We concluded our epic journey in the little town of Shakespeare’s birth, Stratford-upon-Avon. This place was completely different from the hustle and bustle of London. Practically everything closed at 5:00pm, and everything was around a 10 minute walk away from wherever you happened to be. It was interesting to walk around and know that this is where it all started for Shakespeare. I think these days we see him as this larger than life figure, almost like this god of writing. But, standing in front of his burial register, we saw he was just listed as Will Shakespeare. He wasn’t a mythological being. He wasn’t the William Shakespeare to most people, he was just Will. I thought about that a lot while walking around Stratford, considering that this was his most “just Will” place. It made him and his writings feel a lot more real and tangible. How many times did people tell him he should just become a glovemaker like his father? Once he married Anne Hathaway he wouldn’t have been able to do an apprenticeship. Were the two of them just surviving on hope that his writings would take off? These were the things I thought about everywhere in Stratford.
It’s been two days since I got home from my England (sorry Susan). I wrote half of this post in Heathrow, a little bit in DFW, and now I’m finishing it up in my chair, back home in Arkansas, with a cup of tea I bought from out favorite tea store in Covent Gardens. I didn’t have any interim period where the trip felt not over yet because touching down in the states and going home opened me up to dealing with all the problems I’d been pushing down because “I’m in London, I’ll deal with it later”. If that sounds like a downer, it’s because it is. The biggest culture shock I’ve experienced was having to reckon with the fact that London wasn’t really just my life anymore, that I have more going on then wake up, museum, shop, take a nap, go see a show.
But as much as London was a sort of escape for me, I think I did a lot of growing up on this trip. Or just finally realized all the growing up I had done. And that’s one thing I’ll always be grateful for.
So long London, you were grand.
Theatre in London U of A 