and houses, churches and castles, and here and there a ruin and, above all, a wonderful sweet story. But the beauty is incomparable, and his own. "

From: Shakespeare Country:

It 's a chance that the small town that candescribed as the heart of England was so rich, but comfortable as the landscape of green Warwickshire are set. Would it not be easy to determine as to who first applied the nickname of "green" community, but descriptive so happy that you believe, the name of the County of Warwick, without the addition, and so it is difficult to think of Stratford Stratford-upon-Avon, without thinking, like Shakespeare. The citizens of the place may be able to think about howa sort of city business, but for others it is a backdrop to one of the greatest men of the world, the great poet and dramatist whose genius dominates the homage of the entire civilized world. There is a backdrop of beauty and of great interest, some 'stylized, perhaps, a show-place. Few can these people, "with soul so dead", a phrase familiar Sir Walter Scott, impassive while wandering through places associated with great admiration.

Mostvisitors from afar to Stratford-upon-Avon train, and the voices of those stations are probably the worst first impression of the city. This is especially the case for the central Great Western Road, Alcester, leaving us in a wide road with large general hospital to our left, then new red brick houses, and then plan from his forehead, low buildings, shops and ugly rises from the foot to go. Wehappen in a strange way of variable width, and it could go right over the city from west to east - on a street with five names, Alcester Road, Greenhill Street, Wood Street, Bridge Street, Bridge, and walk - and is Clopton bridge over the Avon without the slightest inkling that we were a bit 'more peaceful, comfortable to overcome a common kind not uncommon in the English Midlands.

A look at the windows, with their cards in-numerable and variedSouvenirs, showed that the city was different, as it seemed. A little to our left, we passed the shrine center of this heart of many shrines - the birthplace of William Shakespeare - as a glance to the right along the High Street, which branches off at the narrowest point where the part of our Highway Forest Street, Bridge Street would be broad insights into some of the oldest buildings in town. If our travelers expected to haveIgnorance about the importance of Stratford, looks come Clopton Bridge, downstream along the shore to see, would be an original building - a building of red brick and white stone building with a high-green gables, slate roof and many small towers. This building in a city would certainly pique our curiosity of the traveler, and would ask that you discover the Shakespeare Memorial. In addition, lower the river, would see the tower of the Church of StratfordRising from the trees - the church, is buried in Shakespeare - and would certainly stay at a wish and the city, which had appeared at first glance, have little that was particularly attractive.

Clopton bridge itself could take us. This is a fine structure of stones, many strings with low parapets, on which we have beautiful scenes up and down the course of the soft-flowing Avon, the windings, which we have but brief look at the water, whereas lowMeadows are guaranteed by green trees, omnipresent Warwickshire. Valley View towards the monument and the church can see the old bridge is built near one another in red brick for the construction of a disused railway line near and said to one of the first of our railway bridges, a fact which potentially reduces downstream of our impatience with the terms of his disability, but also to hinder our view of the beautiful old bridge, when you look upstream from the game boxes on the Left BankThe Avon.

Here you can, "said an old-time clergy Stratford and derived its name from a word of English with them means Avon aufona Fluvius much like us. The river was covered by a wooden bridge old tradition says that unsupported Queen Matilda led them to the troops, but that was more significant from a public Stratford and replaced by the current stone bridge, iron plates on which a record of construction and repair and extensionthe first half of last century. Until the expansion gives standing on a stone column with the following story enough: "Sir Hugh Clopton, Knight, Lord Mayor of London, this bridge was built at his own expense, correct the reign of Henry VII's.

For Avon, we will return later. Going east again on foot-and-Bridge Street Bridge, we visit the "shrine associated with the memory of those who not only is Stratford, but most famous son in England, we are passing thebroad Bridge Street, and find the path forks on both sides of the simple, white, lots of windows of the bank. The route left is Wood Street, through which we came out of the station. The law is Henley Street, a short way, two-thirds of the way in which we increased to achieve a clean and beautiful half-timbered and gabled house a lot, like most of the houses in this way to make big Stratford, directly from the street. And 'the' place of birth. " On both sides there is now ground gardensince the shrine opened may be less likely to eliminate any fire hazard from which the city suffered heavily three times during the period of Shakespeare. The last of these occasions - in July. 1614 - no less than fifty-four houses were destroyed, so that there is no doubt largely those fires, we have ensured that can no longer walk to the Tudor building. Fortunately, among those spared are the most interesting.

