stratford-on-avon in the heart of the English county of Warwickshire is the birthplace of William Shakespeare considered by many to be the greatest playwright of all time Shakespeare was born here in 1564 and spent the early part of his life here before moving to London sometime around 1590 every year some three million visitors flocked to Stratford from all over the world to see the town which produced such genius and walk in the great bards footsteps or to see a production of one of his masterpieces by the world-famous Royal Shakespeare Company Shakespeare was a prolific writer producing
over 150 sonnets and 37 plays during his lifetime and creating some of the most memorable characters in English literature from the tragic heroes of Hamlet and Macbeth to the star-crossed lovers of Romeo and Juliet and the fools in King Lear or The Tempest yet while his work has studied the world over by students and academics alike very little is known about Shakespeare's life and to this day he remains something of an enigma the author Charles Dickens said the life of WS is a fine mystery and I tremble every day lest something should turn up throughout
William Shakespeare's birthplace so this is the house in which William Shakespeare was born does Shakespeare come from a large family well he was one of eight but only five survived so when he was born he had had two sisters before him but they had died when they were about only a few weeks old so that makes him the eldest boy and the heir to the fortune he was born in 1564 which we know was a plague here here in Stratford and can you tell me what does this house comprised up well it cuz this originally
of a parlor downstairs where visitors would have been greeted and they would have slept if they needed to stay the night the hall where the family would be in their main meal at 11:00 which took about two hours a long time but that was for the family to rest from the working day the workshop where we are now which is where the business was run from where John Shakespeare made the glyphs John Shakespeare was probably one of three Glover's here in the town we actually think he was one of the most high-end ones and gloves
are a very popular gift in this period and then upstairs where the bedrooms are including of course the birth room where William Shakespeare and his eight other siblings were born so you noticed a crib by the side of the bed where a young child would sleep and then you have a truckle-bed where an older child would sleep and if there is no child a servant would sleep in there so going through the rooms first room that we saw with a bed in it was that more like a guest room a showroom if you will yeah
that's your showing-off room that's where you're showing off how wealthy you are so the signs in there are obviously the bed beds are cost about 20 pounds the local schoolmaster here in Stratford earned 10 pounds a year so you can only have a bed if you can afford it so in that room the bed is by the window so that when your neighbors will walk past they look in and they see you can have a bet because beds downstairs signifies beds upstairs the floor in that room again you wouldn't think much of it today it's
a stone floor it's called blue liest limestone and starer again is another sign of wealth was there a time when this house was in danger of not being preserved in the Victorian period an American gentleman wanted to buy the house and take it back to America he wanted to have it demolished brick by brick but Charles Dickens he comes along and he helps the public raise three thousand pounds in order to buy it and that's when the birthplace trust as a charity set up this is Anne Hathaway's cottage in Shaa tree which is just outside
stratford upon avon and the house itself was built in fourteen sixty three two rooms a parlor and the kitchen and it was later extended from two rooms to twelve Anne Hathaway was born in the house in 1556 and she was the eldest daughter of seven surviving children and she married William Shakespeare in 1582 but after she married they didn't live in this house they lived with his family in the center of the town there's very little known about Anne Hathaway there are no paintings no drawings no sketches of her in fact the only possible clue
to how she looked comes in one of Shakespeare's sonnets when he refers to somebody who has got raven black hair Cora red lips and a very white complexion and in the sonnet itself he makes a play on the words have a way which we think his Hathaway so that is the only description we have over Anne was quite old when she married William back in those days was she bordering on being an old woman she was she was 26 and in those days she was very much bordering on being an old woman or an old
maid as we would say having the average life expectancy for a woman was only thirty and for a man thirty-five even for this class of person and of course when she married William Shakespeare she was three months pregnant and in those days with him being 18 they had to have a special marriage license that cost 40 pounds now in today's when are you talking about probably 40,000 at least this money was refundable it was issued by the Bishop of Worcester and it was refundable providing the man married the woman unfortunately William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway
so they got them on your back Shakespeare died on the 23rd of April 1616 and is buried in Holy Trinity Church Stratford next to his wife and to whom he intriguingly left his second-best bed
