The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0369 Friday, 28 April 2006
[1] From: David Kathman <
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Date: Thursday, 27 Apr 2006 11:05:32 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0361 Stratford
[2] From: Carol Barton <
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Date: Thursday, 27 Apr 2006 12:07:05 -0400 (EDT)
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0361 Stratford
[3] From: Terence Hawkes <
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Date: Thursday, 27 Apr 2006 17:39:29 +0100
Subj: Stratford
[4] From: David Kathman <
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Date: Thursday, 27 Apr 2006 23:05:31 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0361 Stratford
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: David Kathman <
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Date: Thursday, 27 Apr 2006 11:05:32 -0500
Subject: 17.0361 Stratford
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0361 Stratford
Gabriel Egan or others with closer ties to Stratford may have more to
say on this, but Peter Bridgman's rant about the Birthplace seems to me
to contain a number of distortions.
Peter Bridgman wrote:
>Gabriel Egan writes ...
>
>>It seems implied here that the birthplace is a fake and that
>>Barton was disappointed when she realized that it was. If
>>so, evidence is required. If not-if Barton was just disappointed
>>that a 16th-century house isn't as she expected-then I'd suggest
>>that this was a valuable learning experience.
>
>Carol Barton is entirely right. The so-called "birthplace" is an
>outrageous fake.
>
>In Shakespeare's time there were two adjoining timber-roofed
>properties on the site of the present detached tile-roofed "birthplace".
>WS must have been born in the eastern property as his father only
>purchased the western property when WS was 11 (the western half
>now has the period cradle!).
I am not aware of any evidence that the property purchased by John
Shakespeare after William's birth was specifically the western property;
as far as I recall, the records are ambiguous on this point, only noting
that the property was on Henley Street. However, it's possible that my
memory of the facts is faulty. Does Mr. Bridgman have any documentation
to back up this assertion?
>At some time between 1603 and 1646 a tenant in the eastern
>property transformed it into a pub called the Maidenhead (later
>the Swan and Maidenhead). In 1762 Richard Greene made a
>sketch of the two buildings, showing dormer windows in the
>roofs and a porch in front of the western property. Thirty years
>later, dormer windows and porch were already gone and the
>western property was now a butcher's shop. In 1808 a new buyer,
>Thomas Court, removed the exterior timber framing and refaced
>the eastern property, i.e. the pub, in red brick. Only in 1847 was
>a Shakespeare Birthplace committee formed to purchase the two
>properties and set up a birthplace monument. Incredibly, they
>demolished both buildings and built the present fake-Tudor
>building to resemble Greene's 1762 sketch.
As far as I'm aware, the Trust did not "demolish" the Birthplace
properties; they renovated and restored them to make them look roughly
as they would have in the 16th century, which is not the same thing as
"demolishing" them. They did demolish the buildings on either side of
the Birthplace, to reduce the risk of fire.
>None of the period furniture in the present building has any
>connection with the Shakespeare family.
I don't think anybody associated with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust
has ever claimed that the furniture now in the Birthplace is the
original furniture that the Shakespeare family owned. It is simply
period furniture, and perhaps some replicas (I'm not sure off the top of
my head), to give visitors a feel for what the interior of the home
would have been like in the 16th century. One may find this too
touristy for one's taste, but to imply that the Trust has been
dishonest, as Mr. Bridgman appears to do, seems disingenuous to me.
Dave Kathman
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[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Carol Barton <
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Date: Thursday, 27 Apr 2006 12:07:05 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: 17.0361 Stratford
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0361 Stratford
Thank you, Peter. I hadn't intended to respond to Mr. Egan's diatribe
(more in the spirit of giving Hardy less busywork to do, than because I
couldn't). However: to second your response, for which many thanks, the
only apparently "authentic" anything at the Birthplace was a small piece
of wattle-and-daub covered by acrylic--everything else could and was
being touched and mauled by the many visitors (and clearly had little
value to anyone, even the proprietors).
