Getting out of the city - Oxford and Stratford-upon-Avon

In the far too early for me morning, our coach left King’s College and our group was on its way to see what happens outside the teeming city; it was a welcome change for me, I’ve been waiting to see some cows and a more compressed High Street with less people.

Thankfully, the route to Oxford had some cows to pass and Oxford’s High Street was very familiar territory with it’s Top Shop and Schuh and available Cornish pasties and bacon rolls (although I didn’t notice the bacon rolls until it was too late and I’d already ordered a pasty, which was slightly painful, the bacon roll is one of England’s greatest inventions in my opinion). Anyhow, I essentially bypassed the historical fare that Oxford has to offer because I was so excited to see a university town with the normal university street fare and went shopping. London has everything that a High Street can offer, but it can be hard to find and involve several trips, and our group is coming back to Oxford so I will be seeing the Ashmolean Museum (hopefully) and more of the uni including the Bodleian Library.

I visited Stratford on my very first jaunt to England back in the year 2000 with my high school AP English class and I am pleased to say that it hasn’t changed much, it’s High Street has vastly improved, but I was there to see some Shakespeare sites and get sensations of déjà vu about having my picture taken in the garden behind Hall’s Croft.

First we visited Shakespeare’s birthplace, where the guides were helpful in explaining the hospitalities of Shakespeare’s age (nicest bed in the front) and how to make gloves and how much flesh-scraping that involves, as well as how Shakespeare’s father would have run his shop out of the front window. From the birthplace we traveled to Nash’s House/New Place, the former living space of Shakespeare’s granddaughter and the end of his line as well as the site of the very, very large house that Shakespeare owned and that was destroyed by a later owner because he didn’t want to pay taxes, apparently his sense of patriotism and appreciation of the arts was seriously lacking. After that site we made our way to Hall’s Croft, which is where I remember standing in 2000 and thinking, ‘So, nothing in any of these houses was actually owned by any of the people we’re talking about? Okay.’ I’ve come to refer to these as the ‘I don’t know’ portions of tours, Stonehenge has a giant section about what they don’t know about its functions and that does irk me a bit as someone used to seeing actual artifacts that aren’t just period-accurate. It was much more impressive seeing Jane Austen’s actual writing desk and Charlotte Bronte’s actual gloves than seeing desks and gloves of the period, but of course they are far newer figures to history than Shakespeare and his family (and of course we saw what very well might be Shakespeare’s signature at the British Library later on).

After Hall’s Croft it was time to see some dead people, who (although not having literally seen them I can’t verify) were actually located inside their burial sites and gave that air of authenticity I needed. The Holy Trinity Church in Stratford has the burial sites of Shakespeare, his daughter, granddaughter, and Anne Hathaway to round out the main family right in front of the altar. The church itself is quite beautiful on the inside, the woodwork has many embellishments and in the stalls lining the space in front of the altar and the graves of the Shakespeare family one can sit on little gargoyles and smirking faces.

This trip to Stratford did include one thing I hadn’t done the first time I came, seeing some Shakespeare, specifically Macbeth, at the Swan Theatre. Macbeth has always been my favorite of Shakespeare’s plays, I like that it’s both depressing and Scottish, and when I read it I had reactions to more of the lines and wanted to write them down than any other of his plays. This performance was excellent, well acted, well costumed, well staged in a different kind of theatrical space than I’ve seen. I was at first very amused by the signs outside the seating area proclaiming that this performance would have lots of graphic elements and loud banging; amused until I realized my group was sitting next to the PA and the orchestra when the play started. Loud banging indeed.