May 29, 2018

A Time-honored Tradition

By Mary Schricker Gemberling

My first exposure to Shakespeare was over fifty years ago in college when I enrolled in a cursory course about his life and writings. William Shakespeare surfaced once again in my early years of teaching when the curriculum demanded that my junior high students read Romeo and Juliet. Over the years I have seen a scattering of Shakespeare performances in various theatres, but it wasn’t until recently that I began to appreciate and understand the brilliance and complexity of his works.

William Shakespeare was born on or about April 23, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, a small English market town located about 100 miles northwest of London along the banks of the River Avon. His father, John, despite little formal education, ran his own business as a glove maker and held the position of alderman in the town council. His mother, Mary Arden Shakespeare, gave birth to eight children, only five of whom survived to adulthood.

On a recent trip to England Gary and I had the opportunity to visit Stratford and tour the home where William Shakespeare grew up. After falling into decay during the first four decades of the nineteenth century a campaign in 1846, led by another literary figure, Charles Dickens, allowed the house to be purchased for three thousand pounds and put into a national trust. Our tour of the home and gardens revealed structures renovated and furnished as it might have appeared in 1574 when the house was full of children.

Although William Shakespeare has been depicted by some as poor and uneducated that wasn’t the case. By the age of four or five, he was enrolled at the King’s New School in Stratford. It is there he received the intense submersion into the classics (studied in Latin) that led to his development as an author.

Little else is known about Shakespeare’s teenage years but we might surmise he was a typical, somewhat rebellious youth. At the age of seventeen, he was a teenage father, having to marry the twenty-six year old women he had made pregnant. It is not known how he supported his wife, baby girl and twins born a few years later, but he did eventually leave for London to begin his career in the theatre. By 1592 he had become an established player and playwright in London and the author of at least seven plays. Within a decade he had become so rich he bought and settled his growing family in New Place, one of Stratford’s biggest houses. He continued to divide his time between the two cities, but retired to Stratford in 1612, quietly enjoying his time with family and friends until his death at the age of fifty-two in 1616. Having written thirty-seven plays, 154 sonnets, and five titled poems, Shakespeare is considered to be the most imposing writer in English Literature. His greatest contribution would probably be the variety of material that he produced during his lifetime. He wrote histories, such as Julius Caesar, love stories like Romeo and Juliet, and comedies such as Taming of the Shrew. His poetry is often quoted as well as lines from his plays. He single-handedly invented new words for the English language such as assassination. His characters are quite believable and appealed to the masses in a time when plays were quite popular in England. Even in today’s entertainment industry, it is difficult to create something that appeals to such a large group of people. Shakespeare’s work is timeless and has been adapted to stage and screen to be viewed in just about every corner of the world.

Many excellent Shakespeare theatres can be found performing around our country, and the Midwest is no exception. One of the closest is in Bloomington, Illinois (about a 2 hour drive east of the Quad Cities). Started in 1978 at the Ewing Manor, The Illinois Shakespeare Festival has grown from rather rustic beginnings to a top tier professional theatre. The Chicago Tribune recently named ISF one of the top twenty must- see cultural attractions in the state of Illinois.

Each year a group of friends from the Quad-Cities join Gary and me on the grounds of Ewing Cultural Center for our annual Shakespeare outing. We arrive about two hours early and stroll around admiring the flowers and looking for the perfect place for our lawn chairs. Once we are settled we set up our picnic, open the wine and visit until it’s time to enter the outdoor theatre where, under the stars, we will once again be wowed by the genius of the writing and the talent of the actors in another Shakespeare production. This year we will be seeing the disreputable but lovable Sir John Falstaff in rare form in Shakespeare’s most farcical play, The Merry Wives of Windsor. Two additional plays being shown at the festival this summer are Henry V and Shakespeare in Love. The festival runs from July 5th through August 11th. Additional information about ticket purchases and other festival events can be found at IllinoisShakes.com or by calling (309) 438-2535.

Experiencing Shakespeare in the open air is a time-honored tradition. So pack your picnic basket, call a few friends and carpool it over to Bloomington, Illinois to join us for a magical evening under the stars!

“Good company, good wine, good welcome, can make good people”…………Henry VIII

Mary, a former educator and Seniors Real Estate Specialist, is the author of three books, The West End Kid, Labor of Love; My Personal Journey through the World of Caregiving, and Hotel Blackhawk; A Century of Elegance.

Filed Under: History

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