____________ was here

A few days before the Harry Potter series turned 20, I made my way to Stratford-Upon-Avon to visit the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, and tour around the town for a few hours. Many authors and famous figures such as Charles Dickens, as well as a diverse band of Shakespeare lovers, contributed to a public fund to buy the Shakespeare property at auction in 1847, and turn it into a museum for the public good.

The Tudor property housed several generations of the Shakespeare family and their relations, and must have been a lively place. Shakespeare leased part of it as an inn called the Maindenhead, which was in operation until 1847. I was very struck by this window, formerly in the birthing room.

Nineteenth- and twentieth-century pilgrims from the UK and the USA (and elsewhere, no doubt) carved their names, and sometimes their places or origin in the glass, like so many schoolchildren on so many desks. It seems it was an accepted practice, maybe even an expected practice on the part of both the pilgrims and the caretakers of the property. Famous names include Washington Irving.

This desire to leave one’s name behind reminded me powerfully of the scene in The Deathly Hallows, the last book of the Harry Potter series, in which Harry and Hermione travel to Godrich’s Hollow in an effort to progress their quest and, though he doesn’t admit it aloud, for Harry to visit his parents’ graves. When they pass by the cottage where Harry’s parents were killed by Voldemort, and where Harry got his lightening scar, an information sign appears, which is visible to magical people only. Pilgrims have inscribed their names on it telling Harry that they’re thinking of him, wherever he is, that they’re on his side and they believe in him. Hermione is scandalized that people have graffitied the sign, but Harry is grateful for their support.

I wonder what Shakespeare would have made of this desire on the part of visitors to inscribe their names on a window of his former home? What kinds of pilgrimage marks have you come across and what do you think of them?

-Victoria