Of all the things on our list to do, the most random was one I discovered on my own. Apparently Sir Ian McKellen owns a pub called The Grapes. And sometimes he’s even there.  I told my kids about this.  What I actually told my kids was, “Ok, I don’t expect there’s any version of our story that results in me meeting Ian McKellen. I’m just saying that, if we do? I will fangirl so hard you will forget you know me. I will scream like I’m watching the Beatles on Ed Sullivan.”  They don’t really get that last reference, but the point is valid.

London’s a big city, and we’ve got lots to see. The idea of saying to my family, “Hey, after Buckingham Palace, how about we go find this random pub that may or may not be huge?” just doesn’t seem to ever come up.  At night, though, I get on Google Maps and I look to see where it is.  It’s a bit of a hike from “stuff”.  I see no obvious “Hey, while we’re in the neighborhood, oh look at this place!” opportunity.

Until we take our boat ride on the Thames, and the tour guide actually brings up The Grapes as one of the tourist attractions.  We can’t see it from our trip, but it’s in everybody’s mind now.  The next day when we’re at the Tower of London I bring it up on my phone and it *looks* close, but not really close enough that we want to go on an adventure.  But that night I do figure out the nearest tube (subway) stop, so I have that info. Google tells me that it’s 8 minutes from that stop.

Long story short the kids convince my wife that we should go for it, because despite not being a “real” tourist attraction, this is the kind of thing I came here to see.  So they green light the adventure and we’re off.  We get off at our stop, immediately have no idea where to go next, ask somebody.  He shows us a map that shows our destination outside the “15 minute walk” window and tells us it’s more like 20 minutes, and that we should take the bus. We have not had luck with busses so far so I suggest we walk.

We walk outside and immediately forget everything the guy told us.  I’ve long said that my achilles’ heel is “directions while in a building.”  People say things like, “Ok, you’re gonna go out here and you’re gonna take a left” and I’m already lost, because I go outside and there’s a whole central square outside and at least half a dozen possible answers to “take a left”.

We ask a policeman who says, “Oh, Ian McKellen’s place?” he’s the first person that knows it.  Tells us that it’s at least a half hour walk.  That number keeps going up.  We’re convinced now to take the bus. But he also tells us that Sir Ian is there frequently, and that he himself (the officer) had walked in to get a drink and had that, “Wait, did Gandalf just pour my beer?” moment.  Says he’s got Gandalf’s staff up in a case over the bar.

We get on the bus we’ve been told.  You know what else you’re supposed to know other than the bus number? The direction.  After a few stops I get it into my head that we are going the wrong way.  So we get off, cross the street, intend to get on a bus the other way.  We ask the driver if this one will be going where we’re going. He says he’s never heard of it – the place, or the street. Great.  I’m showing him a map.  He says to try a different bus.

We get on a different bus.  Again, a few stops in, conversation with another rider, we’re told we’re going the wrong way. Again, I try to ask the driver, driver has no idea what we’re looking for.  Keep in mind that every time we get on and off the bus it’s taking money off our “oyster cards”, I have no idea when they’re going to run out, with no way to refill them in the middle of nowhere, and we’re lost.  Flag down a taxi? They don’t always take credit, and I don’t know how much cash it’d be to get back home. Uber? My international data connection is far from stable enough to rely on that.

Of course, ou know what family’s do in situations like this. We’re hungry, we’re tired, we’re lost.  So we’re fighting.  Do we keep going? Do we go home? How do we even begin to do either? It’s not a good day.  I’ve long since given up the possibility of finding the place, because even if we do find it, unless Gandalf himself comes out to greet us, I doubt it’s going to live up to the effort we’re putting in.  It’s been a few hours now.

A bus driver has suggested to us that we’re walking distance to a police station, so we start walking that way.  We walk past an Indian restaurant where a man has come out for a smoke, so we give it on last try.  “Two minutes down this road,” he says, walking around the corner of his restaurant.  “Sir Ian’s place.”  Gives us very specific directions, walk past the green building, etc…  Really? We were that close the whole time? Amazing.  Still don’t know how we’ll get home, but at least we’ve achieved our goal.

