Stratford is so close to Birmingham that it’s part of the city transit system, so I decided to check it out. Turns out it looks surprisingly similar to Stratford Ontario—at least, the part with the river and swans and huge Shakespearian theater.
The big thing to do there is to see the various Shakespeare houses… such as the place where he was born…
…The place where he scandalously wooed his much older wife before their shotgun wedding, the place where his daughter lived, the church where he was buried…
…and the site of the huge mansion he built after returning from London as wealthy playwright. They are doing an archeological dig there now, because the place got torn down long ago. Apparently the guy who bought it off of Shakespeare’s descendants was a bit of a jerkbag. First, he got pissed that so many people wanted to see the tree Shakespeare planted in the backyeard, so he chopped it down. Then, he got tired of the high taxes on Shakespeare’s old house, so he had it destroyed “so that no one will have to pay taxes on it again.” Douchbag: 1; History: 0.
At least there are some sweet sculptures there with select Shakespearian verse.
Stratford is tres touristy, and the exhibits are hugely overhyped. There is really not much there to see. “This is a bed similar to the one Shakespeare might have been born in, placed in a room that might possibly have been the room where he was born, we think. Notice that the wallpaper bears resemblance to the type of wallpaper his family most likely had, and that he referred to wallpaper once in King Lear.”
The best thing about Stratford is undoubtedly the Royal Shakespeare Company. I caught a performance of Anthony and Cleopatra that was truly riveting. They crossed the ancient setting with modern dress, so that soldiers wore commando gear and wielded assault rifles, whereas Caesar wore a $4000 suit. You might think this would clash horribly, but they really made it work. Another innovation entailed the use of expertly-timed bells, drums, and tones to underline dramatic moments, almost like an understated soundtrack. It really hammered home the shock and dismay that characters felt when stuff happened.
Oh, and there was a butterfly farm, which I actually enjoyed a lot less than i thought I would… way too many flying and mutating insects everywhere. Ugh.
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