To access the home must be the ticket neededobtained from the hut just to the east, the Office of the directors and guardians of the birthplace of Shakespeare. Although brick facade and changed a lot, this house was standing at the time of the poet, his neighbors who live there under the name Horneby.

The birth itself is one of the most important shrines of the city, a place visited every year by thousands of people from around the world. From his small room, and small-scale irregular, one can easily imagine howpeople comfortable and spacious days of great Elizabeth, lived in the fine collection of books and documents, signatures, memorabilia and curiosity, we gain in understanding between people, for Shakespeare himself, his family and people he knew. Upstairs, we are in the same room where 23 April 1564, the poet saw the light. Here generations of visitors scribbling their name, according to an old bad habit of Thomas Carlyle, Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickenswere victims. Now the autograph records of who visits the home properly in a guest book kept the destination.

It is not possible for anyone with the imagination of talent, be indifferent in these spaces - spaces where the poet was born, when he came, what we think we probably had a happy childhood, which was the Grammar School, about a quarter mile away, and from which to woo a mile above the fields of Shottery. The intimate knowledge ofpersonality of Shakespeare, we can only slightly, the story of his life may take much, but here, at least we feel that we see a lot of space, as he saw it, when, instead of the simple creation of Tudor times, we have some Omnium Gatherum room of a museum. It 's a museum full of interest in the Shakespearean scholar and attracts visitors from having copies of the books he had read the poet himself dwell on his old signatures and otherlegal documents on the famous "portrait Ely Shakespeare, through images, maps and other relics of the past Stratford-upon-Avon.

So little we know about the detail of the history of the life of Shakespeare is the story of his homeland, from owner to owner, fortunately by the time of its birth, the purchase of the house from across the nation in 1847. It 'true that there is no shortage of theorists trying to prove that his birth did not really takePlace here, but circumstantial evidence strongly supports the belief that he did. Here his father, John Shakespeare lived and conducted his business here from wood stapler and Glover. In the immediate vicinity have been modified to improve conditions in the sixteenth century, Shakespeare above for the holding of a dunghill outside his front door with a fine! Henley Street is now a clean and pleasant, when the modern garage motor is slightly influenced the West, and the pastalong the road in a Saturday evening, I noticed, if not an old man, probably a fishy smell of fried fish from a shop almost opposite the place of birth, while the end of Henley Street to the sounds have been a hymn of 'Salvation Army. Even men can not live feeling in Stratford.

Skip to the back door of the house, we are in a garden, the keepers of which there have been a particular interest in it to plant designated representatives of all the flowers and treesthe poet in his works. Here, a study in September, I found "the primrose pale" in full bloom, and up here in the summer months are a better representation of this "old-fashioned flowers and herbs to see unfadingly prosper in the words of Ophelia and Loss:

"And 'rosemary, this is the remembrance, pray,' I love you, remember: and there is pansies, that's for thoughts .... There are fennel for you, and columbines: there is a rue for you: And here some for me: we can callE 'or herb of grace' Sundays: O you must wear your rue with a difference. There's a daisy: I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died. "

For you there's rosemary and rue to keep this

Apparent and enjoy all .... long winter

Here's flowers for you;

Hot lavender, mint, savory, marjoram;

The marigold, that to bed Wi 'the sun,

And he makes you cry ... Daffodils,

What comes before swallowing companies, andtake

The winds of March with beauty dim, purple,

But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,

Or Cytherea breath, pale primroses,

The die before you can watch unmarried

Bright Phoebus in his strength, disease

Most of the waitresses accident, bold and oxlips

The crown-imperial, lilies of all kinds,

Flower de Luce-be.

All these flowers of the poet - flowers, now familiar epithets attached to itself - can be found inThe lovely garden at the back of the birth. Go through it again at Henley Street and again on our way for the construction of the bank and from there the route, which passed the student must be Shakespeare, at times perhaps -

with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school -

go short High Street, on the other side, where we see the ugliness of simple design City Hall and the old bigGuild Chapel.

