Dr Kat and Stratford-upon-Avon

surprise truculently to Aspen [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] hello and welcome back to the channel if you're new here welcome my name is dr. cat and this is reading the past now the start of this video you saw us traveling I'm now back in our flat as you can tell from the bookcase behind me but this is a vlog I suppose of my trip with my husband to stratford-upon-avon I want to look at what's on offer in stratford-upon-avon for visitors or learners is it simply a Disneyland for Shakespeare or is there something more to it what is there and what can we learn from it so with that in mind let's go the RSC or Royal Shakespeare Company is perhaps the most famous export from stratford-upon-avon excluding William Shakespeare himself and certainly it was the reason that I was so keen to go up on this occasion I particularly wanted to see their current production of Tamburlaine which is of course by Christopher Marlowe but nevertheless I was really excited to see this quite infrequently perform play it's a very complex text and it's got some quite difficult and Trixie staging that needs to happen and if you get the chance to go and see it before their run ends I highly recommend because they did not disappoint but their building also houses a museum and it's a museum of theatre history so if you're interested in costume choices set design even the way in which scripts are cut they've also got a First Folio I highly recommend a look at that because they've done it really beautifully perhaps for me one of the most interesting things about this building is the architect so the Royal Shakespeare Company's theatre opens in 1932 on the site of the old burned down memorial theater it is designed by a woman Elizabeth Scott in the 1920s and it makes it the first important building to be built in this can three that was designed by a woman and for me that makes it particularly beautiful to see and experience and enjoy this space I was somewhat surprised that when I got to stratford-upon-avon that while the RSC is there and being promoted the real heavy hitter of a shakespeare offer was the birthplace trust this trust was founded in 1847 by public subscription by 1891 an act of parliament set out to protect the trust for the benefit of the nation they present themselves as being aimed at a full gamut of society so from a child's being introduced to Shakespeare for the first time all the way up to having something on offer for a doctoral student looking to learn more about Shakespeare so I figured that as a former doctoral student with a husband who although not a child has very limited interest in Shakespeare and not much knowledge of it this would be fairly good candidates to test out this theory now I don't know obviously we don't know obviously what it's like to travel there with children but we can talk about how accessible it is and hopefully you'll find that stuff useful the birthplace trust looks after a number of properties one of which we didn't manage to go and see because it was quite far out for us but that was mary arden's chuda farm that's the birthplace and childhood home of shakespeare's mother it's also a place that william himself apparently visited in his own childhood as we didn't go there I won't be talking about that anymore but I think from mary arden's Tudor farm all the way through what's quite interesting about the way the birth place operates is that you can chart Shakespeare's life through the properties they are there for periods of his life and on top of that I think it's possible to I suppose remove the Shakespeare element and also explore it as these are properties that are lived in by people of the past and we can understand them better and our history better by looking at them the birthplace is furnished to appear as it would have done in 1574 when William would have been ten years old and the eldest surviving child of his parents he would have been there with his brothers and sisters Gilbert Joe and and baby Richard it's also the site where Shakespeare's Glover father had his workshop and perhaps shop so that is also represented within the space they have surviving examples of 16th century furniture resting alongside researched reproductions it's also possibly the home of a 18 year old William and his new bride Anne Hathaway straight after their shotgun wedding it also is inherited by William in 1601 after his father's death William subsequently leaves this house to his eldest daughter Susanna also protected by the birthplace is Anne Hathaway's cottage this is a 1460s Hall single room single storey dwelling that expands out as the Hathaway family becomes more affluent yeoman farmers they were in the war trade so they did fairly well out of that exceptionally profitable product the cottage is filled to the brim with lots of period furniture and it's set in an absolutely gorgeous 19th century garden so you can go from shakespeare's birthplace to the home of his wife and then from there you can go on to new place now that's the footprint of the house is all that stands and in it they have built a beautiful garden with lots of lovely pieces of art and you can also see marked out on the floor the footprint of the building and its rooms as it was discovered when it was excavated William purchased his new place as a family home in 1597 he's 33 years old at this time and from being there you find out just how large this house was in fact it was the largest house in the borough probably around about 20 to 30 rooms at the time that William buys it he is incredibly wealthy and influential within his local community by this point in his life of course he is a actor playwright and sharer in the law Chamberlain's and later Kings men by this point when William Dyce his eldest daughter again she seems to certainly be the favorite inherits the property although his wife Anne is allowed to live there until her own death in 1616 the final property that sits underneath the shakespeare's birthplace trust banner