Visit to Shakespeare Room in the State Library

This was a fabulous visit for all who attended. Not only were we able to touch the chair, made from the tree, that grew in the garden, next to the house where Shakespeare lived in Statford… but we also were introduced to the symbolism surrounding two of his great benefactors, The Earl of Southampton (young Thomas Wriothesly) and Queen Elizabeth.

Both their crests adorn this amazing room with its linen fold timber inlay, its Hampton Court ceiling and its stained glass renditions of “All the Worlds a Stage”… and the seven ages of man.  The Hampton court ceiling is adorned with so much of the mythical imagery that we find in the plays and the poems especially A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest  and “Venus and Adonis”.

Thank you Helen, Janice and Julia for making this such a memorable experience for us all, especially for bringing us up to speed not only with all those amazing Shakespearian online resources in the State Library, but all those rare books that connected us physically with the 16^th and early 17^th Centuries.

We had to complete our tour with a visitation to the Shakespeare statue which once stood in Shakespeare Place but is now cruelly flanked by two arms of the Eastern Distributor… here we all are (or those that could fit within the lens) perched below Shakespeare  and his creations: Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Portia, Falstaff (all with faces turned appropriately away from the camera staring at the feet of the master.

We then sauntered over to the Renaissance rooms in the New South Art Gallery where we experienced the world as Shakespeare himself might have done through the Renaissance images of secular activities and landscapes and the Humanist transition to a religion of more down to earth figures. A collection of images from the visit are all collected in the Shakespeare and Renaissance link at the top of this page- or go here 🙂 But please scroll to the very bottom for the gallery of pictures.

Thank you all for your interest and your attention!