SHRINES of BRITAIN'S GLORY

Waikato Times, Volume 100, Issue 16815, 5 June 1926, Page 19 (Supplement)

SHRINES of BRITAIN'S GLORY

STRATFORD-ON-AVON.

There is very little in the history of the picturesque market town of Strat-ford-on-Avon to distinguish it from the hundreds of other similar towns which are tp bo found throughout rural Britain, and it derives the w'hole of its great fame and popularity from the fact that it happens to be the place of birLh and burial of William Shakespeare.

Every year many thousands of tourists make a round of the numerous buildings in Stratford and the vicinity which are claimed to be associated with the Illustrious poet, but the details which we possess of his life and doings are so scanty that his connection with many of the so-called Shakespearian shrines is mainly conjectural. The reputed birthplace is on Henley Street and consists of two adjoining houses in which his father carried on business as a general merchant. The room in which the poet is said to have been born in 1564 is the front one on the first floor of the westerly house, but the event cannot possibly have taken place there, as his father did not acquire that portion of the premises until 1575, and it is also extremely doubtful whether he was born in the easterly house, although it had been in the possession of his father for at least eight years prior to the date of the birth. For more than a century after Shakespeare’s death it was a tradition in Stratford that he had been born in Brook House, a riverside cottage which belonged to his parents in 1504, and which was believed to have been their residence at the time of William’s birth, while Hie house on Henley Street was sunpposed to be used solely for the purpose of his father’s business. No one can explain why the reputed birthplace was changed from Brook House to Henley Street, but in 1874 the latter premises i were purchased by public subscription j and vested in trustees, who carefully restored the houses as far as possible to their original condition, although the cellar in the basement is the only portion which can be truly said to be , in the same state as it was in the days of Shakespeare. Armies of Visitors, All traces of Brook House have disappeared, and the double house on Henley Street is interesting owing to 1 the fact that Shakespeare undoubtedly worked on the premises during the lime that lie assisted in his father’s business. Every year the “birth-; place" is visited by over GO,OOO tour- j ists, and among the signatures of dis- j languished visitors which arc to be seen scribbled or scratched on the walls or window-panes of the reputed, birth-room are those of: Izaak Walton, Sir Walter Scott, Thomas Carlyle, j Dickens, Thackeray and Robert Brown- I iug. |

The house known as New Place, in I which Shakespeare passed the last five years of his life and died in 1616, was pulled down in 1700, and the house which took its place was demolished by the owner in 1760 owing (o a dis-j pute between himself and the town j council regarding the amount of an j assessment. Ever since that time the j site lias been vacant, and is now laid i out as a garden, in which visitors are j

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shown a mulberry tree said to have been grown from a cutting of an older tree, which ig supposed to have been planted on the spot by Shakespeare himself, and which was destroyed by the owner of the second houso out of 6pite. The resting-place of Shakespeare is in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church, and the fact that he is buried in the most prominent part of the sacred edifice is generally regarded as a special mark of recognition of the genius of Stratford’s most famous son by his fellow-townsmen, but it is nothing of the sort. Shakespeare purchased a lease of the parochial titles, which gave him and his family the right of burial within the chancel of the parish church. The doggerel inscription on his gravestone, which is popularly, but erroneously believed to be the composition of the poet himself, runs as follows:

“Good friend, for Jesu’s sake, forbear “To dig the dust enclosed here. “Blessed be he that spares these stones,

“But cursed be he that moves my bones.”

There are two buildings in Stratford which are of special interest to American visitors. One is the Bed Lion Hotel, in which Washington Irving stayed when he wrote his famous description of tile town, and in which llie two rooms occupied by the great writer arc preserved in the same condition as they were on the occasion of his visit a century ago. The other is the so-called Harvard House, which is maintained as a memorial of John Harvard, but the place is only very remotely connected with the founder of Hie celebrated American university, as it was no more than the girlhood home of iiis mother, Katherine Itogers, who left it for ever when she became the wife of Robert Harvard. Other Show Places,

j The Grammar School, at which Shakespeare received his scanty education, is a well-prtserved relic of the past, and is attached to a religious guild which was founded in the 13th ; century. Flight-Lieut. Warneford, V.G., who was the first airman lo destroy a Zeppelin in the late Great War, was a pupil at the school. A spacious old farmhouse at Wilmcote is one of tho most interesting of the numerous Shakespearian shrines in the vicinity of Stratford, as it was undoubtedly the girlhood home of his mother, Mary Arden, and must have been very familiar to him, for one of his favourite resorts in his latter days was the village inn at Wilmcote, where he was hugely entertained by the quaint sayings and antics of a halfwitted man employed at a nearby mill. The claim that the picturesque thatched cottage at Shottery, which was purchased and restored by the trustees of tho “birthplace" in 18D2, was tlie maiden home of Anne Hathaway and the scene of the poet’s courtship of his future wife, is open to grave doubt, but, even if they arc not all they are claimed to be, this anil many other Shakespearian showplaees in the vicinity are buildings which stood on Iho site in Shakespeare’s day, and possess an undoubted interest as having been well-known to greatest genius in the annals of English literature.