is the marital home of that favored elder daughter Susannah and her physician husband John Hall and that is called halls Croft Susannah marries John Hall in 1607 but most of this property they say was built in 1613 for me of particular interest was the references that are made to the medical science at the time of course John Hall being a physician there's lots of medical equipment on display in the house as well as the beautiful examples of furniture and there is also a fantastic physical garden that's being produced outside of which I'm going to speak more about later on in this video for me it is really helpful to have these properties laid out in the way they are that you can experience a time before Shakespeare and also a time after Shakespeare and I think it's interesting that in this town that is so Shakespeare focused the birthplace Trust is willing and able to explore these themes and as far as I'm concerned more power to them for doing so in addition to the RSC and Shakespeare's birthplace trust there are some other places that are certainly worth exploring the churches and monuments that are in Stratford related to Shakespeare and those that are not of particular worthy mention is the guild hall and schoolroom this is a two-story Tudor building on the lower floor you have the old buildings now price of reformation these were rooms of the guild of the Holy Cross they managed to secure eyes and maintain their role within their civic community and maintain their authority and power indeed at a certain time Shakespeare's father John becomes bailiff of this guild it operates a sort of courtroom downstairs upstairs is the schoolroom this is where Shakespeare studied there is a Tudor schoolroom but also a Georgian schoolroom at the back and on the site of the jordan schoolroom that is where visiting companies of players would have to perform their works before the members of the guild in order to get the license to perform in stratford so in this one building we have Shakespeare having his learning we have his capacity to watch his father work in the courts of law we also have his ability to watch the fires acts of his day perform arguably this building may be quite intrinsic to the shaping of the man Shakespeare now I'm not a fan of biography but I think if you're going to engage in it this is a property that you need to come and see and even if you're not it's really worth coming to to experience those legal and educational frameworks that are happening during this period we believe that Shakespeare would have started at this school room in 1571 so he would have been seven along with all the other boys he left school early we think at around fifteen so he didn't complete his education but while he was there he was under the charge of a couple of school masters one of them Thomas Jenkins is played by a costumed historical interpreter and Thomas Jenkins was particularly keen on getting his boys to perform so again we have the legal activities happening downstairs we have the performances of these fine actors for their licensing we also have Shakespeare himself learning not only to read and write and learn these fascinating stories many of he then adapts we also have him being asked to perform so again this is a space that's really worth looking at if you want to try to figure out how Shakespeare become Shakespeare another site we visited was Tudor world and as you're gonna see from the following video clip I wasn't sure about going into this building and Jamie my husband was very keen on taking me in there and took extreme Glee in my discomfort so I'm gonna show you that now because I love my husband very much and I abstract him around many many sites both here and in the past we're now gonna go and have a look around the Tudor World Museum now it is supposed to be done in a Horrible Histories way now one thing I was oh how will history is that while it's not perfect there is an attention to detail or a temptress which details with some elements of dumbing down so that's all from expecting to see here let's see if that's what happens a lot that you're laughing stop trolling me that Elaine for me true the world is confusing because they market themselves as a almost pantomimic Bordas Ripper II London dungeons esque experience I had fears that I was going to see essentially fake history up and down the place that there was going to be no research it was going to be the Henry the eighth has syphilis story played out over and over again and that isn't what it was they claimed in small print that they are a Horrible Histories version and while Horrible Histories as I say it's not perfect it is researched dumbed down certainly but they are paying attention to the details of history and that is what's happening here did I enjoy myself yes it was great fun my husband enjoyed himself too I think kids would love it you get to sit on the beds you get to play with objects you get to fiddle about with stuff and it's great for that while it's not somewhere that I would say this is a must if you've only got a day in Stratford make sure you make it here I wouldn't say that but if you're there for a few days and you've got an afternoon spare it's certainly a really good time and if you're a history geek like myself you won't be annoyed by what they're saying I've thought a lot about how I wanted to present what I found in Stratford and to me it seems the clearest way of doing it is sort of thematic Lee and the themes I want to look at is outside and inside so homes and gardens and then also body and soul as you wander around stratford-upon-avon you check out the birthplace trust and so you can go into the garden of the birthplace and here you can see what it is here is it's a 19th century garden what's missing is the garden of shakespeare his family wouldn't have have known it the outbuildings the stables the physic guard and the vegetable patches and in the rear corner a stage has been erected and on this stage actors perform script from Shakespeare's play when we