Thursday 22 August 2024: A small group of our UK-based Ramsay Postgraduate Scholars recently participated in a day trip to Stratford-upon-Avon, where William Shakespeare was born and spent most of his life.
2023 Ramsay Postgraduate Scholar Stuart Nicholls, a quantum physicist from Adelaide is studying a Master of Advanced Study in Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge. He wrote this reflection on the day:
“A small group of Ramsay scholars from London, Oxford and Cambridge made a day trip to Stratford-upon-Avon, a small town in the countryside northwest of London, on Tuesday 11 June. This was a literary pilgrimage to the place where William Shakespeare was born, where he lived much of his life and wrote a number of important works, and where he died and was buried.
“The first stop on the itinerary was Shakespeare’s birthplace, a half-timbered house, still standing in the centre of town, with lovely gardens. The house is filled with period furniture, some of it from the house itself, and the tour guides in each room gave an overview of what life was like for the Shakespeare family. William’s father John Shakespeare was a tanner, making leather gloves and accessories which he sold out of a shopfront window of his studio facing onto the street. Also of interest, following our recent dinner with Dr Ankur Baria, in which he discussed the West from an Indian perspective and a song of Rabindranath Tagore, was a statue of the great Indian poet in the gardens, inscribed with a beautiful ode to Shakespeare that he wrote.
“Translated into English it reads:
In Honour of William Shakespeare
When by the far-away sea your fiery disk appeared from behind the unseen, O Poet, O Sun.
England’s horizon felt you near her breast and took you to be her own.
She kissed your forehead, caught you in the arms of her forest branches.
Hid you behind her mist mantle and watched you in the green sward where fairies love to play among the meadow flowers.
A few early birds sang your hymn of praise, while the rest of the woodland choir were asleep.
Then at the silent beckoning of the Eternal you rose higher and higher till you reached the mid sky, making all quarters of heaven your own.
Therefore, at this moment, after the end of centuries, the palm groves by the Indian sea raise their tremulous branches to the sky murmuring your praise.
“The next destination was Anne Hathaway Cottage, located a pleasant half-hour stroll out of town. This is the place where Shakespeare’s wife was born, and which the Hathaway family continuously occupied for more than 300 years. Larger than Shakespeare’s birthplace and surrounded by an apple orchard and colourful gardens, this is where much of the couple’s courtship took place. Shakespeare bucked the trend of his era, not undergoing a seven-year apprenticeship to learn a trade as his father had done, and which meant most men were not married until finishing their apprenticeship in their early-mid-twenties. Instead, at 18, he married Anne Hathaway who was 8 years his senior. How Shakespeare, 21 years old with a wife and three children and without having learned a trade, financially supported his family is not documented – he may have relied on support from his parents.
“Next, we visited the New Place, the site of the large home that Shakespeare purchased after becoming wealthy from the success of his plays. The original home is no longer standing, but there was an exhibit about it and more beautiful gardens. The day ended with a pleasant dinner at a restaurant in town.
“Thank you to my fellow scholar Genia Hill for helping to organise the day, and to the Ramsay Centre for supporting our study in the UK and this day excursion.”
Interested in our Ramsay Postgraduate Scholarships? For more information visit: https://www.ramsaycentre.org/scholarships-courses/postgraduate-scholarships/
Media contact: Sarah Switzer 0407 816 098 / sarah.switzer@ramsaycentre.org