So Long, Farewell, [Some German Phrase] Goodbye...

Hi all, sorry for the lack of updates. I've been entrenched in finals for the past week or so, but the good news is that they went pretty well. Knock on wood. Anyway, I'm off for a week to visit Scotland and all the wonderful people up there! I will take oodles of pictures and no doubt accrue multiple priceless anecdotes to share with people for the rest of my life. I can't wait, so I'm going to go sleep so the time passes quickly. I have to get up at an ungodly hour to catch my flight, but that just means more time with family, so it's worth it. Anyway, I must go, talk to everyone in a week when I get back (or on the 8th, specifically).

Also, because it has something to do with my title (in an indirect way):

Knole Doubt About It

First off, I apologize for the title. Next, I want to tell you about my adventure to Sevenoaks and the Knole House that's been there since the 15th century.

We were supposed to go to Bath, but it turns out that it gets mighty expensive for a ticket on the weekends, and not all of the group was willing to pay the heightened rate. So we went to Sevenoaks instead, which was much cheaper but still a fun trip. It's about 40 minutes out of London by train. We went because the town includes a huge house called Knole, surrounded by a 40 acre deer park. The house has enough history to fill a textbook, but it was a royal residence for a while, it has been passed through all kinds of nobility, and it's still the residence of some nobles today. I thought the most interesting thing about the house was the room and bed where James II awoke to learn William of Orange had arrived with an army. There were huge galleries of portraits of almost every notable English historical figure for 400 years, and countless furniture sets from various eras. All in all, it was a very beautiful old house, and I have many pictures of the outside, but none on the inside (prohibited). Anyway, to the pictures.

Here is the town from the British Rail station.

Just a little path leading off to a neighbourhood along the way to Knole. There were several little spots like this.

This was the graveyard of the church's parish. I'm not sure if you're supposed to take pictures of gravestones, but I'm pretty sure they're there to be remembered, so what does it hurt?

The parish itself. The gravestones dated back to the late 18th century, so I suppose that's how old it is.

The gatehouse to the Knole estate. It was pretty busy with tourists; I try to keep them out of the pictures to varying degrees of success.

There will be several pictures of the grounds of the deer park. I won't caption them, I'll just let them speak for themselves. By the way, it may look sunny but it was cold and windy too. Not that I minded, of course.

And of course the deer were plenty as well. This was a herd (is that what a group of deer is called?) with one male who kept making a noise somewhere between a burp and croak. It was either to warn us to stay away or to call more of his herd to him. They were very pretty.

One of them was ignoring the call, however, so I got a better look.

Here's the house from the front lawn. Very autumn-y.

I try to give as many angles as possible in the next few pictures.

This was in the inner courtyard. There was some construction (a common theme everywhere I go, it seems) but not too much.

More of the first courtyard. I couldn't get a better view on the statue since we weren't allowed on the grass.

Last before we went in the house. You would know it was a deer park even without the dear, eh?

And we were outside again, where it had gotten cloudier. This is the first courtyard from the other end.

There was a tearoom around the back (we didn't eat there, choosing a cheaper and more substantial Italian restaurant in town), and up a slope from the back you could get a better picture of the sheer size of the place. It has something like a staircase for every day of the week, and a...bedroom for every week of the year, or something like that.

Some deer accosted us on the way out to thank us ever so much for stopping by.

And that is that. Lunch/dinner in town and back in London that evening. It was a very fun trip. The walk through the park was fun too, and I've decided to search out another place like it next weekend for a hike. I'll need the study break for finals, I'm sure. I did quite well on my midterms, if I may partake in some shameless self-promotion, so I'm optimistic about the finals. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the pictures, I will have more from a mystery location next week!

One More Newsless Week

Hello all. There was no trip this week, so I have no pictures and not much to tell. I spent the weekend doing homework and walking around London to research a paper for my history course. Next week I'm taking a voluntary trip to Bathe, so I will have pictures galore.

