Houses that matter

Shakespeare lived here. At Stratford Upon Avon in England. Yours truly revisited the experience of her trip to all the houses he inhabited

The greatest writer of English language was born in Stratford Upon Avon in England. Stratford is a small town with every bar, street, store taking pride in deploying the bard’s name to tap into customers or tourists. Say for example, the name of the pub or store includes ‘Shakespeare’ in its bigger title. At a distance ahead of the poet’s birth house was a large statute of his, and a crowd of tourists posing around it. I did too, holding a Shakespearean-era look alike fountain pen in my hand.

Shakespeare’s two-storey birth house was situated on a sprawling campus, symbolizing the poet’s good life back in the day. Of the furniture that was on the ground floor, a writing table-chair set is what the mind remembers vividly. And of course, the sight of a fountain pen dipped inside an ink pot. The guide on the floor said that Mr Shakespeare lived in this house until about he was eighteen (or 21? Unsure if yours truly correctly remembers the guide’s words), after which he moved into a new house that he bought of the fortune he made from his writings. I think that the guide also mentioned that in his adult life Shakespeare had rented the ground floor of his birth house to his sister for a sum of rupees. The wizard of words seemed to be good at economics too; given the fact that he charged his blood sister to pay for a house that neither of them had built. “There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so…” in his own words.

On the first and the last floor of the house were several rooms. One room had the fire place sealed with a glass slab. On the slab was printed the popular lines from Shakespeare’s work: ‘infant mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms…’ – As you like it. On the same floor was also a glass window which was covered by hundreds of signatures of visitors in the past. This house was like a shrine to several famous 
authors and poets such as Charles Dickens and John Keats who came here to seek inspiration for their writing.

Most artefacts and interiors of this well-maintained abode of the wordsmith are replicated to resemble the original, with the skeleton of the house having survived the test of time. On the premises is also a souvenir store replete with all things Shakespeare. There were fridge magnets; t-shirts; crockery; soaps; portraits; and other knick-knacks etched or printed with famous lines by the bard such as ‘to be or not to be’; ‘all the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players’; ‘the course of true love never runs smooth’ …I bought three fridge magnets with the bard on one; his house on another; and a quote on the third. Also got myself a fountain pen that resembled the kind our dear poet wrote with. Being in the souvenir store with well-crafted sentences was immensely inspirational.

At a distance from this house was another house that Shakespeare bought of his money. However, it was razed to the ground. The newly constructed structure that replaced it served mostly like a museum, displaying artefacts such as crockery, clothes, etc, from that era. Some of them are actually what was in the original house!

The campus floor was decorated with plate-inscriptions of famous Shakespearean lines. A section included a money minting machine from where my host minted a golden coin with the bard embossed on it. Along with the fridge magnets, the coin is also one of my prized possessions that find a place in the security drawer of my room.

It is common knowledge that Shakespeare was married to Anne Hathaway. I went up to her maiden house as well, which was an unusual design from the inside. The lady guide on the floor narrated us the story of how Anne Hathaway brought Mr Shakespeare luck after he married her. She continues to; given the fact that there was a ticket one had to buy to visit her maiden house with an apple tree full of the 
brightest red apples on its premises.