Shakespeare's Shrine

Shakespeare's Shrine
Author :
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages : 230
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780812206623
ISBN-13 : 0812206622
Rating : 4/5 (622 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Shakespeare's Shrine by : Julia Thomas

Download or read book Shakespeare's Shrine written by Julia Thomas and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2012-05-24 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anyone who has paid the entry fee to visit Shakespeare's Birthplace on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon—and there are some 700,000 a year who do so—might be forgiven for taking the authenticity of the building for granted. The house, as the official guidebooks state, was purchased by Shakespeare's father, John Shakespeare, in two stages in 1556 and 1575, and William was born and brought up there. The street itself might have changed through the centuries—it is now largely populated by gift and tea shops—but it is easy to imagine little Will playing in the garden of this ancient structure, sitting in the inglenook in the kitchen, or reaching up to turn the Gothic handles on the weathered doors. In Shakespeare's Shrine Julia Thomas reveals just how fully the Birthplace that we visit today is a creation of the nineteenth century. Two hundred years after Shakespeare's death, the run-down house on Henley Street was home to a butcher shop and a pub. Saved from the threat of an ignominious sale to P. T. Barnum, it was purchased for the English nation in 1847 and given the picturesque half-timbered façade first seen in a fanciful 1769 engraving of the building. A perfect confluence of nationalism, nostalgia, and the easy access afforded by rail travel turned the house in which the Bard first drew breath into a major tourist attraction, one artifact in a sea of Shakespeare handkerchiefs, eggcups, and door-knockers. It was clear to Victorians on pilgrimage to Stratford just who Shakespeare was, how he lived, and to whom he belonged, Thomas writes, and the answers were inseparable from Victorian notions of class, domesticity, and national identity. In Shakespeare's Shrine she has written a richly documented and witty account of how both the Bard and the Warwickshire market town of his birth were turned into enduring symbols of British heritage—and of just how closely contemporary visitors to Stratford are following in the footsteps of their Victorian predecessors.


Shakespeare's Shrine Related Books

Shakespeare's Shrine
Language: en
Pages: 230
Authors: Julia Thomas
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2012-05-24 - Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Anyone who has paid the entry fee to visit Shakespeare's Birthplace on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon—and there are some 700,000 a year who do so—migh
At Shakespeare's Shrine
Language: en
Pages: 408
Authors: Charles Frederick Forshaw
Categories: English poetry
Type: BOOK - Published: 1904 - Publisher:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Shakespeare's Shrine, an Indian Story, Essays and Poems
Language: en
Pages: 268
Authors: John Harris
Categories:
Type: BOOK - Published: 1865 - Publisher:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Celebrating Shakespeare
Language: en
Pages: 405
Authors: Clara Calvo
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2015-11-19 - Publisher: Cambridge University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

On the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, this collection opens up the social practices of commemoration to new research and analysis. An international t
Shakespeare’s House
Language: en
Pages: 217
Authors: Richard Schoch
Categories: Biography & Autobiography
Type: BOOK - Published: 2023-11-16 - Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the wide realm of Shakespeare worship, the house in Stratford-upon-Avon where William Shakespeare was born in 1564 – known colloquially as the 'Birthplace'