During the week I went to see Endgame by Samuel Beckett. It's a one act play about a blind, lame man sitting in a room ordering around his servant who can't sit down while his two legless parents yell at him from inside two garbage cans in the corner. The story was about as strange as the premise, and it involves dependency and nihilism and disillusionment. One of my friends said you weren't supposed to find it funny, but I found it quite funny anyway. I'm not sure I'd see it again, though.

Next week we see The Power of Yes. I'll update when I can. Night!

Joey-Upon-Stratford-Upon-Avon

Hello all. I've just got back from Stratford, and I'm putting off doing my homework in order to tell you about the trip. I wanted to get the details posted while they were still fresh, too. It was a fantastic trip, and I have many interesting things to tell you and pictures to show you. So, let me begin.

We left on Friday at about noon on a bus and drove the 2 and a half hours up to Stratford. We were to stay two nights, seeing three plays (which I'll talk about later) and do various other interesting things (also to be detailed). So, starting with the arrival. EDIT: This is weird, but to read the next caption you need to highlight the text. I can't fix it, so just start highlighting here and drag down to read. Sorry!

This is the name of the bed and breakfast I stayed in, along with about 1/3 of the roughly 20 students and faculty on the trip. The group had three B&B's between them. I was in a room with my already-room mate Sam Fairfield and another Grinnellian, Sam Leevee. It was a nice B&B, albeit one with an awful shower. They did a nice breakfast, though. I wanted very much for the owner to be like Basil Fawlty, but he was nice and polite, unfortunately.

We left the B&Bs fairly early on to walk through Stratford and arrive at the Church where Shakespeare is buried. The program head (and also professor of the Shakespeare class) Donna Vinter gave us info on Shakespeare's family and life in Stratford.

It was a nice graveyard. If there can be such a thing.

The lecture was given as we sat by the river Avon. It is a really nice little town, and all the better since we went out of tourist season.

Unfortunately, they were doing heavy construction in the Church and this was as close as I could get to Shakespeare's grave. I know it's not much of a picture, but maybe you can imagine it. I'll include the epitaph he wrote for himself (possibly the last poem he ever wrote):

GOOD FREND FOR JESUS SAKE FORBEARE TO
DIGG THE DUST ENCLOASED HEARE.
BLEST BE YE MAN YT SPARES THES STONES AND
CURST BE HE YT MOVES MY BONES

The back of the church. The construction was an eye-sore, I wish they had been doing it another weekend.

More graveyard.

This is the view of the Avon from a bridge near the town centre. It was chilly when we were there, hovering in the 40s and 50s the entire time.

A swan. There were enough ducks and swans in this town to take if over if they ever organized.

That night we saw our first play, Julius Caesar, as performed in the Courtyard Theatre by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Needless to say it was excellent, though there were a few problems. They chose to have these projections in the background during the speech and battle scenes, showing hoards of Romans yelling or standing or fighting. They were really distracting, especially during the Mark Anthony funeral speech, which is my favourite speech in Shakespeare. I wouldn't go on about it (the tickets were free, so I don't want to sound ingrateful) but it plays into my story later.

The next morning was our time to visit all the tourist spots in Stratford, and I got this pictures of the Shakespeare Statue by the river in the town centre. Not much else to say: there he is.

Situated around him were some of his most famous characters. Of course, the first one I will show you I've forgotten the name of (the other two I remember). I thiiiiiiink this was King Lear. I've never read it, so maybe I'm just guessing. If anyone knows, let me know.

Not hard to figure this one out. Alas, poor Iorick.

She's a little tougher, but you might remember she had a little trouble with a certain damn spot.

Another picture-less interlude. We got out tickets for all the Shakespeare activities and went on the brief tour at the Shakespeare museum. It was narrated a series of videos narrated by Judi Dench and Patrick Stewart. I can't escape this guy. They were pretty good videos, with a number of clips of film adaptations, and they had a copy of his ring and an original first Folio. However, they were a little hyperbolic sometimes, saying he was the greatest writer basically ever. I love Shakespeare, I really do, but he is not the end-all-be-all of English literature. We owe him a lot, but not everything. Anyway.

