The eye
of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not
seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue
to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream
was.

Where do I begin?  How do you build up something in your mind for your entire adult life, until it becomes as close as you’ll ever get to a religious pilgrimage, and then one day, there you are?  How do you describe that? I’m torn between my desire to brain dump literally everything I saw and felt and did, and my knowledge that nothing I write will capture it.  Who do I think I am, Shakespeare? Even trying to craft this post a flood of Shakespeare memories came pouring back into my brain as I likened my trip to how the London Olympics both opened and closed with Caliban’s “I cried to dream again” speech.  But as you can see, I chose Bottom’s Dream. Because the experience was one of wonder, and when it came time to leave I was ok. I wasn’t sad.  But I was changed.

I don’t know how many posts I’m going to get out of the trip. There’s going to be at least half a dozen.  I don’t want to miss anything, but I don’t want to drag it out forever either.  As I post, I hope people with questions will jump into the comments or social media and ask, because though I may find it difficult to sit down and write about, I’m certainly more than ok talking about it.  So if I don’t get to something that you really wanted to know, ask away and I’ll answer.

How This Is Going To Work

To recap the details of the trip and put some context on the stories – we took a red-eye into London, leaving Sunday night and arriving Monday morning. We then got a car service to Stratford-upon-Avon, where we stayed in an Airbnb Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.  Thursday it was back into London for a week (including a show at The Globe) before heading back home.  Along the way there’s several dozen pictures I’ve got to share, including a number of pictures of things I’ll bet you’ve never seen before!

With that in mind I’ll leave you with the view outside the front door of our Airbnb in Stratford:

If you can’t read it, that’s the back of The Shakespeare Centre, home to The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, and the spiritual center of my universe for the last several decades.  All we have to do is cross the street.

But first? Sleep.

To be continued …

By the time you read this, I’ll be on a plane to London. From there we’re going straight to Stratford Upon Avon, Shakespeare’s birthplace and a town I’m still not sure I’m spelling properly, and my life will be forever changed.

For years people have asked me whether I’ve been to Stratford, and the answer has always been no.  Once I knew that I would be going I started wondering how to change my answer, because it’s hardly sufficient to say, “Not yet, but I’m going in August.”

The more time passed, the more I inflated the idea in my head as something I’d likely never do.  At times I likened it to a religious pilgrimage, then I decided that was a bit sacrilegious to folks so I stopped saying that. But it doesn’t change the fact that I didn’t expect to ever go there. My wife had been to London shortly before we got married, and it didn’t seem fair, with the big world we live in, to say “Hey, I want you to go back to someplace you’ve already been, just for me.”  I don’t really work like that.  Worse, all I could think for myself was “I will want to spend every waking moment doing Shakespeare things, and that would be boring for them, so then I would deliberately cut back on the Shakespeare, but then I wouldn’t get out of the trip what I’d built up in my head….” and on and on and on.

Until one day the family got together and said, “We want to take you to see Shakespeare’s birthplace.”

That was probably a year ago. And here we are! Hours to go before I’m on a plane. Last night the kids asked me what I was looking forward to the most.  I said, “Checking it off the list.”  They said, “Wow, that’s a disappointing answer.”

I said, “Let me put it another way.  Up to this point in my life I can say – have to say – No, I’ve never been to Stratford.  After this trip?  I will be able to say I have.  This is a defining moment in my life.”

I can’t wait.  See you all soon!

-SG

 

 

It’s now one week until my trip to Stratford Upon Avon!  Lodgings locations, travel there (from landing in London) arranged.  We’ve got our “Full Story” tickets to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, which gets us into:

• the birthplace
• New Place
• Hall’s Croft
• Anne Hathaway’s Cottage
• Mary Arden’s Farm

Additionally, here’s what I know we have to see (but I know nothing about their relative location to each other, whether they need tickets in advance, or what have you):

• Must have a meal at the Dirty Duck
• The school, of course.
• The church / grave, of course

Does anybody know that “The Creaky Cauldron” is?  I don’t think it’s a Shakespeare thing but it seemed like something my kids might like, to break up the Shakespeare.

