Shakespeare bust outside Guildhall and Art Gallery.

 

Shakespeare bust. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

See That Painting of Ophelia - and the hair that grew in the grave

Painting of Ophelia by John Everett Millais.

The painting of Ophelia floating in the water gave me the creeps when I was young. The origin of the story is bad enough. It comes from Hamlet.

SHAKESPEARE'S PLAY HAMLET

 She is his girlfriend, would-be fiancee. Whilst he is suicidal ('to be or not to be') she is the one who does the deed. After Hamlet has killed her father Polonius, who was hiding behind a curtain.

Does that remind you of Romeo and Juliet and their double suicide? I never noticed the resemblance, the parallels of the plots before.

To go back to the romantic yet unnerving painting, only years later did I see the picture again in the Guildhall in London. I also remember the story of the wife or girlfriend of the poet who buried his poems in her grave and dug the poems up again later, only to find that her hair had grown after she was buried. Spooky. 

Two stories about the same woman. 

I saw Ophelia at the free Guildhall exhibition on the ground floor. The ground floor gallery is above the Roman floor excavations, which you can see through a window (though you pay to go inside to the exhibition.

The picture of Ophelia was an unexpected bonus. I was gratified to find out that the girl portrayed was merely posing. However, the artist's model was in poor mental and physical shape and caught Pneumonia. I don't know what posing, still, as the dead body of a suicide does to your thought process, but it is not exactly a recipe for positive thinking. 

The young artist's model later died of an overdose.

HAIR

What of the growing hair story? Years ago I read that a dead body dehydrates and shrinks, so that the nails and hair appear to have grown. Now, there's another theory. The poet was not present. The person he paid or encouraged to retrieve the poems made up the story for notoriety. Perhaps he was encouraged by the transfixed horror of everybody he told about how he dug up the coffin and pulled out the poems. What could he add to continue to hold the listener's rapt attention. Another equally plausible explanation.

If you want to make yourself miserable, you can worry about the appalling way painters and their models lived, the short lives of people in Victorian times, the prevalence of suicide in olden times and still today. 

Alternatively you can cheer yourself up by thinking, that's just a pretence, a painter's model. The poor girl (poor financially?) gained immortality as his model. Today we have modern plumbing with hot and cold running water.

What of the painter Millais? 

MILLAIS, THE PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTER

Millais founded the pre-Raphaelites from his home in Gower Street in London, England. His equally well-known paintings included The Princes In The Tower which is in the Art Gallery of Royal Holloway College.

Also visit Guildhall.

Princes in the TowerI like the way the princes are looking in opposite directions. Watching out for danger. Like meerkats.

Elizabeth Siddall married Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

This is his portrait of her, as Beata Beatrix, in the Tate Britain Gallery.

Guildhall

You can see the Ophelia picture now at the Tate Gallery. Tate Britain, not to be confused with Tate Modern. Famous paintings tend to move about elusively. Online, you can usually catch these out of copyright pictures somewhere. If you can get a ticket, and live in a city where you can go out, protecting yourself and others with a mask, aren't you the lucky one. Enjoy. 

Useful Websites and links

#art #painting #elizabethsiddal
#tate #artist @ Tate Gallery

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Ophelia

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/aug/04/tate-removes-reference-to-amusing-restaurant-after-racist-images-in-mural-draw-anger

https://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-britain

https://www.visitlondon.com/things-to-do/place/157999-guildhall-art-gallery-and-roman-amphitheatre

About the Author

Angela Lansbury is a travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. She is a member of five Toastmasters International speakers' clubs, one in London, three in Singapore, including Braddell Heights Advanced, currently meeting online, and one permanently online club. BHA meets the first Wednesday evening each month, and the third Saturday afternoon on app learncool. 

Buried-alive-safety-coffins, find the lady with the ring; Poe's House in Baltimore; Rossetti In London

The fear of being buried alive is apparently a common fear. If so, good news. Lots of coffins have been designed with windows, ropes attached to bells, comfy lining, breathing tubes,  and other reassuring devices. I think a phone with a battery would be handy. And some sandwiches.

Coffins with windows etc. Some handy stuff for survivalists. You hear lots of stories of people being rescued from morgues. One in South America.

Add the ghoulish stories about coffins opened from the WWI trenches, with fingernail marks on the insides as if people had tried to claw their way out.

Your best bet is to be buried with something which somebody would like back. You may know the story of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - if you don't, this is an unforgettable story.


Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti buried his poems with his red-haired wife, Lizzie, who died of a suspected drug overdose. He later decided he needed his poems back, So she was secretly dug up in the middle of the night. When she was dug up it was said that her long flaming red hair had grown after her death!

But hair cannot grow after death. So maybe she was still alive when they buried her!

Others say that actually her body would have shrunk after death. The liquids would have evaporated. Her flesh would have contracted. That gave the impression that the hair roots had grown.

The memorable portrait of her as the drowned Ophelia (from the play Hamlet) was painted with her as the model in a bath. She caught pneumonia when the candles warning the bath water went out.  The painter did not notice and she was too shy to tell him.

She caught pneumonia. Her angry father demanded that the painter should pay the doctor's bills.



Drowned Ophelia in Guildhall
I saw the portrait of her as Ophelia in the art Gallery on the ground floor of the Guildhall in London, well worth a visit for the portraits and the Roman ruins below glass in the basement. You can glimpse them from above and pay to get up close when the area is open.

Even when the interior is closed, you can see the bust of Shakespeare outside, which is good for a portrait or selfie. Shakespeare of course wrote the story of Hamlet and his suicidal love Ophelia.

Oops. Horrors! Maybe posing as a suicide victim put the idea into the head of the model, Elizabeth or Lizzie Siddall.

Elizabeth Siddall's Life and Death

Elizabeth Siddall, circa 1860
Born	25 July 1829 London, England
Died	11 February 1862 (aged 32) London, England

Back to Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall. I had always been haunted by the painting of the drowned woman, Ophelia. Dead. Helpless. Immobile. Hands up as if asking for help. White faced.

Knowing the model was merely posing in a bath cheered me up no end.

However, her story, like her time in the bath, was chilling. She had always been frail. At the time of her wedding she had to be carried to the church which was only five minutes away.

She had a miscarriage.

She died two years after the wedding. Accidental overdose, they said.

But suspected suicide. It was later revealed that Dante had found a note asking him to look after her brother. A friend advised him to destroy the note because suicide was scandalous and the church would not have allowed her to have a decent burial.

You can see the plaque in London on the house where they lived. Dante's dates were 1828-1882.


Plaque on the house where Dante lived.

There was at least one well-known case of a woman supposedly buried alive. In the north of England. She was placed in a mausoleum wearing a valuable ring.

I was shown by the tourist board the religious building, her mausoleum, and the bell supposedly placed so that she could ring it with an attached rope.

I wish I could remember where. I think it was in the Potteries near Sheffield.

At night, grave robbers opened the coffin and tried to hack off her ring. The pain woke her and she screamed.

They were terrifed and ran off.

I bet she was terrified too. And bleeding. She dragged herself uphill and rapped on the door.

The door was opened by the horrified housekeeper who called the new wife of the widower, who called the widower.

The widower and his new lady were very shocked. They thought it was a bloody ghost. the bleeding first wife protested she was alive, and had been buried alive.

The story goes that somebody said it is not possible that she is alive 'unless horses can climb the staircase'. Two horses then appeared at the top of the staircase!

She later died and was buried with a bell so that she could ring for help. They say you can hear the bell on windy nights. The bell was pointed out to us. A-ah!

You may be disappointed, or cheered, to hear that Wiki reports that this story, with the elements of the ring and the horses, is common all over Europe. Therefore it is a myth. Or is it? Grave robbers are hardly rare.

As for removing rings from the dead or dying, that must be pretty common too. In fact I have done it myself. When my mother was dying in Watford General Hospital, I went to visit her with my father. I overheard the relatives of the person in the next bed complaining that their relative's handbag had gone missing. They were making a noisy and continuous fuss. I sat looking at my mother's hand with the wedding ring. I thought, I should take the ring for safekeeping.

Removing Mother's Ring
I tried to get the ring off and could not remove it. to cut a long story short. My mother was unconscious. But when I tried to pull the ring off, several times, eventually my mother waved her hand as if to say, go way, stop it.

I asked a doctor. I asked a rabbi. They both said, "She was unconscious. She did not know it was you. She did not hear what you said. She did not feel you. It was just a reflex action."

I don't believe it. It was uncanny. It was memorable. I think she felt. Each time.

But she had had a stroke. One of several. A nurse told me that the x-ray showed that over time she had had several small strokes, shown by blood clots in the brain. So many clots that they thought her life would not be worth living. They wanted me to sign the no resuscitation form.

