Stratford upon Avon is wonderful in any season, but it is especially beautiful in Spring. For the last two years I've spent 24 hours there as part of my Easter holiday - it's a kind of 'cultural retreat'. I stay in B&B near the theatre, walk, eat cake, talk to as few people as I can get away with, go to the theatre (of course!) and then spend the second day in the Birthplace Trust library and archives reading room, trying to cram a year's research into five and a bit hours...
The Birthplace Library holds the archives of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and has a lot of material relating to Frank Benson which I'm slowly becoming more familiar with. This time, I looked at two prompt books for
As You Like It and
Taming of the Shrew and began to sift through some of the company's accounts from 1909 and 1910 which made for quite alarming reading because Benson was clearly touring at a ridiculous level of financial loss.
Stratford is a very spiritual place, for me. It's hard to explain it without it sounding silly, but the first time I went there I felt as if I'd returned home to somewhere I'd always been missing. It has the same impact for me still, today, almost thirty years on, and there's a sense of theatrical history there which is almost tangible. Leaving it is always a wrench. I'm saving some of the pictures for a post later in the month about the old Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, but these give something of the flavour of Stratford in Spring... I wish I could bottle the scent and sound of the place as well!
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Holy Trinity Churchyard; The 'Gower' Hamlet; Canal Basin and Avon bankside looking towards the Church:
April 10th 2015 |