Then we visited the house Shakespeare was born in, which has become a sort of pilgrimage for people for many years. It gets around a half a million visitors every year, apparently. Interesting enough, though with very low ceilings. My favourite part was a window that had been signed by some of the people who have visited. It had people like Shelley and Keats, so that was fun. Oh, that window is the birth-room, where it all began.

The house.

This was one of the main streets in Stratford. Nice town, as I said before.

Here is the church in which was the Edward VI grammar school, where Shakespeare learned to read and write.

A sign for the school.

Next we went to the house of Shakespeare's daughter, Susannah, and her husband the physician. This was a little bit of a bust, since it doesn't actually have much to do with Shakespeare. It was all about medicine. I just included a picture of the four humours because I think that theory is hilarious.

Ah, but then my favourite part of the trip (besides the plays). I went by myself to Anne Hathaway's cottage, which was about a mile outside of town. This was the start of the walk, which would lead through fields and neighbourhoods.

It was a cloudy, windy day, but I didn't mind. It was lovely to walk through the town, peeking into so many people's backyards.

At the cottage, there were orchards stretching out, the ground littered with apples. Almost no one was there, it really is the time of the year to go.

There is the cottage itself. Nothing too fascinating, except for the bed where Shakespeare might have made the mistake that trapped him in a loveless marriage for his whole life. Okay, that's some conjecture, but I like to think he truly disdained her.

There was a section called the orchard and statue walk, and it was so beautiful. There was no path, just rows of trees and statues donated by different artists. I'll shows you most of them.

I won't be able to remember all of the plays these reference, so forgive me. If you can figure it out, let me know.

This is meant to be Falstaff's belly.

Brutus. Or, Brvtvs, if you will.

Twelfth Night. I've never read it, so I won't judge.

?

There was a hedge maze in the orchard also, and I got to the middle of it. All that was there was this bench. I thought I might as well take a picture to remember my struggle.

The maze from the outside.

Another shot of Stratford, this one the town's Southern side from the river. They were doing construction on the other theatre the RSC uses.

So ends the pictures, but not the trip. That afternoon at 1:30 we saw As You Like It, which if you remember I had already seen at the Globe. This was a somewhat darker version, though it isn't fair to call it truly dark because it's a comedy in the end. I enjoyed this version as much as the other, some things more and some less. The show itself was better directed, I feel, than Julius Caesar, with more subtlety and no projection. Rosalind was better in this production as well. Like the Globe, the Courtyard has a projected stage so the cast really interacts with the audience. It's a joy to see Shakespeare done so well, there's almost nothing better for me.

Then it was dinner at a pub (I forget which) and another show, The Winter's Tale. Again, very good, it was costumed as if set in the Victorian period, and the set was beautiful and sad. The actor playing Leontes (who also played Caesar) was excellent, which was good since our class met with him for breakfast the following morning (this morning). His name was Greg Hicks, if anyone knows him. His name is still Greg Hicks if no one does, though. He was gracious and friendly, answering our questions about his interpretation of Leontes and his take on Shakespeare. He mentioned that he also thought the projections in JC were tacky, and gave us a bit of the politics going on behind the curtain. He really was very good to come out, since it was the last performance of TWT last night and the cast was out at a bar called The Black Swan celebrating. We actually went to the bar and saw him. So he may have been a bit hungover, but he made it anyway. Okay, I'm rambling, sorry.

Such was the trip, and I'm tired and behind on homework but happy. Well, not too behind, have no fear. But this past week has included four Shakespeare plays (we saw All's Well That End's Well at the National Theatre on Wednesday), four hours of Shakespeare classes, and two days in Stratford. I am burned out on the man, I have to say. We see Endgame tomorrow, so I'll get back to you on that. Hope you enjoyed the pictures!