It amazes me how some people believe that Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare.

“In England, some people are reluctant to accept that someone who didn’t go to university was able to write the plays of William Shakespeare,” said Clive Depper, senior guide at The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, as we chatted after a tour. “The evidence, if people are prepared to take the time, is overwhelming that he wrote the plays.”
Okay, people who live and work in Stratford might have a vested interest in maintaining that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, but after my recent visit here to tour the Royal Shakespeare Company’s new theater and see some plays (read blog), I’m more convinced than ever than none other than William Shakespeare wrote the plays, sonnets, and poems that comprise some of the greatest works in the English language. The trip also underscored for me the Bard’s importance on the world stage.

In Stratford, you can visit Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare was baptized and where he’s buried, and the house where, in 1564, he was born.

Depper greeted our group of about 10 visitors to Shakespeare’s birthplace. The tour began with a video narrated by Patrick Stewart and Judi Dench, who point out that when we say things like, “All’s well that ends well,” “The milk of human kindness,” “For goodness’ sake,” and hundreds of other phrases that have become part of the English lexicon, we’re speaking Shakespeare.

Then Depper took us into the house where the Bard’s father, John Shakespeare lived with his wife, Mary Arden, and where he ran his glove-making business.

We walked through the Shakespeares’ parlor and dining hall and into a workroom, where John Shakespeare would have had his glove-making business. “Shakespeare’s father tanned his own leather, so the tanning process would have made the place smell terrible,” said Depper. “In the plays, there are 70 references to glove-making, to tanning, to glove-makers’ tools.”

Depper led us upstairs and into John and Mary Shakespeare’s bedchamber, where painted cloths hung on the walls—both for decoration and to keep in the heat—and where a canopied bed stood. As Depper described Elizabethan parenting customs, such as wrapping babies in swaddling clothes, I felt a sense of awe to be standing in the very room where William Shakespeare was born.

“I think what really strikes home is that he was touched with genius,” said Depper, who talks of the Bard almost as if he knew him personally. “There’s a strange confidence in the man, but there’s also a humility. I don’t think he would have shone in a crowd, but he knew from a very early age that he had this amazing ability with words, and he was determined to be a success as a playwright.”

The power of Shakespeare’s writing soon became evident. When I left the house, walking through the gardens on the way to the gift shop, I heard some familiar words: “My gentle Puck, come hither. . .”

An actor in Elizabethan garb was reciting Oberon’s instructions to Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. As he plucked a bit of greenery from the garden, he said, “. . .Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell: It fell upon a little western flower, Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound, And maidens call it love-in-idleness. . .”

After delivering his beautifully executed monologue, Noel Dollimore explained that he and other actors from a group called Shakespeare Aloud present scenes from the Bard’s plays in the gardens and at other Shakespeare sites.

After browsing in the shop, where copies of the plays sit alongside Shakespeare mugs, dish towels, and snow globes, I reflected on something Clive Depper told me at the end of the tour. “A few months ago, a Chinese woman visited the birthplace,” said Depper. “When we got to the bedchamber, she asked me if she could perform a blessing. She stood at the end of the bed and spoke a few words in Chinese. Then, with tears streaming down her cheeks, she said in English, ‘Thank you for giving the world William Shakespeare.’” I couldn’t agree more.

When you go: Here are some places to walk in Shakespeare’s footsteps in and around Stratford-upon-Avon:
• Shakespeare’s Birthplace. The house in Stratford is furnished to look as it might have in 1574, when William Shakespeare lived there with his parents and brothers and sisters.
• Holy Trinity Church. Shakespeare was baptized and is buried in this church in Stratford.
• Mary Arden’s Farm. Shakespeare’s mother, Mary Arden grew up on this farm in Wilmcote.
• Anne Hathaway’s Cottage. Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway in 1582. She grew up in this thatched-roof cottage in Shottery.

More information is at www.shakespeare.org.uk.