I agreed with them that I wanted to save her further misery. However, she would never have let me go. But it turned out I had no rights. Her husband, my father, was next of kin on the form and he had the veto, the final say.

Meanwhile, it took several minutes for her to work out how to react and move her hand. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

All those scratch marks from fingernails on the insides of coffins. On the walls of the gas chambers in Auschwitz. Inside the coffins of those gassed in the trenches of WWI.

Now, let's move onto another story about life after burial in Europe.

Flag of German.

Not to be confused with the upright lines of the same colours shown vertically on the flag of the upright Belgians on the flag of Belgium below.

Flag of Belgium.

Germany
In Cologne see the tower with the two white horses' heads at the top.

Photo from Hps-poll in Wikipedia. Tower, Cologne, German.
See the two white horses' heads.

Regarding the UK, Wiki finds an example in the south of England and says this:

England[edit]

In 18th-century England, the woman in the story was identified as Emma Edgcumbe, Countess Mount Edgcumbe, wife of George Edgcumbe, 1st Earl of Mount Edgcumbe. However, the century before, Emma's ancestor Lady Anne Edgcumbe was commonly identified as the woman. 

In England, numerous other ladies with the ring have been identified, including

 Annot of Benallay, Lady Katherine Wyndham (wife of Sir Edward Wyndham, 2nd Baronet), Hannah Goodman, and Constance Whitney. 

In Scotland, the woman was identified as Marjorie Elphinstone (second wife of Robert Drummond of Carnock), or sometimes Margaret Halcro Erskine.

What about America. That's a big continent.

USA
Of course the writer who played on this fear of being buried alive was Edgar Allen Poe. he wrote a story which was made into a film.

Is the fear wishful thinking, that even after you are buried you are actually alive. That after your loved one is buried, they are still alive.

I visited his house in Baltimore where I learned that he married his dying teenage cousin. I later discovered to my horror why girls who died of TB attracted such devotion. It was not just pity for their frail, feeble bodies and pallid faces. But TB gave them a feverish rosy glow to their cheeks akin to a blush or orgasmic flush.

Useful Website
https://www.vox.com/2015/7/31/9075011/buried-alive-safety-coffins
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_with_the_Ring
https://www.grunge.com/107520/how-to-survive-buried-alive/sl/take-an-unhinged-number-of-precautions
visitengland.com
visit-canada.com
www.germany.travel/gb/en/home
visittheusa.co.uk
https://baltimore.org/article/history-edgar-allan-poe-baltimore
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Siddal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti

Author
Angela Lansbury. Travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please copy and share links to your favourite posts.

Civilization And Survival: Villages, Hikers,Travellers - what is civilisation? Which do you prefer, city or country?

The word civilisation comes from the word for city. But is city life more civilised? People in the city go to the coutnryside to de-stress on holiday. But people living in the countryside flock to the cities looking for work and excitement. Are the cities more civilised?

Problems
Cities are polluted. Crowded. We go to remote places to escape. How long can we stay in remote places without the help of civilisation?

You can see from the poor quality of this blown up photo that it was taken from the house, quite some distance away. I wasn't sure this garden fox was friendly. He was watching me. I was watching him.

1 HIKES
I go on hikes. Holidays in the coutnry or climbing require weeks of preparation and shopping trips to camping supply shops. Waterproof clothes. Sleeping bags. Tents. Borrowing items and recelining loaned items. Protective glasses. Water bottles. GPS. Repairs to watches.

Hikes uphill or downhill are great for the first half hour. Sometimes as long as four hours.

As soon as you get to a mountaintop, you sit down.

In Madeira, after hiking down to the waterfall, several people caught the minibus back uphill.

I love the scenery. But could I stay there indefinitely, like the tramp who wrote, 'What is life if, full of care, you have no time to stand and stare?'

Couple seated on the city's bench, admiring the view of the countryside. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

You can stand and stare for an hour or two. Then you get hungry and thirsty.

1b FOOD
Eat from nature. Fine in summer if you have fruit trees nearby. My garden has one good apple tree. But half the apples contain worms.  The other one has tasteless woody apples. Maybe that's because it's too early in the year. You have to spend a lot of time picking and cooking. If you just want a good, eating apple, pop down to the supermarket.

Garden food, a nice extra. But you'd have a hard time trying to live on it exclusively all year.

