For all that we explore here the importance of Shakespeare to children, the Bard himself endures in popular imagination as utterly adult. In portraits of the day, he appears as the handsome and dignified creator of theatrical worlds; in films like Shakespeare in Love, he is a rakish, romantic lead. Yet in her book An Introduction to Shakespeare (1951), historian Marchette Chute looks to his childhood to illuminate a life-changing event: the day that young William Shakespeare ― born in the cottage pictured here ― saw his first play.
Just the notion of Shakespeare encountering theatre for the first time is striking enough ― who can tell what ideas and images were later brought to life because of that childhood spectacle?
Chute’s retelling of that fateful day is all the more evocative, capturing the excitement of the town of Stratford ― of which Shakespeare’s father was the mayor ― at the arrival of the actors. The town hall became their theatre, the setting of plays filled with sensational scenes, humor, and “moral maxims.” As with Shakespeare’s own plays, there was something for everyone.
Chute closes this account on a contemplative note: “Every year the small boys of Stratford could watch [the actors] unpack their wagons, and some of them must have had visions of growing up to be actors themselves.” There was, of course, only one William Shakespeare; but the dreams of those young people live on hundreds of years later, in the spirit of any child introduced to Shakespeare today. Who knows ― the child in your class might be the next Bard!
©2018