Living the Dream again...

There's been a flourish of busy-ness in the Merry Shrew universe over the past few weeks.  The wonderful Louis Marder bursary from The Shakespeare Institute paid for another three day visit to the archives in Stratford and a stay in the lovely cottage we used last year.  I really love Stratford 'out of season' and having a proper little house to stay in makes it feel as if I'm actually 'living my dream' and residing there...

We slipped into an already well-rehearsed pattern: up for a leisurely breakfast, then off to the Archive and Library, where we scribbled like mad at our respective tasks for about five hours - no lunch break to maximise working time! - before crawling out into the late afternoon in search of warmth and food.  Then back to the cosy cottage for  a review of the day's findings before crashing out with a bottle of red, a good film ('Paddington' was our very favourite this time!) , meals courtesy of  Marks and Spencer and the occasional Malteaser/Jaffa Cake for a late night snack!  Food and archives.  What more does a girl need?

Having had a chance to assess the material accessed this time, I'm finding things are finally beginning to fit together.  Working with prompt books, costume lists, set lists, photographs and newspaper reviews, I feel as if I'm finally getting a handle on what exactly it was that Benson was touring round the provinces for all those years.   The most exciting thing has been, oddly, the discovery of colour. I know it's a ridiculous cliché to think of the past as being in sepia tones, but discovering the fact that the drapes for the castle interiors in Hamlet were purple has been a revelation.

Discovering the vast amount of money lost on tours to South Africa and North America during 1914 has been less surprising - and the minutes of the company management meetings include an alarmingly long list of creditors.

I still am in several minds about what to do with all this information.  I'm coming to the end of the two year period stipulated by the SBT and I really do need to consider how best to 'publish' the things I've discovered.  I have a few ideas... but still lack the academic confidence to dive in just yet. In the mean time, I'm spending as much time as possible typing up and collating the information available about productions.

How lucky am I ?