Here's aloe vera, grown on a balcony in Singapore. Tastes terrible. No flavour. Slimy. A packaged aloe vera drink from the supermarket was very pleasant.

In Singapore we are surrounded by coconut trees - which somebody has planted in neat rows. I never climb trees to get coconuts. When was the last time you climbed a tree to get a coconut? Or tried to open one without a manufactured knife? 

At a condo in Singapore, nimble lads were hired to cull the coconuts (before the coconuts fell on the heads of sunbathers or gardeners and killed somebody). The lads had either ladders or climbing shoes and ropes, large bags to collect the coconuts. They had shop-bought machetes to cut off leaves which got in the way, or were old and likely to fall. The machetes also cut the tops off coconuts if you wanted to eat or drink.

1c TOILETS

 I am very glad to get back to civilization. Toilets. Water for washing hands. After four days hiking rhough mountains with no toilets, even a squat toilet is a luxury. A door to close for privacy. A bin where you can chuck tissues. If you are lucky, a ledge where you can keep your bag off the dirty ground.

Insects kept away. Insect repellent you can buy. Sandwiches to buy.

After a hiking trek, even a marathon, people come back with broken toe-nails, bruises, insect bites.

2 WWII
In WWII people on the run from the Nazis hid out in the woods in Belarus. They survived by raiding nearby villages for vital stuff such as food and medicines. When the war ended, they did not choose to stay in the woods making their own shoes and clothes and huts. They went straight back to civilisation, cities.

3 EQUIPMENT For Climbing
My friends and family go on hikes and treks. They depend on items brought from civilzation. Ropes. Sleeping bags. GPS. Bottled water. Maps. Signposts. Rescue helicopters.

4 WORK PAYS
All my millionaire friends and acquaintances are incredibly hard-working. They get up at 5 am to run and get fit before work, catch planes (or climb mountains). They work evenings and weekends and national holidays. Mostly they do working breakfasts, working lunches, and two meetings in an evening. (One woman I know with two businesses declines evening parties because she goes to bed at nine p.m.)

Some have two businesses, at least two. Actually three overlappy. One business is fading out, about to be sold off to a loyal employee. The second main successful one is supporting the other two. The third is up and coming.

Richard Branson came to open an exhibition of playing cards. A whole queue (Americans say line-up) of people wanted to speak to him. He stayed for the dinner afterwards. I hoped to speak to him after dinner. But before dessert he had left to go to another meeting.

He owns an island. He doesn't camp. He builds. He doesn't just buy a car, or drive car, or drive a train, or own a plane. He owns a train line and an airline.

5 COMMUNICATION
They learn foreign languages. They don't insist on talking their own language. They talk your language.

They don't consider a language is hard to learn or easy to learn. They just do it.

6 SCOUTS?

Scouts are great. Guides are great. (Girl guides, hiking guides and tourist guides.) Summer camps are great. 

Kids who get lost sometimes survive for days. A Japanese kid survived when he found a hut with eqipment. I'm pretty sure he was glad to be found, just as his parents were glad to find him.

7 CRUSOE

Admittedly, a small and exceptional number, one or two, maybe a hundred, famous people got stranded on desert islands or discovered them and decided to stay there. The Mutiny. The painter Rousseau. 

They were the exceptions. Most people on islands want subsidies, tourists, or citizenship elsewhere.  Survival guides tell you how to signal for help to planes, ships, search parties.

7 OUT OF WORK?

When you shut down a major industry, the mines, the car factory, there's a great outcry because 'people will be out of work'. So the workers cannot make their own shoes and clothes, grown their own food, cook their own food, build their own houses. 

8 TEETH TELL TALES

I look at pictures of primitive people. They have missing teeth. In the heyday of Great Britain, nobody had missing teeth. The elderly received crowns, bridges and dentures on the National Health service.

9 LIFE EXPECTANCY

Yes, I know that some islands have remote groups who live to 100. But most don't. What is the life expectancy of a person living Africa or South America outside the big cities? What about all the children dying before the age of 5 because they don't have clean water? 

We did not reach our wonderful civilsation overnight. The three Brontes girls died around the age of 30 (apart from the sisters who died earlier). it took a long time to get where we are now.

With modern transport and the spread of information, the New World can overtake the old world. Britain has water shortages because our old Victorian pipes are leaking. It costs time and money to replace them. New countries can just start with new.

10 GOVERNMENTS

A copany CEO is called in to turn around the finances and organization of a business within a year or two. Governments are expected to have five year plans and show progress before they are out.

