Travelogue, Part the Second: Mostly Stratford-upon-Avon
Here is my second part of my account of my trip to England.
After we left London we went to Hampton Court Palace, which was where Henry VIII (who LOVES himself) lived with Anne Boleyn. This place was amazing, because most of it is displayed as it would have been at the time, which is beautiful. It was so amazing to think that I was walking through the apartments of generations of kings and queens. And I have found my true calling, because there are re-enactors there, and I so much want that to be my job.
We spent a few hours there, then went on to Stratford-upon-Avon. This town is a gorgeous little place. It's very homey and just a lovely place to stay. I stayed in the Quilts and Croissants Bed and Breakfast, which is run by Richard and Sue, just about the nicest people you could ever hope to meet. It was a lovely place to stay, incredibly comfortable beds, really good food, and wonderful people. Of course we visited Shakespeare's Birthplace, Anne Hathaway's house, and Mary Arden's house during our stay. These places are all uniquely cool, and it's fun to imagine Shakespeare living in there, walking around, doing his Shakespeare thing. We also went on a couple of hikes through the countryside which was SO BEAUTIFUL. Nothing is as beautiful as English countryside. At the end of the hikes, my feet hurt like whoa and my poor shoes were covered in mud (good English mud!), but oh! We saw these little villages all set up in the sort of manor systerm-- one of them was just like I would imagine Highbury, from Emma. And we saw the site (through the mist, no less!) of an iron-age hill fort! I just about squee'd my little head off. My brain was rocketing so fast between Jane Austen love and King Arthur love that even my mind was exhausted when we came back.
We had classes at the Shakespeare Centre. We had lectures and discussions with the foremost Shakespeare experts in the world: Stanley Wells, Paul Edmondson, Robert Smallwood... And Robert Smallwood, let me tell you now, is magical. He's a born storyteller, he loves what he does and wants everyone else to love it too, his eyes twinkle, and his voice just draws you in. We also had a master-class with Jane Lapotaire, a BBC actress, which was both instructive and terrifying. When she demanded lines of Shakespeare, the entire class simultaneously forgot we'd been doing monologues and went, "...". We had discussions with people from the plays we'd seen-- the awesome William Gaunt, who was Gloucester in Lear and Sorin in The Seagull, the Fool from Lear, and the very cool Monica Dolan, who was Regan in Lear and Mascha in The Seagull (and, by the way, was fresh out of the lead in Polly Teale's Jane Eyre).
While we were staying in Stratford, we took day trips to Warwick Castle and Kenilworth Castle, and to Oxford. Warkwick was great, if over-commercialized, because it was my first castle. And the parts of it that hadn't been messed with were terrifically atmospheric. Kenilworth, which is a ruin, but which used to belong to Robert Dudley, is simply gorgeously beautiful. It just feels... so melancholy, almost eerie, when you're there. At Oxford we toured Christ Church, which was also beautiful. I almost can't imagine going to school in someplace so old and beautiful. We saw the dining hall, which is where they shoot Harry Potter's Great Hall. And the cathedral, where they have relics of St. Frideswide.
Finally, here is a brief summary of the plays we saw. The Seagull was... eh. It was okay. The leads weren't very good. King Lear had Ian McKellan in it (naked, at once point, which... I could have done without seeing), and some very talented actors giving great performances. Cordelia was not good at... anything really, including being dead. The Taming of the Shrew was disturbing. Twelfth Night was surprisingly good, even with an all-male cast. A Midsummer Night's Dream was the most amazing piece of theatre I have ever seen. Check out its website. If you ever, ever get a chance to see it, GO. It makes you believe in all kinds of magic. The best way I can think of to describe it is Shakespeare meets Cirque do Soleil meets Bollywood. The actors peform all kinds of amazing acrobatics (while singing and dancing, no less!); the set is pretty much vertical. It is also performed in English plus six Indian dialects with no translation needed, because the message of the words still gets across. I have made may icons from pictures I found online. Here they are.
