Shakespeare’s Church in Stratford-Upon-Avon

This week’s Tudor Time Traveller location is Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-Upon-Avon.

Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-Upon-Avon

During a visit to Stratford-Upon-Avon last year I took this photo of the Holy Trinity Church better known as Shakespeare’s Church as this is where the famous poet and playwright was baptised on the 24^th April 1564 and buried on the 25^th April 1616.

The present church was begun in 1210 and looks much the same as the church Shakespeare would have known and worshipped in as a boy and again on his return to Stratford in retirement.

During Henry VIII’s reformation, the original chantry, rood screen, much of the carving and most of the glass were destroyed. Henry closed the college and sold off the tax income privileges, “the duty of employing a Priest and looking after the Chancel went with the privileges” (Holy Trinity Church, 2008). In 1605, the son of a glove-maker, one William Shakespeare, purchased a share in them and, along with it, the right of burial in the chancel.

Shakespeare is not alone in the chancel, as buried along side him are his wife, Ann Hathaway, his daughter, Suzanna and son-in-law, Dr John Hall.

During his daughter’s lifetime, Shakespeare’s funerary monument was erected. Made by Gerard Johnson and mounted on the north wall of the chancel it features a bust of the poet holding a quill pen in one hand and a piece of paper in the other.

Shakespeare's Funerary Monument

The bust is said to be a good likeness of William Shakespeare, although last year a startling discovery was made when a previously unknown sitter in the Cobbe portrait was identified, by one of the world’ s leading Shakespeare experts, as a portrait of Shakespeare. Claimed to be the only portrait of him painted during his lifetime.

Read the full article here.

Below the bust is engraved a Latin epitaph and a poem in English.  The poem reads:

STAY PASSENGER, WHY GOEST THOV BY SO FAST? READ IF THOV CANST, WHOM ENVIOVS DEATH HATH PLAST WITH IN THIS MONVMENT SHAKSPEARE: WITH WHOME, QVICK NATVRE DIDE: WHOSE NAME, DOTH DECK YS TOMBE, FAR MORE, THEN COST: SIEH ALL, YT HE HATH WRITT, LEAVES LIVING ART, BVT PAGE, TO SERVE HIS WITT.

Is this the real Shakespeare?

I absolutely loved Stratford-Upon-Avon! Apart from visiting the church I also visited his birthplace and found it so surreal to be standing in the exact room where he was born. I could not believe that I was stepping where Shakespeare had once walked and that the walls now echoing with my voice were once witness to Shakespeare’s words.  Do words get any more valuable than this?

I will leave you with a quote from Shakespeare’s Henry VIII in which the ‘3^rd Gentleman’ describes the coronation of Queen Anne Boleyn:

At length her grace rose, and with modest paces

Came to the altar, where she kneel’d, and saint-like

Cast her fair eyes to heaven, and pray’d devoutly;

Then rose again and bow’d her to the people;

When by the archbishop of Canterbury

She had all the royal makings of a queen,

As holy oil, Edward Confessor’s crown,

The rod, and bird of peace, and all such emblems

Laid nobly on her. . . .