were there somebody was doing this some Crispin's Day speech from Henry the fifth you can then wander through and go to Anne Hathaway's cottage which is a mile out of Stratford it's a lovely walk through lots of little back alleyways and you actually get to walk through the front door as the hand Hathaways family would have used it so this is perhaps the door that Shakespeare used when he came according it's really nice to experience that to follow in Shakespeare's footsteps you can walk inside these properties and walk through the living spaces and kitchens and bedrooms and it see what the bed and then belief Italy but the trouble which would come out for maybe a maidservant which are possibly some children love it hopped here now in obviously this is Shakespeare's daughter's house but they they say that a bed frame will potentially being in a kind of home of the middle Inc would be a third of the value of the household goods and people would be all-in bears though that inherit they would then marry and have their own children they were potentially dying so beds are not disposable like the Masters might have changed out with a bed frame itself goes generation it's with somebody throughout their whole life sometimes close privy stall here you've got a little setup a little wash station so you could wash maybe your neck and face with some muslin obviously you're not gonna get in the bath because pause and let's the miasma in so we've come upstairs and we've got another example of a bed with that it will truffle underneath which with what looks like a kind of plaited straw mattress and then you've got a teeny-tiny short chair I'm not quite sure what it's for perhaps it's for yes early one and pelipper's that's that's not a suggestion what's coming through here they've actually young they've lost off a section of the wall so you can sort of see how it's structured underneath the wattle and daub but then as now the aspiration was to have a home with the garden as you saw just a moment ago the birthplace garden is from the 19th century there's also a beautiful garden at Anne Hathaway's cottage that also dates from the 19th century new place is itself a garden so you have the patty out of area at the front which has got the footprint of the house but then out the back they have a reconstructed Tudor not garden and I have some footage of us playing in that here we go in the nut garden the way we understand these very watered organized spaces now is that they are an attempt for Tudor people to show that they have mastery over the natural world and one can only assume that in a world where sickness is prevalent and frequently unexplained that some sort of watering or capacity to order the natural world would feel quite comforting this level of kind of design control would be pretty appealing they would imagine two people who were unsure of what the future held with him I'm adding it up that much time yeah do you being pac-man yeah good you done being pac-man now yeah us though the most exceptional garden that we visited was the one at Hall's Croft and here's why so we've just been talking to the gardener here at horse Crofton and we think he's the head gardener for the whole of the Shakespeare's birthplace trust but he is so incredibly not knowledgeable about particularly like the physic garden we've just been talking about physic Gardens with him for like quarter of an hour and it was super interesting and he was really kind and prepared to share his knowledge and it's an absolute gift I think well any kind of historical institution has somebody like that who is just prepared to down tools and just talk to people and be fun with it it's just an absolute blessing what you think what is amazing incredibly knowledgeable and patient was all the questions in there yeah it's a practical knowledge about not just weed like in a book that you will you learn from working yeah it's at least I think that's the thing when when people are kind of when people decry stuff like his experimental archaeology and they don't see it it's real history there is something about putting the clothes on your back putting your hands in the dirt and dealing with this stuff that gives you a knowledge that no amount of book learning or online archival research gonna give you it just isn't you there is something that he understands fundamentally that unless somebody like me was actually digging the ground we just simply wouldn't understand and it's been an absolute gift to meet him and I think he's they're very very very lucky to have him here are you gonna take up horticulture me I don't think I might take up horticulture because I'm incredibly clumsy and I think that me with a large pair of shears is it's bad news but I tell you what use you star and I'll observe down the front here what I was you can see through the camera now is this is all vegetables at the front closest to us there's two vegetable patches and then further back where there's that sort of little pathways that's the physic garden and he's actually reclassified it based on the humors each area is supposed to treat that it's divided into four sections so it would be about blood black bile yellow bile and phlegm so yeah he's he's really divided it up to the right plants with the right space that he's gonna do even more work to segment it up more and more it's gonna be amazing amazing house that was lived in by Susanna Shakespeare's daughter and her husband I have a confession to make I love physic Gardens and the reason for that is because to me they are evidence of a lost knowledge virtually every housewife in the nation in the early modern and medieval period would have had a knowledge of plants and her balls that is so completely lost to us now they would have had an idea of how to bring down a fever how to treat a rash how to deal with a headache just from the plants that were in their garden if they were lucky enough to have one but also from plants they could have found in hedgerows or public land this is knowledge that while it