We’re walking our last mile (so to speak), and I think the whole fam is still thinking “yeah, sure” but as we pass all the milestones the guy told us I’m thinking this has to be it, this has to be it.  And lo and behold, look at the sign I see?

It’s smaller than I expected. I think I thought it was its own building.  But that doesn’t matter.  After taking our pictures I head for the door – but first cope out the ubiquitous posted menu, to plan ahead for what kind of food my kids will eat. It is 3pm.

A sign on the other side of the menu says “Absolutely no under 18s.”  I almost die, but I go into denial instead and figure that perhaps that’s a “at night when it’s a bar” thing.

“Kitchen’s closed,” says a man standing outside smoking.

I wish I had a better ending for the story.  I have a few moments of disbelief, most of the “My wife is gonna kill me” variety.  The man is quite nice, suggesting other places we might try.  We tell him that we’re American tourists who really came all this way specifically to see this place.  He tells us that “Ian’s out filming” anyway.  We end up walking all the way back to the tube station (which, after the variety of “bus going in the wrong direction” missteps, wasn’t all that far away) and having dinner back in more familiar ground.  Never even went in. I kind of wish I at least went in, to see the inside.  I wonder if the dude was lying, like some sort of gatekeeper, and Sir Ian was there at the bar.  I know of course he wasn’t, but you never know, you know?  I was just so dejected, the last thing I wanted to do was walk in, looking like a fool who wasn’t going to stay for a drink or get any food, seeing nothing even remotely resembling “this is a place where you want to take pictures of stuff.”

On Instagram and Facebook some followers were saying, “That’s my local place!” and “Ian is always there.”  I said, “Next time you see him, tell him Shakespeare Geek was looking for him!”

 

So we head out of Stratford-upon-Avon to continue our adventures in London, but fear not! Just like the man himself, our Shakespeare adventure does not stop just because we’ve left home. There’s more to come!

This part of the trip is the family trade-off.  They put up with my stuff, now I put up with theirs.  We see all the touristy stuff – Kensington Palace, Windsor Palace, Buckingham Palace … you get the idea 🙂  I’m spending my time looking for possible Shakespeare connections, of course.  Which, to be honest, I feel a bit bad for.  The story of Queen Victoria does sound very interesting, it’s just that I have no investment in that story like I do with Shakespeare’s time.  I like doing things where I feel like I’m adding to my knowledge — but if I start with “I know nothing about this”, then it can go the other way and just make me feel stupid. It’s hard to go from three days of “Yes, I probably know just a wee bit more about this than the typical tourist” to “Tell me again which queen lived here?”

But London is not without its Shakespeare. I spot one family tree in one castle that starts with James I and I think, “Oo! I know that name!”

 

We head for The Eye, which is a giant ferris wheel, because we’re tourists and that’s just what you do.  I am a bit intrigued because a see a sign that suggests we will be able to see The Globe from the top, but we do not (I have misunderstood the sign).  For the curious, I didn’t find it all it was cracked up to be.  If you’re thinking “I’ve been on ferris wheels before, and this is a big one” think again.  You are in an enclosed capsule, which makes sense as we don’t want people falling out or jumping.  But it’s an enclosed capsule that is big enough to hold, oh, 20-30 people.  And an entire ride around takes over 30 minutes.  So a ride on The Eye is really more like standing around in a room with 30 strangers and looking out the window for half an hour.

We take a boat ride on the Thames after our ferris wheel ride, and finally I get to see my Globe!

Animatedly I point it out to the kids and tell them that’s where we’ll be going soon.  The tour guide points it out as well, telling the story about how the money for seats would be placed in a box, and then those boxes would be taken to the office, which is where we get the term “box office”.