In Singapore, from the kampongs (villages) to the skyscrapers. I left Singapore for a brief trip to Greece. Our guide told us the reasons for their lack of insfracstructure (roads from the capital, Athens, to Thessalonia, second city int ht north, were because of occupation by the Turks. That ended in 1910. I though of Singapore, where so much has been accomplished. You need a blalance bewetwen preserving the old ruins, and building the new buildings. The best I have sen are place where a msueum and excavation are left under the skyscraper overhead. 

11 PRESERVED Buildings and and new

Guildhall

For example, The Guildhall in London has Roman remains behind glass under the ground floor, with the Guildhall above, plus a mdoern art gallery. 

Yorvik

Yorvik in York has preserved the findings in a museum, with the development whose foundations discoverd the antiques, contunued above.

By all means preserve the old. But don't neglect the new.

12 TRAVELLERS

I met a gypsy whose relative used to visit formers and look after their beehiaves, colecting the honey twice a year. Very worthwhile. 

Others seem to have no way of making a living. If the 'travellers' can survive without having schools, permanent jobs and paying taxes, why do they have to set up camp in the middle of cities?

13 CARAVANS

Some travellers in my area have been given housing. Maybe they could be given housing with large parkling spaces, keep their caravans, and travel in the summer, like the rest of us, to places where campsites are set up in secluded areas with views.

The people in the city don't like travellers' carvans being parked. The city people complain about theft and litter.

The country people don't like caravan parks where city people invade the scenery.

The Tiny House movement seems a great idea. But the tiny houses need to hook up to electric supplies and waste disposal.

Without income you don't need to pay income tax. Without a fixed address, you don't need to pay

council tax. On the other hand, without a fixed address, you can't claim benefits.

14 RESPONSIBILITY & WORK

Some say that with high taxes, as high as 50%, you are already working the first half of the week for the government (the community) or the first half of the year for them.

To get over the problem of school leavers without experience, and companies not willing to empoly inexperienced staff, we have work experience.

To get over the problem of the young having the latest knowledge, whilst the old are out of date, most industries, including opticians and medical staff, have training days, compusory, every year.

We used to have national service for everyone in the UK. National service still exists in Singapore and Israel.

With robots taking away jobs, maybe we should have a working week where one day a week is for community service.

Students have to pay back loans. Maybe immigrants could be sent to college for language tuition and training in jobs for which there is a market, and have to pay back the loans.

JFK famously said, 'Ask what you can do for your country'. Immigrants should be asked what they can do for the country.

15 ANIMALS
In the city we have romantic views of teddy bears, magnificent lions and adorable baby animals.

Those who live with and train wild animals often get killed. The villagers whose family members and friends are killed by crocodiles don't take kindly to the wild crocodiles nor to the ones on conservation and breeidng areas where the animals and reptiles escape.

Our animals are tamed dogs and cats and in the west we don't eat pets, especially not in the USA and UK. No to guinea pigs, eaten in South America, no to dogs eaten in China, no to horses, eaten in France, no to snails eaten in France, no to frogs legs eaten in France, and only chocolate covered insects at Chrstmas eaten as a novelty, whilst insects are eaten in Africa.

As for killing animals, uproar about a dentist killing a lion. Heads of animals which used to hang on the wall are upsetting Hindus and other animal lovers. We have the Chinese eating anything except the table, and nutritionists saying we could solve the food crisis by eating insects.

Others say modern medicine has increased the number of humans and the answer is contraception and population control.

Animal lovers are divided. The rottweiler lovers and lovers of pack animals against the owners of poodles. The owners of dangerous snakes against their next door neighbours.

16 INSECTS
The haters of spiders are against the haters of flies.

Spider photo courtesy of Trevor Sharot photography.

Mosquitos have apparently kept loggers and citiy folk out of the jungles. In cities such as Singapore fogging keeps down the mosquitos. Laboratories are trying to breed mosqitos which are harmless to breed with the others. So the dear little mosquitos can enjoy sucking our blood without giving us malaria.

My Japanese friend was bitten by a mosquito and got dengue fever. She was in a city with a hospital and recovered.

That reminds me. I must add fly spray and insect repellent to my packing list.

17 HEALTH & SAFETY

I am all for healthy and safety and this includes mental health. Every child and adult should have a check-up at their doctor or a nurse on their well-being. Everything should be covered, aches and pains, lumps, scars, falling hair, sleep, drink drugs, sex, money, jobs, relationships. 