might have been based on something as I talked about in my humoral scientist video that was incorrect the plants still work and I think it's worth mentioning that our medicine is still based on plants the best painkiller that we still use now although it's in different forms it's been made into tablets and liquids and it's been medicalised but its root source is still the opium plant however it's been taken out of our hands we don't have unless you're a particular type of person we don't have opium poppies growing in our back gardens we don't have echinacea we go to a Holland and Barrett other stores are available or we go and see our doctor for a prescription and that is how we are medicating ourselves but we don't have the knowledge that they had so with in halls craft it's absolutely possible that the physician John Hall is using these plants in his own garden to treat his patients but it's also possible that his wife Susanna shakespeare's daughter would have been treating her own family so John and perhaps people in her village perhaps her parents she would have been treating her family with the medicines from her own physic garden and that to me is really interesting that it's not necessarily John the physician that's using this within his household it may and probably was his wife the household manual was aimed at women it's talking about these physic Gardens nevertheless within craft and now I want to kind of talk more about the theme of the body within halls croft there is a lot of medical equipment on display let's have a look at it so it was cataract surgery take the movie cutter we've got a muscle knife a syringe a number four amputations or centromere going through phone we've got a prosthetic nose that covers evil spirits most people actually survived a joke recently bone memories and then we have a flea bleeding health purposes never stays probably hung unfortunate a that we went to horse cross we missed the leech expert and she's actually licensed to keep medical leeches and I think she apparently brings them with her to horse croft so if you get the chance to go and visit and she's there make use of that amazing fund of knowledge when we think about the body I think we also think about how we costume it and across the birthplace there's lots of examples of costume that you can look at and also force your husband to wear because you're bullying him a little bit let's have a look at that to put the cape on no you look majestic look at yourself in the mirror you look absolutely gorgeous I mean you look a little bit like a dog who might you know try and get my stitches out on it like a very happy teacher but if you really want to look at the history of costume then you have to take a trip to the RSC Museum there they have on display the finest examples from their costume archive but they also have this great thing which is an augmented reality whereby you can sort of try on the costumes they're really pumping out this modern way of representing a museum and I think it's brilliant if you're interested in heritage and the displays of history if you want to look at how it's done visiting these various different sites from Tudor world to the various houses helped by the birthplace to the RSC Museum all the way through to the guild hall and school room you're seeing very different ways in which heritage is being presented and very successful ways despite those differences I really recommend checking all of them out of course for our early modern predecessors the body was simply the vessel for the Soul and Shakespeare grew up and lived through a time of spiritual upheaval and that is something that I think is particularly interesting with in stratford-upon-avon because there are displays where you can scratch the surface of Shakespeare and see these wider Reformation and post-reformation contexts first of all on your hit list might be Holy Trinity Church this is the site in which William Shakespeare was both baptized and buried we have the baptismal font and we also have his gravesite he is buried alongside his wife his daughter and her husband and also his granddaughters first husband absolutely worth seeing and visiting is the guild chapel because in the guild chapel you have this spectacular example of a doom painting this is reminding parishioners of the final judgment this is medieval church art and it was whitewashed under the orders of successive monarchs through the Reformation period for it to survive is fascinating and for us to have access to it in this level of quality is absolutely brilliant also it in this chapel is this picture called earth upon earth it is spectacular in the way it has survived it is essentially a memento mori it's reminding worshippers that they too will die that their body is simply a vessel and that their immortal soul is what they should be concerned with all of this gets stripped away through the Reformation it's very difficult for me to think of an example a modern example of what it would have felt like to have these buildings whitewashed the closest I can come and it's even then a fairly poor representation is perhaps if we imagine that every television screen every cinema screen every poster or billboard rather than being in color suddenly becomes black and white maybe that's the closest we can get to understanding or perhaps all of those images get pulled out of our lives if these images have whetted your appetite then a trip again as I mentioned to the schoolroom and Gil is really worth your time because downstairs where the court space would have been where John Shakespeare would have stood his tenure as bailiff at the back they have uncovered an auto painting and even more recently they found this beautiful survivor the face of John the Baptist this was covered up when the guild of holy cross had to secularize but here it is uncovered for us to enjoy now there's also elements of a more superstitious faith practice at Anne Hathaway's cottage we found a witch mark now I couldn't film it because it was simply