In September, I went with my family to Stratford-upon-Avon to see a production of Shakespeare's Hamlet. I had never been to Stratford before, nor had I ever seen Hamlet, so it was a great experience.

We flew into Birmingham Airport in the afternoon, and collected our car - a Citroen Picasso: loads of room in the front, and a windscreen that went right up over your head to give an un-interrupted view of the sky, but seats very hard and uncomfortable in the back. It's not too far of a drive to Stratford, and it was made more interesting by using a Sat-Nav. The routes it chooses don't always match with the signposts. An element of faith is needed. Nevertheless, we arrived at a point on a lane in the countryside a few miles from Stratford and were told we had reached our destination. We knew we were going to a point in the countryside, but had expected there to be a house! We drove on a bit in the hope of finding the place, and passed a couple of houses which were obviously not our accommodation. By this time it was completely dark. A car came up quickly behind us, so we pulled into a gateway and decided to ring the house where we were going. After a couple of attempts to explain where we were, it turned out we were in the gateway of the house we were looking for. We were quickly shown to our little apartment.

Hotels in Stratford are expensive and all booked out. You can stay in a bland place near a motorway 15 miles from the town, but it is totally without character, and for the four of us, we'd need two rooms. The place we chose to stay was an attic apartment in a farm complex. It was purpose-built and had two bedrooms, bathroom and main room with kitchenette, sofa and dining table. There was a TV, DVD player and even some Top Gear DVDs. The girls were delighted. Best of all, the whole thing cost less than one room in the bland hotel.

A short drive into the town brought us to a nice Indian Restaurant, where we had a lovely meal.

When we woke up early next morning we were treated to a view of big empty fields, and a hawk of some sort sitting on a haystack. Then we heard, and soon saw, a flock of geese flying across the countryside, honking as they went. It really was idyllic.

After a leisurely breakfast, we headed into Stratford, only about 2 miles away. Parking is not easy to find, but we eventually found a car park beside a hospital and paid for a day's parking. We went on a long walking tour around the town. Stratford has lots of narrow streets, and quite a few old buildings dating from the time of Shakespeare.



And here we come to the mystery of the Bard. We know that a man calling himself William Shakespeare wrote many plays in London. And we know that a man named William Shakespeare lived in Stratford, and know a little bit about him. But the mystery is that we don't know that these two were the same person. There is some evidence, but it's not certain.

Our tour took us around the streets and we saw the outsides of many old houses. We didn't go into any, though we could have done. We saw the house that Shakespeare owned when he was old and rich, which he passed on to his children. We saw the house in which he was born. And we saw the Church of the Holy Trinity, where he is buried. Shakespeare worked in the church as a lay vicar, so his grave was given pride of place on the altar when he died, and the graves of his family are beside his. On the wall above the grave is a statue of Shakespeare. The inscription under it makes some reference to him as a writer. This is the first piece of evidence that the rich man of Stratford was Shakespeare the playwright, the man who wrote Hamlet and all the other plays. The statue isn't a very good one, and it was originally painted, then whitewashed to make it more in keeping with what should be in a church, and finally painted again to restore it, without any idea what colour it originally was. The statue was made during the lifetime of Shakespeare's wife, so we have to hope that it is a reasonably good likeness.

As well as all the Shakespeare stuff, there is some more to see in Stratford. There's a brass rubbing centre; there's a lovely marina and bridge across the river, a pleasant place to hang around; and there's a nice market place at the other end of the town. There's an interesting church on the main street which was owned by some sort of a crusading guild - restoration work on it uncovered some pictures which have now been reproduced as tapestries. They tell the story of St Helena, the mother of Roman emperor Constantine the Great, who was Christianity's first pilgrim. She went on a trip of to the Holy Land and came back with a large number of amazing relics, including a cross which everyone acknowledged was the cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified. But you're never far from the presence of the Bard. There are statues of him, plaques to him and carved scenes from his plays throughout the town.

In the course of our walk, we had a very nice lunch in a pub - English pubs offer very good food. We also wandered into a few shops and bought some nice souvenirs. At the end of the afternoon, we were footsore but really felt we had been introduced to the town of Stratford.

After a quick trip back to the apartment to freshen up, we headed in to the main event, Hamlet.

The Royal Shakespeare Company have been based in Stratford for yonks, but their main theatre down beside the River had got rather dilapidated, so they eventually got approval to demolish it and rebuild. This has obviously been going on for a while now. In the meantime, they've built a temporary theatre called the Courtyard. This is a big steel cube, with bare chipboard on the inside. Seats are comfortable, but set in a sort of a steel scaffolding structure. It bears all the marks of a temporary structure. But once the lights go out, the play's the thing. You forget everything else.

This production was second to none, with David Tennant (better known as Doctor Who) in the role of Hamlet, and Patrick Stewart (still well known as Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek) as his evil uncle Claudius. I'm not going to explain the plot of Hamlet here. Most of you already know it. If you don't, then go to a performance; you'll enjoy it. This production used a very large, bare, square stage with the audience around it on three sides. The fourth side featured a mirror wall. Sections of the wall could turn to allow people to come through, and there were a few surprises such as people behind the mirrors being visible when the lights back there were turned on. David Tennant was superb as Hamlet. He's such a heart-throb that there were huge numbers of teenage girls in the audience. I've never seen such a young audience at a play, which has to be a good thing. But I have to say his acting was faultless. Whatever reason the girls had for coming, they saw some great acting, from Tennant and from all the rest of the cast too.

During the interval, my daughter explained to me that Ophelia's suicide in the river is remarkably similar to an actual suicide that took place in Stratford around the time of Shakespeare. A young woman drowned herself in the Avon - and the surname of the real-life girl? It was Hamlet! This is strong evidence that Shakespeare knew Stratford well. He would be unlikely to have heard of such an event in a country town unless he was from there.

Hamlet is rather a long play, the longest of all of the Bard's works. But it didn't drag at all. It was exciting up to the end. As we were leaving, we overheard some of the young girls saying 'We're going Tennant hunting'. I'm sure there was the inevitable queue for autographs, but we decided not to bother, despite my daughters' fanatical love of Doctor Who.

We did other stuff on our short trip to England which I'm not going to talk about here, but I thought you might be interested in my first impressions of Shakespeare's town and one of his greatest plays. I enjoyed Stratford and will certainly visit again.

Gnomon

23.10.08 Front Page

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