Getting to tour Westminster Abbey with our study abroad group was such an informative and beautiful experience. Our tour guide Molly, did a great job of being a guide who gave us so much information as well as keeping it so lighthearted and hilarious. She really made the tour everything it was and I loved getting to hear all the knowledge she had to share.
So, we saw a lot of resting places. Seeing the resting places of many of the monarchs and closely related families was so strange. Knowing that their actual bodies were in there and have just been sitting there for hundreds of years is so weird. I know that’s a bit of a childish word to use, but that is the only way that I can think to describe the experience. Especially because of the untraditional presentation of their resting places, it was even more surreal. I expected it to feel more like a crypt, but it felt instead like a sculpture museum oh, and by the way there are dead bodies everywhere.
The other way that people who had passed were marked was on the floor below the feet of the Abbey. There was one specific section that was full of authors and theater-makers. Some of them were buried in the Abbey and others were just honored with markers but not buried there, such as Jane Austen and Shakespeare. Shakespeare was honored with a statute and wall sculpture that was much larger than many of the others. It was a sculpture of his full body, and he was leaning on a sort of dias with a long roll of parchment hanging off of it. His body is actually buried in Stratford-upon-Avon, the place that is most associated with him. He wrote 32 plays in three categories, histories, tragedies, and comedies, and is one of, if not the, most favorite playwrights of all time. By the end of our trip, I will have seen three of his works, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Hamlet.
Another theater maker who was just after Shakespeare’s time was David Garrick. He was an actor, playwright, and theater manager who rose to extremely high levels of fame during his time. Due to this, he was buried inside Westminster Abbey. He also had a large wall monument, which was a sculpture of him pushing aside curtains. It was the most fun monument, as fun as burial sites can be I suppose.
Laurence Olivier was also buried in the abbey. His ashes were buried under a 1 ½ ish foot by 1 ½ ish foot ish tile in the ground. He is who the British version of the Tonys is named after. He was an extremely influential British actor who was beloved by many. He is most well known for his roles in Hamlet and Wuthering Heights. He was also one of the founders of the National Theater, situated now on the south bank of the river Thames.
As for the Abbey itself, it is still a functioning church. There was twice when someone came over the intercom to lower our heads in prayer. Right around us leaving at 12, they also had a church service. While you do have to pay to tour the Abbey, you do not have to pay to go to church there! I am not sure how they managed that, because there really weren’t any seats where the main church area was. My assumption is that there is a smaller chapel where they actually hold church unless it is really big event. I had made the false assumption that the royal families go to church in the Abbey when they are in town, and that was part of the reason it being open to the public shocked me so much, but it turns out they go to church in Winsor.
Theatre in London U of A 