This topic was posted , thanks fhayek.
Posted on 04/23/2021 5:06:55 PM PDT by fhayek
For the second year running the pandemic has halted Shakespeare’s Birthday Parade – although see below for details of the virtual one. While we are missing the fun, Sylvia Morris looks back on the history of the parade which has been an annual feature of the town since 1826.
SHAKESPEARE’S Birthday has been celebrated in Stratford-upon-Avon for very nearly two centuries. Over this period there have been many changes, but the floral procession from the centre of the town to Holy Trinity Church remains their central feature.
It is headed by students from King Edward VI School because the school initiated the custom of carrying flowers to be laid on Shakespeare’s grave out of respect for their fellow pupil, a ceremony carried out every year since 1893.
The idea of a special procession for Shakespeare began with the Garrick Jubilee in September 1769 though plans had to be abandoned because of torrential rain. Processions were a popular, if not regular, feature of Birthday celebrations from 1826 onwards. The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre opened in 1879 with the first professional production of a Shakespeare play on 23rd April, that overwhelmed the town’s homegrown efforts to mark the big day.
The main event, though, took place behind closed doors. Ordinary people were not expected to participate, and had little to look at. In 1893 there was a concerted effort to do more, with the Mayor inviting townspeople to decorate the streets with flags and festoons, and as it was a Sunday special church serv ices were held to which the town’s Shakespeare organisations formally walked in procession.
Sorry, on old white European guy. Death to Western Civilization.
Thank You for posting.
It was Edward de Vere the 17th Earl of Oxford that could turn a phrase, not the glove maker’s son born at Stratford upon Avon.
https://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/edward-de-vere/
That stupid theory has been so thoroughly debunked that it should be criminalized!
The stupidity is in those that believe the wool trader from Stratford was a literary genius. Why don’t you prove the Stratford man did write the works ascribed to Shakespeare? I don’t think you can.
Good Lord. A theory should be criminalized?
This topic was posted , thanks fhayek.
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