too dark but carved into the fireplace above the parlor is this fish it's a religious simple meant to ward off evil spirits it's right by the chimney as they often were because spirits were thought to be able to enter through the chimney also on display Anne Hathaway's cottage is this anti evil device it's called a Bartman jerk or a bearded man jug and as that's probably because of the little face with the beard on it and you would stuff this full of herbs and plants and urine urine is fabulous for keeping away evil spirits and demons and it will sit alongside things like which marks and herbs around the door to protect and preserve the home now of course there are plenty of people that have their home blessed by priests today that might call somebody into sage if they think they're haunted plenty of people where evil eyes or put evil eyes on their wall so it's not that uncommon brethren these are beautiful surviving examples that you can experience on your visit to Stratford there are certainly times when stratford-upon-avon feels like Shakespearean Disneyland they really want you to know that shake see this board here that Shakespeare came from here and I understand why when you've got a fabulous heritage export you cannot sell it but and this is the big thing Shakespeare is just the surface when you scratch beneath it whether you're at the RSC or the birthplace trust or the schoolroom when you speak to the room stewards or the costumed interpreters or the people in the book shops you find that there is a wealth of knowledge and a passion for history literary culture theatre history that is unparalleled the people there really care about their heritage and the national culture and its really worth asking some questions because they are helpful and welcoming I didn't find anybody who was keen to fob me off everybody wanted to have a chat about something that war Shakespeare related but also stuff that wasn't Shakespeare related it's brilliant to see this and it's brilliant to experience it and I absolutely loved it so I suppose what I want to say is strap Raven you know come for the Shakespeare experience the mall oh go to your s C and C Tampa Lane but stay scratch the surface dig a little deeper find out about how those who lived at the same time as Shakespeare and before and after him lived how they organized their homes how they shaped their garden and their natural world learn about their bodies how they costumed them but also how they attempted to protect and preserve their souls in increasingly dangerous and uncertain spiritual times a casa no flog video is complete without some additional funny excerpts so if you stayed this long please keep watching because here's some other funny things that we found so if you made at the end of this video thank you and as a reward let's have some hilarity you may have noticed that you've been slightly positioned differently and I'm joined by some friends because when we go away we do love to take a trip down to the shops and to get some souvenirs and when you're talking about souvenirs in stratford-upon-avon you are going to be hard-pressed to avoid a rubber duck they love a rubber duck so I've got an Berlin doc I've got Henry the eighth's duck I've got an Elizabeth the first up I've got obviously a William Shakespeare duct which adorably has a little bit of paper that says - quack or not - quack love we went to a cafe called the 40s which is unsurprisingly forties themed amazing afternoon tea if you're going check it out and there we got Rosen River - duck and we got Spitfire pilot duck we also of course have to come home with William Shakespeare I love him look at him in his little Shakespeare outfit with his little collar it's be sweet we also found some other weird of wonderful things and this is what we learn about them check out this of all the things I never knew I needed desperately want right really William Shakespeare action figure with removable quills and I mean where it has been in my life why didn't I know about this this is absolutely spectacular Thank You Shakespeare's birthplace for showing me that such a wonderful I'm sold absolutely so we've just we're just heading him from the exhibition site we gotta go and have a look around the first place but you had a lot of issues with that last thing the Bullock dagger what was how about there making it up who would actually call a weapon a bowl of dagger that's bollocks let's try to see what I can get past us it's nonsense I mean I don't know why they make you up it's a great viticulture okay okay I tell you what uh Ricky he's brilliant okay I tell you what if you call over that if you can prove to me that it's it's the very deficit seven elaborate hoax I know I'll give you an advance Paula good you soared a lot I think he's done he's done with that we're gonna go look at the birthplace also my husband convinced me with a crippling fear of heights to get on a ferris wheel ignore that face the view was delightful despite the fact that I could hear my heartbeat in my ears Thank You stratford-upon-avon you were wonderful and I can't wait to visit you again if you enjoyed this video and I hope you did please give it a like subscribe and click the bell icon so you know when I'm next uploading if you want to you can find me over on social media on Instagram and Twitter follow me there and let's get into a conversation are you praying to go to stratford-upon-avon what do you think you'd like to go and see what do you think of the things that I've seen there I hope you've enjoyed this and I look forward to seeing you all very soon take care bye bye for now [Music]

Channel: undefined

Views: 16,037

Rating: 4.9883833 out of 5

Keywords: Shakespeare, History, Education, Stratford-upon-Avon, Vlog, Shakespeare's Birthplace, Schoolroom, Guildhall, Reformation, Post-Reformation, RSC, Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine, Staycation, UK Holiday

Id: v7XaaUn-esg

Length: 39min 31sec (2371 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 07 2018