Shakespeare Rules

When Kymberly and Justin were in London for a visit, we took a day trip to Oxford and Stratford-upon-Avon.  As you probably know, Shakespeare was born and lived in Stratford, and while there we were able to see his birth home.  The city is full of Shakespeare as he is the reason so many tourists come.  The Royal Shakespeare Theatre is based in Stratford, and in the center (or, when in England, centre) of town there is a statue dedicated to Shakespeare. This statue memorialized the tragedies and the comedies, and located in the four corners around the statue are four famous characters, such as Hamlet.  Unfortunately, the city was doing a lot of contruction around the statue, and I wasn't able to to get a great picture of the characters.  The statue itself was not touched by construction, and the picture to the left is part of the memorial.

Many towns in England are on rivers, and you can usually tell because the town is "upon" something, and generally evokes images of quaint little English towns. For example, the town Kingston (which is in London, close to me) is called Kingston-upon-Thames as it is on the River Thames. (So, really, London could be called London-upon-Thames, but the words quaint and little do not exactly fit with London).   The same is true for Stratford, which is "upon" the River Avon.  Interestingly the word "avon" means river in England.  So, the picture to the right is the River Avon, or the Avon Avon (ha ha), in Stratford just across from the Shakespeare statue.

Stratford is quite a lovely little town, and it easy to see why Shakespeare, despite all the fun of various sorts he had in London, always came back home.