The School's The Thing

A leaf on The Greenwood Tree, Michael Thompson and Robert Lister

Back to the street across the ford at the River Avon
And so back to Stratford-upon-Avon, this time for a retirement present for my Shakespeare buddy, Michael. We’re enthusiasts for productions of Shakespeare and, in particular since the mid-1970s, the work of the Royal Shakespeare Company. And so I planned a geek day of exhibitions, walks and tourist attractions; things that you can fit in when the demands of paid work are in the past. Luckily for me, I also had a secret weapon for two bits of the day: actor Robert Lister, the partner of Pat, one of my long-standing friends from the world of drama teaching.

The Play's The Thing exhibition at the RSC and the view across the Great Garden at New Place to the theatres

A leaf for his pages
I included a picture of The Greenwood Tree in my blog about New Place, but I didn’t know that Rob and Pat already had an engraved leaf there so it was a thrill to find it on the wall when Rob helped us envision the outline of the roofspace and floor plan of New Place.

Busts in the Schoolroom decorated by pupils at the current school on site

Ripe voice of Raconteur
Rob is a journeyman actor, known for work with the RSC, National, English Touring Theatre, one-man site-specific shows and as Lewis Carmichael in The Archers. On this occasion he was a vivid storyteller bringing to life not only New Place but also the extraordinary Schoolroom and Guildhall, renovated in recent years and opened to the public.

The cradle of the bard's imagination and a very very early Tudor rose (the first ever depicted?)

The child is father of the man
It is inconceivable that Shakespeare didn’t attend the Schoolroom above the Guildhall in Stratford, given the status of his father, John Shakespeare, as alderman, chief magistrate and bailiff at various times. One of the more romantic concepts illustrated in the displays at the Schoolroom and Guildhall was how likely it was that the child Shakespeare would have observed petty trials and travelling actors as his father presided over the Court of Record and granted licenses to the touring companies. The trial scenes in plays like The Merchant of Venice and The Winter’s Tale surely had their seeds sown here. And did the young Shakespeare leave with one of the companies when he was in his early 20s, father of three young children but, critically, son of a man who was facing financial ruin by then? Shakespeare travelled and then started to commute between Warwickshire and the capital, desperate to find a level of success – as he eventually did as actor, writer and, most significantly for his family’s economics, as theatre shareholder and landowner in both London and Stratford.

The Guild of the Holy Cross, next door to the Guildhall with a stained glass window depicting Edward VI and John Shakespeare and extraordinary wall paintings