Before that far, but there are places to arrest our attention. Just before the town hall to the right of us - people with a sense of humor, a smile in passing the Shakespeare Restaurant, run by a noted Bacon! - A projection of half-timbered house is worth more than a momentary glance. It 'a beautiful specimen of a Tudor house, with its richly carved beams, vaulted upstairs. This is known as the home of Harvard, because it was the home ofKatherine Rogers, mother of John Harvard, founder of Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts. It 'an interesting fact that, as Shakespeare went to Stratford tradition of Southwark, said Rogers, a neighbor, Warwickshire, Katherine should marry a man of Southwark. He suggests that there is a specific reason for the creation of Stratfordians who went to London for the city was the southern end of London Bridge. The attractive oldHouse, a jewel of Stratford, has just architecturally, and most were converted to Stratford, as appropriate, in an appointment for American visitors pilgrimage are a significant part of those who make too. Scenic outside, the interior with its old world created, it is also worth checking.

Almost opposite the house Harvard-Rogers media, if not entirely worthless, City Hall, built one hundred and fifty years, andIllustrate the beginning of one of the least pleasant time English architecture. At the end of the north down High Street, the statue of David Garrick is on the conclusion of the famous "Shakespeare Jubilee" submitted 1769. Inside the room are some interesting pictures, like Gainsborough's portrait of Garrick.

City Hall is right next to the Shakespeare Hotel, part of which is the Five Gables ", a picturesque half-timbered house, the bottom is theTransactions. The rooms of this hotel has long been identified, often with special joy, for great works of Shakespeare. So the bar - bar "Measure for Measure", the coffee room "As You Like It," and so on.

With this waste in the name of roads, which can not fail to find a visitor, we find that the High Street in the town hall ended, and already we are Chapel Street, with its beautiful stone tower of the old Guild Chapel, a short way in the future. A bit 'outFive Gables ", and also left corner of Chapel Street and Chapel Lane to reach the site of New Place, the house that Shakespeare bought in its prosperity, and where he died April 23, 1616 The house was immediately before them, New Place Museum, as Nash's House was made famous home of the first husband of Shakespeare's granddaughter, Elizabeth Hall - Thomas Nash, who should not be confused with the Elizabethan poet of the samename.

The location of the house and garden are fenced from the street by a low wall, topped by an ornate iron railing, are included in the decoration of the initials "WAS" and the poet and the city coat of arms. The parapets are something collected from uglified with gilding. A bit 'down Chapel Lane, at the foot of the monument is the entrance to the pleasant landscaped garden, New Place. Here is a mulberry tree stump as a long stem of the plantassociated with Shakespeare. Hare can be seen as a pillar of the old town hall, a sculpture of the period before the old Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall, and a large stone, engraved on the verses in honor of poet Richard Jago. The mulberry tree planted by the poet drew so much attention from visitors, as the interest in Shakespeare in the eighteenth century that the UN Gastrell reverend, who then owned New Place "damn themselves to eternal glory" ofCut down, and bore his contemptuous vandalism beyond a few years later, following a dispute with the Corporation for the issue price was demolished in New Place, after his retirement from the city 'of Stratford fairly accurate. The mulberry tree was from a local dealer, who got very moment made for lovers of Shakespeare - in fact, having memories far more real wood is delivered may be charged. Drinkthe big party from a cup from the famous tree, Garrick sang his words:

So this fair cup 't was cut from a tree

What, my sweet Shakespeare, was planted by thee;

As a relic I kiss and bow to the shrine,

What is your hand is always divine.

All yield to the mulberry

Bend to you,

Selig mulberry;

Matchless was

Who has planted;

And you know what he is immortal!

Ofan indignant writer said many years ago: "The old rage, anger destroys mulberry tree in Shakespeare, and a bilious attack powerless to move to the poet the ground last house, half Stratford quited the general disgust of its inhabitants. These could harm wild Gastrell was only the work of eccentricity to be on the brink of insanity. we are in solidarity with the poor in a position of an act so callous and senseless, because it was, as we know, the visible constantThe presence of divinity, the sacred, the ramparts of Zion, and fortified their walls with healing, ten thousand memories vivid sanctifies the hours of abandoned houses in really big, earthy people for their residences, and dedicate their relics for the heart and imagination of posterity. "

New Place, which was originally built by Sir Hugh Clopton at the time of Henry VII, has been purchased, modified, and for his enduring fame of William Shakespeare in 1597. Before the propertyMr. Gastrell, the infamous memory, who had regained control of the Clopton family, and among others the famous Mulberry Sir Hugh Garrick, Macklin, and other dignitaries spoke in 1742.