The next day we visit the Tower of London and I get in a few more Shakespeare references as our Beefeater (how do you capitalize that?) guide tells us the story of the various famous people that have lived and died here.  He gets to the Duke of Gloucester and asks if anybody knows what name we know him as.  “Richard III!” I call out.

“Richard III, very good!” he calls back in response.  “A historian!”

“A Shakespearean!” I retort.

Later I go hunting for evidence of the young princes emprisoned and killed in the tower, but can find none.  Apparently there’s some sort of marker telling the story, but I did not see even that. I did, however, find ravens.  Before we left for the trip someone told me the story of the ravens in the Tower of London, and how “if the Tower of London ravens are lost or fly away, the Crown will fall and Britain with it.” I expected this story to be written down somewhere, and it was.  I expected to see some caged ravens, and I did.  But I also spotted some just sort of hanging out, too, which I thought was pretty cool.

As you can see, I was stretching for Shakespeare references during our London time. We took some bus tours and they did point out some potential Shakespeare references, but they were so small and few and far between that I’ve forgotten most of them.  We did see Westminster Abbey and I did search Poet’s Corner, but it was such a zoo and we were rushed through at such a pace, I feel like I probably missed a number of cool things. I specifically tried to find Laurence Olivier (once I saw that he was there!) but could not.  And if I’d known David Garrick was there I think I would have sought him out, too.  (For the record, Scientist’s Corner was much more interesting – seeing Stephen Hawking next to Isaac Newton was an emotional moment on par with seeing Shakespeare’s grave.)

The story continues!

 

I love posing with statues.  With a painting or something that most you can really do is stand next to it. But with statues you can interact, you can climb on them, crowd around them, pose with them, sit and read a book with them.  I’m happy that Statford-upon-Avon is littered with statues of Shakespeare characters.  There should be a treasure map for tourists like me to see them all out and get a prize.

Welcome to Henley Street!

Not gonna lie, this is the first statue I saw and while I was excited that things were getting real, I also kind of thought, “…eh.  All I get is a fool?”  As far as I can tell he was representing all the fools, as there were quotes from several plays adorning the base.  I think a specific fool with a specific quote would have made me happier.

Then I saw something that made me very happy.

There’s the man himself.  Love that he’s way up high, overlooking his domain. The kids even recognized this one, saying, “This is the statue from Gnomeo and Juliet!  He talks!”  I didn’t even make the connection.

But!  The animated version doesn’t give us the good stuff.  What’s Shakespeare looking at?  At the four corners of the statue are his greatest creations…

Lady Macbeth

Falstaff

Henry V

Hamlet

My kids all chose their “spirit animals” here.   I have one Lady Macbeth, one Falstaff and one Hamlet.  I actually had to come back around for that Hamlet picture, I realized the first night that I hadn’t gotten a solo one of him (just one with the kids). Glad I did, I love that picture.

I posted a few of these on social media at the time and one of my Twitter followers added a picture of her own – with a statue I hadn’t seen!  I had to have it. My wife was all, “I know right where that is, we walked right by it.”  ?! Dude!!  Back out we go. Found him!

I actually had to kick some little kids off of him to get this picture. 🙂

Shakespeare Birthplace Garden

The garden outside the Birthplace is adorned with all sort of gifts commemorating Shakespeare’s contemporaries from around the world.  I took this picture specifically for Bardfilm, who I know has an interest in Shakespeare and Asian culture.

New Place

But if you want Shakespeare statues, New Place is the place to be.

First of all we saw this guy, and I audibly exclaimed, “I know this one! I’ve seen it!  This is where this is?”

Then it got weird.  What follows are these very interesting interpretations of the plays.  I had to get them all, but now I really wish I’d labeled them better because I can’t begin to tell you which play is which.  We actually played the game of trying to guess them, and my son was really good at it – until right at the end when we discovered that he was running ahead and looking at the nameplates, the little cheater.

