Stratford Great Escape 2016

Time is such a relative thing. I find it hard to believe that it is already a week since we were a day into our Stratford 'Great Escape' - four nights in a lovely cottage in the heart of the town, less than three minutes from the Shakespeare Centre, paid for by the Louis Marder Scholarship I was awarded last year.

Having this amount of time to research is a real luxury - normally I'm squeezing time out of the day job and fitting it in where I can. I'd planned three days of research in the Birthplace Library and Archives during which time I was able to access some of the company's accounts and prompt books from three specific productions.

Having the cottage meant a relaxing start to the day, a leisurely saunter to the Archives around 10am and a return to a warm, cosy and very comfortable house, with plenty of work space, two very comfortable sofas and lovely beds! We decided to self-cater - although the tea shops of Stratford did provide some welcome late lunches - and thanks to Marks and Spencer, dined like Queens!  Rachel, who owns the cottage, had left us a welcome gift: how could she have known I was such a fan of ginger?  The discovery of a DVD of The Great Escape in one of the cupboards was another unexpected bonus...

Stratford in February can be incredibly cold and we'd gone prepared with woolly socks and hot water bottles.  Sitting all day in the Library was a chilly business and we were glad of the central heating!

As I'd taken my research assistant with me (she's also my mum!) we were able to get about thirty hours worth of work done between us over the three days: lots of data to add to my database, extra information about the financial state of the company, and the wonderful prompt books.

I'm very much an amateur at this, but I've developed a method for using the prompt books - I buy cheap copies of the plays and then deface them in accordance with the script! Some prompt books are more detailed than others but they all give a flavour of what the productions must have been like on stage to watch.  It's an incredible feeling, handling a book which must have been used in the wings of countless theatres on hundreds of occasions.

The account books, too, have a papery charm - heavy pages designed for pen and ink, meticulously handwritten, each page telling the stark truth about Benson's dreadful financial situation!  In between the pages sometimes are still some 'daily returns' from the theatre managers on the touring circuit or the occasional bill from a printer - the daily ephemera of running a a theatre company,

So busy were we with archival stuff that Stratford itself sort of faded into the background, although on Thursday - which had been a beautiful day - we went and took some photos as the sun set spectacularly over our favourite monument.  My photos don't do it justice!

After such a wonderful week, coming back to reality has been something of a challenge!  Although much of the material we discovered is still to be typed up, I've already used some of the details from the account books to update the database, add some dates and repertoire details, and correct a few gaps and errors.

I now have approximately 60% of the main (principal or A) company mapped, which is really exciting.

It was such a successful visit that I'm already working out when it might be possible to repeat the experience.  We're back in Stratford, as luck would have it, in just over four weeks time but we'll be theatre tourists rather than researchers.  Hopefully, the first signs of spring we saw last week will have fully blossomed by then!

(When I finally arrived home, I could barely get the front door open: six complementary copies of the edition of Theatre Notebook with my essay in were blocking the door!)

In Shakespeare's Garden

Magnolia blossom by the canal