8 PLACES THAT SHAPED THE LIFE OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
1 STRATFORDUPON-AVON
The honey-coloured building simply known as Shakespeare’s Birthplace on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon is usually the first port of call for any tourist visiting the Warwickshire town where the playwright spent his early days. With its thatched roof, gables and timbered facade, it was the quintessential Tudor townhouse.
William was the third-born of eight children to his parents, John Shakespeare and Mary Arden. It would have been a crowded household, especially after William’s marriage to the pregnant Anne Hathaway. The noise and smells emanating from John Shakespeare’s glovemaking workshop, located in a room behind the house, would have formed the sensory background to William’s boyhood.
Today the house is conserved and presented by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. The rooms have been furnished to evoke the interior of the house as it would been in Shakespeare’s day, giving the visitor an authentic glimpse into the domestic life of