If Shakespeare's daughter, Susannah Hall, was still alive in the new site - who died there in 1649 - then came the riots of the Civil War, and here Queen Henrietta Maria was on the way to take the first Charles at Oxford in 1643, and made his residence in New Place, as probablythe principal residence of the city. Prince Rupert, was also here, and for once quiet town was a center of military activity, with about 5,000 soldiers in their neighborhoods. A year ago was the city must have been in a delicate hint of excitement is the battle of Edgehill less than a dozen miles away. One historian says: "At this time the Queen took up residence for about three weeks in New Place, Stratford, while Mrs. Shakespeare lived there." The writer was obviouslyconfuse the wife of the poet and her daughter, Mrs. Shakespeare had died twenty years ago. unharmed in Stratford not these difficult times, one of the Clopton bridge arches are destroyed, and the historical room, air blown in this - a pillar, as has been said, is seen in the New Place to garden.

Divided by the width of a rotation from the site of New Place is the beautiful Old Town Guild Chapel of the Holy Cross, and behind it a long series of finehalf-timbered houses, the Guild Hall, the Gymnasium and homes for 24 poor elderly. A little 'in plain, swept away old paintings, is as magnificent specimen of the fifteenth century, the architecture of the old chapel demands attention. From his tower in the morning and evening during the winter is still the sound of the curfew bell to be heard. Here it is assumed that Shakespeare attended public worship, as you are used to a bench be placed in the chapel, with newPlace.

This connection of the house with the chapel, perhaps the time when Sir Hugh Clopton, dated resided there when he was a great benefactor for the construction, reconstruction of the nave and tower. On the south side of the chapel is the entrance to the old half-timbered Guildhall and Grammar School - the latter over the former. This building will be constructed on the end of the thirteenth century by Robert de Stratford, probably brothersHoly Cross. Shakespeare's associations are all around us. In the large school-room, half-timbered house with open roof, he received his medical training, see the Guildhall, it was suggested that may have been present when the stage company of players are known, have given their services in the period have that his father was bailiff of the country. Nice fence in the rear of the Guildhall we see another half-timbered house, known as the home of the teacher. Withold buildings on both hands, and the old chapel, which we have before us the corner of Stratford, perhaps the least changed in England since the time of Shakespeare, a real coup d'oeil Tudor .

The Stratford Grammar School was - certainly as early as 1424, and re-1553 by Edward the sixth - was an educational center of some importance in the period when Shakespeare was a boy can, we may collect from the fact that teacher salaries head '"twenty pounds a year, a circumstance that would have been that the best men available to be played safely to the office to see the headmaster of ordinary time - as in Eton - had ten pounds. In these circumstances, it is likely that education was probably the best poet of the early theorists of his life were inclined to think. An inscription marks the place where what has been called Shakespeare's desk stand, and it was suggested that, if - asSnapper-up of trifles neglected biographical, John Aubrey records - Shakespeare was a schoolmaster for a time, can the school where he was raised. This is a nice speculation, but nothing more. The desk is now the place of birth.

In addition to the Guild Hall is a similar but slightly lower number of half-timbered houses, red-tiled buildings, almshouses for twelve old Guild and twelve old women - the poor houses that are like one of the oldest and describedmost interesting in England. The facades of the fifteenth century this picturesque houses were long, plaster, but the care with which old Stratford houses many relics that were extended, and the fine lattice is new and very clear. Further south - the street has evolved from Church Street since we left New Place - which we immediately fell as a historical center, where Dr. Hall, the poet, son-in-law, lived, and left, well knownreached the second head of the sanctuaries of the City Shakespeare Shakespeare - the church where he is buried.

Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, is probably one of the best known, the visual representation of how it is certainly one of the most beautiful of our churches. She's tall tower rises through the trees, as viewed from the meadows on the other side of Avon, was in many paintings and photographs, not number. As we approach the cityIt is perhaps less impressive seen in his cathedral of similar proportions, from the Left Bank. The approach road is a short avenue of lime trees - a quiet and pleasant tone. Old elm tree that stood near the terrace, were killed in 1871, and its wood was filmed at the moment, such as "Shakespeare Mulberry Tree "is more than one hundred years before.