Anybody going through a divorce, bereavement, job loss, should have an automatic check. Anybody with three danger signs, such as loss of job, breakdown of marriage, loss of home, posssession of weapons, making threats to kill others or themselves, should have an urgent review.

Whatever cannot be done by paid workers should be done by volunteers. We have a volunteer police auxiliary force. We need think tanks to look at problems and appoint volunteers. I don't think we can clean leaves on train lines. But we could build fences around train livnes, install traffic lights instead of zebra crossings

SUMMARY - WHAT DO WE NEED?

Civilization is what?

1 Water and food.

2 Clothes.

3 Buildings to proect you from weather and animals.

4 Animals and insects kept away.

5 Big guard dogs and pets and packs of animals kept away from tiny babies, childen, small people, visitors, the frail elderly.

6 Roads and rail connecting people and places.

7 Bridges and walkways and balconies closed to prevent suicides and falling objects.

8 Jobs.

9 Money for those who are briefly sick.

10 Energy sources which are replenished. (Such as wind and water, your shoes as you walk.)

11 Education and Accessible information. (Wikipedia.)

What do you think? Please reply here.

Useful Websites
UK
visitbritain.
visitengland.com
London
visitlondon.com
Guildhall
https://www.visitlondon.com/things-to-do/place/157999-guildhall-art-gallery-and-roman-amphitheatre
Yorvik
https://www.jorvikvikingcentre.co.uk/

SINGAPORE
visitsingapore.com

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Shakespeare Week 12-18 March 2018 - quotations you may know and places to visit

Shakespeare. From Wikipedia. Photo by Brice Stratford. See Wikipedia for permissions.

Shakespeare is the worl'd best selling author of fiction.

Born: 1564, Stratford-upon-Avon

Died: 23 April 1616, Stratford-upon-Avon

Spouse: Anne Hathaway (m. 1582–1616)

Problem
Shakesepeare's birthday is celebrated on April 23rd. We can't be sure of the exact day, but he was baptised on April 26th and it was usual in those days to be baptised the third day after birth. Since he also died on April 23rd, that seems a suitable date. St George's Day is also April 23rd, so a good day to celebrate Shakespeare and England and the English language.

1 Shakespeare said so many things we quote. How can I remember them?
2 Where can I go to learn more about Shakespeare?

Answers
QUOTATIONS
Wikiquote will sort you out. Not just the quotations but exactly which play and where the words come from and who spoke the words. These are my favourites, short and easy to remember:

As You Like It (1599–1600)[edit]

Main article: As You Like It

• All the world's a stage,
  And all the men and women merely players:
  They have their exits and their entrances;
  And one man in his time plays many parts.
  • Jaques, Act II, scene vii.

Hamlet (1600–1)[edit]

Main article: Hamlet

• Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
  
  • Polonius, Act I, scene iii.

• To be or not to be, that is the question.
• Hamlet, Act III, scene i.

• HENRY

  Act III[edit]

  
  

  Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
  Or close the wall up with our English dead!
  • Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
    • King Henry, scene i

• Julius Caesar (1599)[edit]

  Main article: Julius Caesar (play)

  • Cowards die many times before their deaths;
    
    • Caesar, Act II, scene ii.
  • Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
    I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
    The evil that men do lives after them;
    The good is oft interred with their bones.
    • Antony, Act III, scene ii.

    • The Merchant of Venice (1596–7)[edit]

      Main article: The Merchant of Venice

      • All that glisters is not gold.
      • Prince of Morocco, reading Portia's note, Act II, scene vii; this is the source of the popular paraphrase "All that glitters is not gold."

• Twelfth Night (1601)[edit]

  Main article: Twelfth Night

  • If music be the food of love, play on.
  • Orsino, Act I, scene i.

  • Timon of Athens (1605)[edit]

    Main article: Timon of Athens

    • We have seen better days.
      • Flavius, Act IV, scene ii.

      • Macbeth (1606)[edit]

        Main article: Macbeth

        • Come what come may,
          
          • Macbeth, Act I, scene iii.
        • Is this a dagger which I see before me,
          
          • Macbeth, Act II, scene i.
  
  
  CANADA
  The Stratford Festival is an internationally recognized annual repertory theatre festival running annually from April to October in the city of Stratford, Ontario, Canada.
   