I apologize for the typo--I meant "Avon" where I wrote "Arden" (with
reference to the robotic swans), as well as for what I'm sure Mr. Egan
will regard my own sentimentality with respect to the numerous
properties of such landmarks. However: I far preferred to stand at the
British Library viewing Caxton's _Canterbury Tales_ (open, to my
delight, to the Wife of Bath's prologue!), or at Westminster in front of
his sarcophagus (whispering "Whan that Aprill . . ."), or at the quiet
little church in the Barbican where Milton's bones lie, or even in the
Bucks house where he once lived, than to be anywhere in the tourist trap
that is Stratford. What I missed, and dearly so, was the sense of
history, of connection, of some vestige of the boy who would grow to be
Shakespeare in anything I saw or felt. Anne Hathaway's house was already
closed by the time we got there; perhaps that would have been more "real."
And I heard the paid tour guide tell some of the most outrageous fibs
man ever uttered as matter of factly as if they were gospel--to people
who clearly didn't know enough to laugh in his face.
In all--the experience was a sad one, for someone who had been
introduced to Shakespeare by English parents whose life circumstances
hadn't allowed for the completion of A-levels . . . but who nonetheless
held the Bard of Avon in everlasting esteem.
Thank you for understanding.
Carol Barton
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Terence Hawkes <
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Date: Thursday, 27 Apr 2006 17:39:29 +0100
Subject: Stratford
Brian Willis will know that I'm a patient man. But why on earth would a
version of Othello, given in German, be of any interest to an audience
in Stratford?
T. Hawkes
[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: David Kathman <
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Date: Thursday, 27 Apr 2006 23:05:31 -0500
Subject: 17.0361 Stratford
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0361 Stratford
Peter Bridgman wrote:
>Gabriel Egan writes ...
>
>>It seems implied here that the birthplace is a fake and that
>>Barton was disappointed when she realized that it was. If
>>so, evidence is required. If not-if Barton was just disappointed
>>that a 16th-century house isn't as she expected-then I'd suggest
>>that this was a valuable learning experience.
>
>Carol Barton is entirely right. The so-called "birthplace" is an
>outrageous fake.
>
>In Shakespeare's time there were two adjoining timber-roofed
>properties on the site of the present detached tile-roofed "birthplace".
>WS must have been born in the eastern property as his father only
>purchased the western property when WS was 11 (the western half
>now has the period cradle!).
Peter Bridgman's assertion that the western part of the Shakespeare
Birthplace wasn't bought until William was 11 didn't sound quite right,
and now I've had a chance to confirm this by looking in Schoenbaum's
*William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life* and Mark Eccles's *Shakespeare
in Warwickshire*. Schoenbaum points out that the first record of John
Shakespeare in 1552 shows that he was a householder in Henley Street
then, so presumably this was at least part of the Birthplace.
Schoenbaum says that "this must have been in the western part of the big
double house; the wing in which, in afterdays known as the Birthplace,
has made of Stratford a secular shrine" (15). I'm not sure what
evidence there is that this was the western part, but on the other hand,
I know of no evidence that it *wasn't* the western part; as I said in my
earlier post, the evidence is ambiguous. Both Schoenbaum (15) and
Eccles (24) then note that in 1556, John Shakespeare bought from Edward
West a house with adjacent garden in Henley Street. This must have been
the other half of the Birthplace; Schoenbaum says that "this was to be
the eastern wing, known to posterity as the Woolshop", though again, I'm
not aware of any definitive evidence as to which wing it was. So by
1556, eight years before William Shakespeare was born, John Shakespeare
owned two houses in Henley Street, which presumably were the two
adjacent houses later joined together and today preserved as
"Shakespeare's Birthplace". It's reasonable to believe that William
Shakespeare was born in one or the other of them, though we can never
know with 100% certainty.
Mr. Bridgman's assertion that "his father only purchased the western
property when WS was 11" appears to be based on the fact that in 1575,
John Shakespeare purchased two houses in Stratford, with gardens and
orchards, from Edmund and Emma Hall. However, as Eccles notes, "There
is nothing to show that either of these houses was in Henley Street" (27).
Dave Kathman
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