I think the nose gives this one away!  Julius Caesar

Falstaff was fascinating.  I actually took a video, I just can’t figure out how to post it. Falstaff is split down the middle. This is one side.

And here’s the other!

I can’t remember who this poor soul is.  There’s a nameplate right at the bottom but I can’t read it.  Is he holding the swords or being pierced by them? I’m tempted to say Hamlet – it looks like he’s holding a skull – but the face is pretty old for Hamlet.

At first glance I want to say Ariel escaping the cloven pine, but The Tempest comes later on the walk. It turns out this is The Winter’s Tale, which completely wrecks my subject line because I guess we found a Hermione after all!  I had forgotten all about this one when I started the post.

No guess at all. Seriously. Can’t even find somewhere to start.  Anybody?

Too easy.  Well shone, Moon!

This feels like Hamlet to me, but I can’t be sure.

Last but not least we have … any guesses?  The Tempest.

Our Revels Now Are Ended

This post represents the last of our time in Stratford.  From here we move on to London, where there’ll be some Shakespeare content (including a review of our visit to The Globe!) but Thursday morning we say goodbye to the land of Shakespeare and head in to the big city.

Did we see everything we wanted to? Could I ever? I could come back again and agan and see something new every day.  I’m reminded now of a quote from Peter Brook, “Each line in Shakespeare is an atom. The energy that can be released is infinite—if we can split it open.” That’s how I look for Shakespeare in the world around me. Maybe it’s getting to see a whole show, or tour the back stage. Maybe it’s statues of Shakespeare’s most famous heroes, or a line of rowboats with names like Viola and Ophelia, or the Falstaff Hotel or a streetsign for Lysander Lane. Maybe it’s yon cloud that looks like a weasel. I’m always looking for the Shakespeare around me, and that’s why Shakespeare makes life better. Because when I find it, I feel connected to something much, much bigger than I am. For a few days there I got to swim in the deep end of the pool, and I didn’t come close to hitting the bottom.

 

I know my kids trust me.  I know this because, when we first began planning a once in a lifetime trip to Shakespeare’s birthplace, I told them, “Hey listen. We’re all going to pile uncomfortably into a tiny car with a stranger who is going to drive us an hour out of town to see some cool stuff.”

“What kind of cool stuff?” they’d inquire.  “How cool? It must be very cool indeed.”

“Tis, indeed, very cool,” I would tell them. “We’re going to see … a piece of paper.”

“A what now?”

Fast forward to Wednesday and we are indeed cruising along in Jonathan’s car, my son in the trunk (trying to decide whether to make “Help me!” faces to the other cars, I learned later), heading off to see the magical piece of paper known as Shakespeare’s wedding bond.  Along the way we find plenty of stuff to chat about – he’s just been to Denmark and visited Kronborg Castle (aka the setting for Hamlet). We talk about American sports, we touch briefly on politics. I’m trying to keep the conversation less about Shakespeare and more social, so my wife and kids aren’t completely left out.

And suddenly we’re there!  We’re a bit early to meet our contact, so we stop for a coffee and see if we can’t get in to the actual church

 

But alas we cannot.  However I soon discover that the cool stuff is outside, because look who is there to greet us!

How many likenesses of Anne Hathaway do you know of, like, at all?  I know of that one poorly drawn sketch that, as far as I can tell, has only ever been used to say “She wasn’t really an attractive woman.”  So how pleased was I to find a depiction of Will and Anne together?  They even look happy.  Later when I arrived home and showed a coworker this picture he asked when the statue was made, and honestly at the time it never even occurred to me to wonder.  I’m sure it’s not original, it wouldn’t be out in the middle of the street if it had any historical significance. I just like that it exists. So few people think to ever put Shakespeare together with his wife.