UK
Your obvious first choice is the UK, starting with Shakespeare's birthplace in Stratford upon Avon. But if you are just in London, you can visit the reproduction round theatre, as well as a monument to Shakespeare in a church, and see his bust on the front of the Guildhall building.

POLAND
Every year in August in Gdansk.

Visits
POLAND
http://esfn.eu/festivals/the-gdansk-shakespeare-festival
http://www.gdansk.pl/en/

UK
Reproduction of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London, England

Reproduction of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London, England. Photo by Another Believer in Wikipedia. See Wikipedia for copyright terms.

Stratford upon Avon:
Shakespeare's Birthplace
Anne Hathaway's Cottage
Theatre
Shakespeare's Grave in Holy Trinity Church

Shakespeare's grave in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, England, UK. Photo from Wikipedia, originally in Flickr by David Jones. 

London, England
Theatre
Reprodcution of the circular Shakeapsear's theatre in the round.
About ten minutes walk from London Bridge underground station. On the banks of the Thames, near the Tate Modern art gallery and the bridge over the Thames river.
The Globe
21 New Globe Walk
Bankside
London SE1 9DT.
Great website with clear directions on how to get there and an aerial video of the theatre.

Church
Bust on Guildhall

Shakespeare bust on outside wall of Guildhall, London, England. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

visitbritain.com
http://www.shakespearesglobe.com (London, England)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare

If you want your own Shakespeare bust, for your home or a museum or celebration of play, it will cost you about £66 plus delivery. A bust suitable for indoors might not be suitable for the garden, but one suitable for the garden might do for indoors. However, it depends whther you want a smooth surface or something more robust and weather-proof.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ceramic-William-Shakespeare-Bust-Statue/dp/B007R61UO0

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I have other posts on Guildhall. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Valentine's Day Service in St Lawrence Jewry Wed Feb 14 2018

Guildhall area. Photo taken from outside St Lawrence Jewry next to Guildhall. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Problem
Valentine's Day Is Too Commercial.

Answer
If you want a religious celebration of marriage in London, St Lawrence Jewry, beside Guildhall, has issued a leaflet saying "Come and join us in a celebration of marriage before heading out for a romantic date with your other half! All are welcome to join us for a service of renewal of your wedding vows.

They are creating a Then and Now wedding montage and sappeling for couples who married there to join them or send a Wedding Day pictures and a current picture with wedding details.

An ide other churches and temples could copy - and probably have.

For more information contact Katrina, tel:0207 600 9478
katrina@stlawrencejewry.corg.uk

While in the area, visit the free art gallery in Guildhall, the Roman ruins below, or the police museum. (See my previous posts.)

Useful Websites
visitbritain.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Rossetti's Redheads At Guildhall Gallery

Guildhall. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

Problems
1 Where can you see London's traitional historic buildings and paintings for free?
2 After you've seen the national Gallery and the Tate, where next?

I had no idea that London's Guildhall contains an art gallery. A visit here offers several delights:

1 Even at night when everything is shut, enjoy the atmosphere in the pedetrian courtyard in front. The lights inside the church reveal the stained glass windows from outside. You can see busts of Shakespeare and wren on the front wall of Guildhall.

Rossetti's Redheads
If you have time, go inside. The shop on the right has a delightful cushion for sale at £30 showing Rossetti's Redhead, his redheaded girlfriend who he married when she was dying. She's the one who he buried with his poems; then he dug up the coffin to retrieve the poems.

Her long red hair had supposedly grown after her death (and filled the coffin according to one account I read). If you must know, I'll tell you what I found. I investigated. I am always keen on finding a practical and scientific explanation for any supersititions or supernatural nonsense. I assume that the people concerned are not entirely nuts and overcome by emotion. They must be observing a fact and attributing a bizarre cause. I recall reading the simple but slightly yukky explanation that after death your hair and nails appear to grow because the rest of the body is dehydrating and shrinking.

Let's end on a more cheerful note. Rossetti coined the word stunner to describe the redheaded subject of his paintings. He made redheads popular. (Natural in those days, no help from supermarket hair dyes.)

Reading the captions on the paintings in Guildhall is a wonderful revelation and insight, into the lives and fashions of Victorian England. The comments on the paintings inspired me to look up the painters' and models' lives in the internet.

That picture of his girlfiends as the dying or dead Ophelia floating in the river, was painted with the model lying in a bath of water. Rosetti, as his romantic name suggests, was of Italian origin on one side, but is now firmly part of the history of England and the whole world.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and phtographer, author and speaker.