If Music Be The Food Of Love, Play On!

We're celebrating Shakespeare today in Stratford-upon-Avon! We saw the house where his wife grew up and then the one where he was born. His wife's house was surrounded by a beautiful garden with flowers of all kinds and colors! The floors in that house are stone, which was unusual for the time. They were laid down by Anne's grandfather, so we were walking on the same floors that Shakespeare himself walked on when he was courting Anne. At Shakespeare's childhood home, we walked around and listened to stories from the guides. I learned that the beds were all so short because people slept in the sitting position to protect their souls from the devil. Children slept in their parents's room until they were able to pass the "candle" test, meaning they were able to carry a candle all the way around the house in the dark without setting anything on fire. They were also in the habit of dressing their young sons like girls until they passed this test because it was well known that the devil was only interested in little boys. Fun stuff. The best part about Shakespeare's childhood home was the actors in the garden. A boy and a girl were acting out various famous scenes from Shakespeare. When we showed up, they were doing the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, and they then proceeded to regale us with Beatrice and Benedick from "Much Ado About Nothing," a scene from "MacBeth," one from "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Hamlet's famous soliloquy, Richard III's big opening speech, and a fun little scene from "The Taming of the Shrew." These guys were amazing! You would shout out a scene or a play and they would jump right into it, acting it out flawlessly. We had a lot of fun watching them, and we got a pretty extensive tour through Shakespeare's major plays! My favorite Shakespeare play is "Twelfth Night," and that was sadly lacking from our mini-performance this afternoon, but that's okay because we're going to see the whole play tonight at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. I'm massively excited about this. Unfortunately, I know already that I won't have internet tomorrow night, barring any unforseen miracles, so I'll have to report on our Liverpool exploits at a later date. Saturday we go to Preston fro two days before heading up to Scotland! I only have a week and a couple of days before this whole thing is over! Time has certainly flown by.