If the church of Stratford was not the tomb of Shakespeare, would be worth a visit, asone of the most beautiful, as it is probably part of one of the most venerable churches in Midland. There was a church where "Domesday Book was compiled, but did not receive any trace of the old structure remains. Antiquity sufficient, however, said the Holy Trinity, for the tower erected shortly after the conquest, and built the rest the beautiful cruciform during the fourteenth and fifteenth century to be. While there are many sites of interestin the Church - especially for members of the old Clopton family - is in his memoirs of Shakespeare and his family that is attractive to visitors the great majority, the son of the sixteenth century, bailiff of Stratford, the city center city center, so they are old benefactor and his family of relatively little interest. But Sir Hugh Clopton, who built the bridge over the Avon end, and who owned the "Big House" (later the new place ofShakespeare), can only guess at his or her point of rest, and then just a few bothered to ask the knight resting place of gold. E 'grave of Shakespeare and monument and the graves of his people, where most visitors to the church are concerned. This will be located at the eastern end of the beautiful sanctuary. On the north wall there, near the altar, the famous half-length figure of Shakespeare himself, with pen in hand, as in the act of writing. And 'as specifiedso to speak, in an entablature with the poet in his arms and crest above flanked by a pair of digits as a boy. This monument, designed by Gerard Johnson made some time between the poet's funeral in 1616, and the question of the First Folio edition of his work was in 1623, as we learn from a reference point for you this year. The fact that it was built shortly after his death - and there can be no doubt to be members of his family - you can also us the parable acceptedShakespeare as close to him in the habit as he lived. The figure was stained, and in 1748 John Ward, grandfather of Kemble, was newly painted and repaired the grave with the profits from the company's performance of "Othello" to give Stratford, since they had a posthumous "use" the great poet. Edmund Malone in 1793 received permission to paint the white envelope, it remained until 1861, when the plaster was removed, and the old colors, although they were understandable,restored. Fortunately, an old historic Stratford was the color to describe the original appearance: "His eyes were light brown, hair and beard Auburn. The dress is a red jacket, sleeves blacks had thrown out a suit off without. The pillow top was green, and the bottom of a green, with tassels of gold. "Under the portrait of the poet is the following inscription: -

IVDICIO PYLIVM, Socrates SPIRIT ART

MARONELAND TEGIT, MAERET POPVLVS,

OLYMPVS habet.

Stay passenger why you go so fast?

Read, if you can, that death plast jealous

Within this monument, Shakespeare Whom

Quick Dide Nature, whose name ys bridge Tombs

Much more cost, but serve Witt at his side.

Obiit. ANO. DOI. 1616

The 23 AP Aetatis 53rd.

The choir is driving the royal tomb of the poet, under a stone with the inscription lines traditionally famous sayingwritten by Shakespeare, the removal of his remains have an ossuary, a long time the church was required to prevent, and contained a large collection of fragments of human. The ossuary was taken down in 1800. It also says that the probability of risk of someone to avoid the curse, the tomb was excavated seventeen meters deep. The lines run:

GOOD FOR LOVE frend IESVS bear

Play the DVST to Digg ENCLOASED:

Blessed MAN YT SPARES THESSTONE,

CVRST YT and BE moves my bones.

It was not until 1694 that these lines said, was to have been written by Shakespeare himself. The tradition can be believed arose from the use of the words "my" bones, because it is easy to believe that the great poet to write verses like it. It may well be that he expresses the horror of costume with which the graves were redug, and the bones of their former occupants removed to make room for the Karnerhas new tenants that bring his family and desires a permanent basis, in which I am aware now. Among Shakespeare's tomb and the wall where the monument is the gravestone of his wife in which you want the son-in-law, Dr. Hall, written in Latin lines, the memorial in the following inscription: "Here lyeth Shakespeare had this life on August 6 depted 1623 at the age of 67 years. " Across the grave are the graves of ShakespeareSusannah Hall (1649), her husband Dr. John Hall (1635), and his son-in-law (1647). The inscription on the plaque placed Susannah Hall is worthy of mention, because it "can be fun to think about their gender," she may have inherited some of the qualities of the great father, and also because they believed that perhaps the line was written by her daughter Elizabeth (later Lady Barnard), the last direct descendants of Shakespeare:

YE BODY OF WOMAN armies SVSANNA interposesA: