Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Coventry and Trudging the Streets of Stratford-Upon-Avon

Our first stop of the day, which was September 27th, was a fairly brief lunch stop at the cathedral in Coventry. The old one that was first created in 1043, founded by Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and his wife Godiva, and it remained more or less intact (despite the dissolution of the monasteries, which did destroy a lot of monasteries and cathedrals) for many years. However, in 1940, the old cathedral was destroyed when the Luftwaffe bombed Coventry.

The ruins of the old cathedral have been preserved, with mainly just the walls and the spire still standing. In 1956, the city started laying the foundation for the new cathedral, having decided to rebuild the morning after the bombing. Though it is not the most impressive design I've ever seen, I enjoyed the stop. It is really cool seeing the old and the new right next to each other, almost co-existing. Pictures are to come.



Then we made it to Stratford.



I can't begin to describe what it felt like to walk into that place. There was just something in the air. Now, I am sure all of it was in my mind, but to know that I was walking the streets of the town where Shakespeare was born, where he grew up, where he married... it was all just way too cool.

The first place me and my friends went (a group of Laura Summers, Adam Dirker, and another girl whose name will come to me--I want to say Marissa) was to Shakespeare's Birthplace, the house still standing as it did so many years ago. I walked through that place, enjoying the sites of where Shakespeare would have slept, the workings of his father's glove making trade. It was just really cool. This place then shows up again later.

The next place that we headed off to was the distant location of Anne Hathaway's house (which was a decent haul from the center of town). It was a beautiful little cottage. It was what I had always imagined as the picturesque thatched roof cottage. Unfortunately, we didn't go in (to see everything, we didn't really have the time and it would have cost more money than the ticket that the school trip had provided us with), but I got to see the outside of it pretty well and the gardens surrounding it, so I was satisfied.

From there, we headed back into town to see Hall's Croft. This is the place where Shakespeare's daughter and her husband lived. It was a really cool house, and apparently the husband (Dr. John Hall) was an excellent physician and had some treatments that were controversial at the time but were correct by modern practices. Who would've thought? He also kept good records of all his patients and the treatments he used, which had one of the typical, dastardly long titles of the period.

Anyway, I then trudged up to New Place on mine own, which is where Shakespeare's house once stood, but it is now commemorated by a beautiful little garden instead. The house next to it, Nash's House, is named after and was owned by Shakespeare's granddaughter's husband, Thomas Nash. This was a pretty nice little place, and I really did enjoy the gardens that were small but had wonderful and color-coordinated patterns. Nash's House was also an excellent example of a typical (if slightly more expensive) house of the time.

After that, I decided to go back to a bookstore that I had noticed across from Shakespeare's birthplace. I walked in, and I saw a couple things that just caught my eye. There was this absolutely gorgeous copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets in a medium-sized leather hardback. I fell in love with it. Unfortunately, there was also an excellent deal on getting twelve of Shakespeare's plays.... so, let's just say I considerably added to my library a lot of Shakespeare's works that I didn't own before and were bought literally right across the street from his birthplace. It made me pretty happy. :)

I've also realized, yet again, that books are my greatest weakness. I just can't get enough of them.

After that, I went with the entire rest of the school and we saw The Merchant of Venice, performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon. The acting was pretty darn impressive and I really enjoyed watching it (even if I was in the nosebleed section :). However, maybe it was just a result of them having the usual theatre under renovation, but I just didn't think that the set design and the costume design was as good as it could have been. But, overall, I did enjoy the show. It was definitely a good weekend.

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Asking for time to decipher the signs...

What is there to know? I'm just another guy trying to figure out what it means to truly love, to truly live, to embrace life to the fullest. If I ever get some answers, I'll let you know. "So live on, / Breathing in every sigh / Hurt and joy / Truly living life to its fullness / Leaving no dream unturned / Or unfulfilled / Live on / Life awaits" -excerpt from "Nostalgia" by me.