The Shakespeare Institute in Stratford

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The Shakespeare Institute in Stratford

December 20, 2009 by suelioness

The Shakespeare Institute

The Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon

A long-term interest in Shakespeare led to postgraduate study at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-on-Avon, giving me the chance to live in Stratford for a year in 1995-6. Being an inveterate student, I am now working on a part-time MA Shakespeare and Theatre and have one more module and a dissertation to do. The Institute offers a variety of postgraduate courses, in association with the University of Birmingham, including research degrees. Courses usually offer a chance to go backstage at the RSC and talks by company actors. There are also Thursday afternoon seminars open to current students, staff and alumni.

During my year in Stratford, I was involved in various productions including Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida and the ‘Bad Quarto’ Hamlet (a video of which is apparently buried in their archives!). The Institute’s Hall is an excellent performance space, and we also performed Troilus at the Waterside Theatre (now the location for RSC Learning). The Institute’s specialist library, with three floors of books on Shakespeare and his time, was opened in 1996. It’s a great place to study, though as a part-timer living in London I can’t come up as often as I’d like; fortunately a good deal of information is accessible via the Institute’s Internet connection.

The Institute is housed in Mason Croft, an historic house with beautiful gardens. It was once the home of popular novelist Marie Corelli, who moved to Stratford in 1901. She also bought nearby Harvard House and refurbished it for the use of visiting Americans. She took part in local campaigns to preserve Shakespeare’s heritage and welcomed to her home many famous contemporaries, including Ellen Terry, Sarah Bernhardt, Clara Butt, Frank Benson, Mark Twain and General William Booth.

The building retains some evidence of Marie Corelli, notably the grand fireplace in the Music Room (now used for lectures), with the entwined initials MC/BV, a reference to Marie and her companion Bertha Vyver, who in 1930 published Memoirs of Marie Corelli. In the gardens there is the Gazebo, or ‘Elizabethan Tower’, said to be Marie’s favourite place to write.

Marie Corelli died on 21^{st April 1924 and left her estate to Bertha Vyver and thereafter to the people of Stratford. Marie Corelli wanted the house to be a residence for distinguished literary scholars and insisted that actors and actresses, and ‘all persons connected with the stage’, be excluded from the premises. It is certainly a haven for distinguished scholars, but needless to say the prohibition on those of a theatrical persuasion is not adhered to!}

Although her books and furniture and other possessions were auctioned off after the death of Bertha Vyver in 1943, many items have been collected to create a Corelli archive, housed at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Record Office, with a few others remaining at the Institute. An unobtrusive plaque to the right of the building’s front entrance is the only sign visible to the passer-by of Corelli’s long connection with Mason Croft.

Sue Taylor

For further information on the Shakespeare Institute, visit their website at:

^{http://www.shakespeare.bham.ac.uk}^.