Alas we will not be seeing a show at the RSC.  A family member actually gave us tickets to a show at the Globe (when we go to London the next week) and I could not justify the cost/time of making my family sit through two lengthy Shakespeare shows.

If anybody’s got last minute tips I’m all ears!  Looking for any local knowledge about how far things are apart from each other (we’ve arranged no special transportation so I’m hoping everything’s a reasonable walk), what we might need tickets for in advance, what times of day might be better for some things than others, that sort of thing.  I’ve been waiting my whole life for this trip so anything and everything that makes it awesome, I’m interested!

Question!  How exactly does one hire a car? Say we did want to go somewhere just outside of town.  I hear Kenilworth Castle is nice.  Or Warwick? What’s my best way to get my family there?

Can’t wait!

 

So my trip to Stratford Upon Avon is fast approaching!  I will be in Shakespeare’s birthplace Monday, Aug 19 through Wednesday, Aug 21. This is a big deal for me, and for my family. I don’t want to be just another tourist. Surely, after running the original Shakespeare blog for fourteen years now and looking at social media audience north of twenty thousand users, surely  I can figure out some ways to make it something that only I could do.

Here’s my first idea. I have mentioned once or twice that I’ve got Shakespeare Geek Merchandise for sale. 🙂  My family all have some, as you can no doubt imagine. I hope you have some, too.  It’s not about the money, I do it to put more Shakespeare out in the world. I’ve often said that the dream is to randomly spot one of my own t-shirts in the wild. Then I could say, “Hey, I like your shirt! Shakespeare Geek, right?  Me too!”

Where’s Waldo?

So let’s do that.  When I’m in Stratford I’m going to be wearing my own merchandise.  If you’re in Stratford, and you have any SG merchandise, do the same. Make it Shakespeare Geek Day.  Because if I spot you I am going to come up and say, “Hey, I like your shirt!” and you’re going to be all, “Dude, wait, are you Shakespeare Geek? That’s awesome.”  And then we can take a picture and I’ll post it on social media, and my kids will be all, “Wait, people actually *know* you?” and I’ll be all, “Yeah, happens all the time.”

I might even be armed with Shakespeare Geek stickers or something to give out. That’s something else I’ve always wanted, to have swag to hand out to fans.

I have no idea the cross-section of “people who own Shakespeare Geek merchandise” and “people who will be in SUA on those days” with “people who are reading this post and want to play”, but hey, that’s part of the fun.  I don’t plan on running up to everybody with a Shakespeare t-shirt because I expect that there’ll be more than a few.  But I can recognize my own merchandise, I’ll know immediately which ones are mine.

And just in case you never realized that we have merchandise, click here now! 🙂

 

Loyal readers may remember a little over three years ago when we got to help with a very cool request.  A reader from Canada wrote in to let us know that his new purebred Doberman puppy needed a full show name to be part of the Shakespeare theme of his litter.  It seems that these dogs get an “everyday” name, such as Toby, but also a full name from the breeder (in this case, Braebrook), so Toby’s full name was actually “Braebrook’s To Be Or Not To Be.”

After some back and forth and digging through texts, with the opening restriction that her everyday name would be River, we ended up on what turned out to be obvious, yet perfect, “Braebrook’s Sweet Swan of Avon”:

Well I got to thinking the other day (when Twitter analytics told me that “dogs” is the most popular interest of my followers), what’s River look like now?  I reached out to Keir, River’s owner who made the original request, and he was happy to provide us with a new picture. Take a look at River now!  Keir told me that River’s on the left, but I’m relatively certain that’s Keir.  So we’ll assume that River is the one in the middle 🙂

That’s her brother, Rancher, on the other side. Keir’s update:

River has become her papa’s little girl. She and I are nearly inseparable, only breaks away from me long enough to boss her older, and bigger, brother ‘Rancher’ around. Seriously, she’s the boss! At the same time, they too have a relationship bonded by love and devotion.

It only just occurred to me while writing this post that I want to know Rancher’s full name.  If he’s part of the same litter (being her brother, and all), he should have a Shakespeare name as well!  I’ll update the post if/when I find out.

Thanks for the update, Keir!  That’s a very, very good girl you’ve got there. Please feel free to keep in touch and send more pictures!