Finally it is time and we head into the library and down into the archives (I love getting to go through secure doors and down passageways that only light up when we walk into them!) where we meet Jonathan’s friend Gillian Roberts, Keeper of Shakespearean Treasures…

And just like that, there’s that magical mystical piece of paper I’ve been telling my kids about.  I mean, sure, it’s a whole book of pieces of paper that are no doubt very exciting to the folks researching this area of history. But I’m reminded of the time I wrote a technical magazine article and then took a copy to show my mother.  She stared at it for awhile until, amused, I said, “Can you understand a word of it?”  She said, “I only need to see two words, your name. I’m just looking at that.”

I know the feeling.  Like I always say, I’m here for the Shakespeare.  Here, let me blow it up for you. Halfway down the left page, toward the center:

I am no doubt using the terminology incorrectly in explaining what we’re looking at, so here’s a link to Shakespeare Documented that explains it better What we see here is the entry in the Bishop’s register that famously misspells Anne Hathaway’s name as “Whateley.”  Although there is a Whateley earlier in the register and it’s easy to think that the Bishop just got confused, it also says she’s from Temple Grafton, and nobody knows where that came from.

This is the picture that I’ve been showing people, because it was right there out in the open for us to get up close to (I have pictures with my kids all around it, too).  Also because you can read it.  However, it’s not the only document in the room, or even the most important one.  The actual marriage bond is sitting right next to it, framed and under glass…

The bond (again, see Shakespeare Documented) was the document that there were no reasons why William and Anne should not be married, and, if it turned out later that there were, then the Bishop would not be held responsible or accountable. Unfortunately, it is very hard to read, at least to my layman’s eyes, so without a magnifying glass and my face an inch from the paper I can’t really “feel” this one like the register, you know what I mean?

What of the actual license?  It is lost to history, I’m afraid.  They have on display this book:

Which, if I understood correctly, is where the license *would* have been – but if you can read the header, you’ll see the dates jump from 1577 to 1584. Shakespeare was married in 1582.

When trying to explain the significance of this to my family the best example I could use was, “Imagine we had a chance to go see the Declaration of Independence. Not passing by it in a line like a thousand people do all day to take a picture of it at a distance under glass as we stream past, but to actually be invited into the room, by ourselves, and to be so close and take your pictures so close you could touch it.  The book on the table behind you is two hundred years older than that. So yeah, when you get back to school and your friends are telling you all about their trip to Aruba, you know that thousands and thousands of people get to go to Aruba, but do you know how many people get to do the kind of stuff you’re getting to do?  Pretty much nobody.”

Our hosts, perhaps wondering if this was indeed an exciting treasure to show three teenagers, began rifling through other chests looking for even more cool things to show while we were here.  Who wants a walk through the history plays? Check out the letters and royal seals of Henry V, Henry VIII, Edward VI and James I!

It was odd seeing Henry V’s name out of context (so to speak). I want to go put it in italics just out of habit. You always hear stories about James I, or Henry VIII.  But Henry V I really only know from Shakespeare, so there’s that parallel universe thing your brain does where it says “Oh, whoa, he was a real guy.”  As if a fictional character just stood there in front of you.

On the way out I handed Shakespeare Geek stickers to my new friends Jonathan and Gillian.  I know Jonathan reads the blog, but I have promised to followup with Gillian when these posts go up.  Hi, Gillian! Thanks for the visit and the special access, it was amazing!

We wrap up the afternoon with a walking tour of some of the more historic buildings in Worcestershire and say farewell to Jonathan, with a promise that if he finds himself in America any time soon we will do our best to return the favor. He then presents me with a parting gift!  Which makes me feel a little silly for handing out stickers :), but what can I do about it now?  But the story of his gift is a story for another post.

It was a pleasure meeting you Jonathan! I hope our paths cross again in the future! Thanks infinitely much for making this happen (and for the gift!), especially with my family in tow. I joke about the awkwardness of lugging my teenagers around to see these things they don’t understand (when they’d rather be in Aruba), but I can tell you the price of a trip like that just by searching Expedia.  A trip like this?  Priceless.