Current Location: Stratford-Upon-Avon, Enland

The first thing I have to do is wish Jennifer a happy birthday!

There is a part of me which is continually surprised to find myself here in England. I’ve been exposed to England throughout my life — mostly in the form of television shows which have been imported by PBS, or Shakespearean plays performed by a college or other theater group, or through history classes in high school or college. Like the rest of this trip, it’s hardly seemed real for me to be here.

So yesterday I arrived in Stratford-Upon-Avon, the place where William Shakespeare was born and where he retired and died (most of his professional life was actually spent in London). When I got here I discovered that there is actually a Shakespeare festival going on — the summer theater festival, in fact — being put on by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Usually when I read about such festivals and check out the schedules, I find that the plays are usually the most obscure plays — Titus Andronicus, for example, or one of the less interesting history plays. This time I discovered that the very night I arrived, the Royal Shakespeare Company would be performing Hamlet, which I’m pretentious enough to say is my favorite Shakespearean play. Needless to say, I bought my ticket and sat spellbound while the play was performed. It was, in many ways, a very traditionally performed Elizabethan play; the scenery was spartan and the costumes were slight, just like in the days of the Kings Players, when Shakespeare and his company relied on dialogue to convey location and where scenery was meant to be suggestive of the location. Very elaborate scenery intended to look exactly like the location of the play and expensive costumes are a more modern invention.

And tonight I went and saw King John, one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known history plays. King John tells the story of the conflict over the throne of England after the death of Richard I and before the accession of Henry III (I think; I may have gotten the succession wrong). King John, brother of King Richard, supported by his mother, struggles to hold on to the throne while young Arthur, illegitimate son of Richard I, is also put forth as the true heir to the throne (supported by his own mother and by the king of France). The two opposing forces meet outside the small city of Algiers to try to win that city’s support; Algiers promises to support the true King of England, as soon as they know who that is, and requires both sides to prove the legitimacy of their claim. As the play progresses, England and France unite, young Arthur is killed while trying to escape the prison that King John has put him in, battles ensue, the duke of Austria is killed and so on. At the end of a sequence of treachery on the part of King John’s sometimes supporters and manipulations by the Catholic church, neither party wins; King John dies in an abbey, and the forces of the French retreat from a near invasion of England, and Henry, son of King John, is proclaimed King.

King John is an unusual play for Shakespeare, and is rarely performed. Some critics think that its structure is odd (which it is), but most people dislike the qualities of ambiguity and amorality which infuse the play. In most of Shakepseare’s history plays, such as Henry V or Richard III, it’s very clear who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, and there is a clear progression of the meta-plot which more or less echoes the succession to the throne of Queen Elizabeth I. King John reflects a much darker period of that history where kingly succession is marked not by heroism or purity of character but by political ambition, ambiguity of character, amorality, and political "spin". In that sense, it is more truly about politics and history than the canonical history plays. As I sat enraptured in the Swan Theater, I couldn’t help but think that the efforts of both forces to win the support of the people of Algiers too closely reflected the last presidential election in the United States; and when I explained my thinking to the woman who runs a bookshop near the birthplace of Shakespeare, she laughed and told me that the comparison had been made before but that people think it better reflects the current election campaign in the United Kingdom. Since I’m not really familiar with this campaign (having watched only enough news on television to catch the famous "Prescott Punch" in Wales), I couldn’t answer to that. But we were both enjoying comparing King John to George Bush, Prince Arthur to Al Gore, and the city of Algiers to Florida. I couldn’t think of a suitable party that the Papal legate would have represented but I’m sure I can come up with one if I put my mind to it.

Obviously, there is more to do in Stratford-Upon-Avon than watch plays; there are several tourist attractions in the area as well, including the house that Shakespeare himself was born in, and the house that his wife, Ann Hathaway, lived in prior to their marriage. Yesterday I visited the Hathaway House and learned, to my surprise, that the Hathaway Family had lived in that very same house from the 1400’s to the early 1900’s. The way that the people of Ireland and the UK live and breathe the history that surrounds them surprises me enough; to realize that there are homes in the world where the same family has lived for nearly five hundred years came as an even bigger surprise. My own home that I share with Jennifer has existed for less than three months, and while the home that my parents live in has been around for longer than that, their occupancy of it doesn’t even go back two decades, let alone generations. Can you imagine looking at a house, knowing that you were born in that house, and your mother or father before you and their mother or father before them? It honestly staggers the imagination.

Tomorrow I leave Stratford-Upon-Avon to head for London; I’ll have less than two days in London before I fly out to Amsterdam to catch my flight to San Francisco. And there are less than three days of my trip. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been traveling for nearly a month now; where has the time gone?