Today is our second day in Stratford-upon-Avon. This morning, I woke up early and went on a run through the city. My camera (phone) was dead yesterday, disabling me from taking pictures of our first exploration of the town, nor of Shakespeare’s birthplace. So around 7:30am, I darted through the mostly still streets of Stratford taking pictures like the crazy American that I am.
Fanaticism aside, I really never considered myself a Shakespeare fan-girl before this trip. Yesterday, when our Shakespeare center guide Nick asked each member of the class to state his or her name and reason for coming to Stratford, I answered that I am passionate about poetry and have always loved drama, and I appreciate Shakespeare because he is such a brilliant amalgam of the two. In my class with Professor Pickett this past term, we explored Shakespeare’s use of genre, particularly the way he navigates history and tragedy. However, his magical manipulation of words along with the great complexity of all of his characters is something I wish we could have discussed more—but the thing is, there’s enough discussion material about one character in one Shakespearean play to fill up an entire course.
This morning, our class went back to the Shakespeare Birthplace center to have voice lessons with a member of the RSC (it was amazing; I’ve never thought about words as living, breathing entities with feeling beyond their meaning) and a preparation for tonight’s viewing of Henry IV part I with Nick. The discussion made me eager to go see the play in a few hours, because he confirmed that performance is the key factor in the combination of Shakespeare’s poetry, plot, and characters (“There is no frozen way of doing [Shakespeare’s plays]”-Richard Eyre, Changing Stages), so I can’t wait to see how the RSC’s take on Hal, Falstaff, the play’s intricate relationships and interactions, and history itself, because their take will only augment my own understanding of the text.
Nick concluded his lecture this morning by saying that “Shakespeare’s plays are a great universe of truth,” and he couldn’t be more right. His vastness, the incredible way that Shakespeare manipulates language and character into stories that have become timeless, is what has struck me most even this early in the trip. Pilgrims from as early as 1806 trekked to this little town and carved their names into the window of his birthplace. People come from across the world to sit in the garden outside his house and read his collected works. I’m just another student who has found her way into this picturesque town dotted with swans and statues of Shakespeare’s characters who wants to scratch more deeply at the window of his world, and I’m ok with that. In fact, I couldn’t be more excited. 
(in front of the Market Cross at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Shakespeare walked past this every day.)