Elizabethan Maury

Thirty miles north of Oxford is Shakespeare's home of Stratford and thirty miles south is London where he worked. Therefore Oxford is where Shakespeare would stop and give himself and his horses a rest before continuing on. Even though Shakespeare's connection to Oxford isn't well known, it is in fact there.

Professor Barry led us on a "Shakespeare Tour" today after our lectures. He explained we were going to go see Shakespeare's bedroom on Cornmarket Street, a place I've walked many times but have never seen anything suggesting the sort, and of course was even more confused when we stopped in front of a modern clothing store. Professor Barry announced that we had arrived and we then followed him up some side stairs to an office space above the shop. When we entered a wood-paneled room, Professor Barry, rather dramatically, pulled back some curtains revealing a fireplace and shifted the paneled sliding doors to reveal the painted wall.

Professor Barry and the walls/fireplace in "Shakespeare's Bedroom"

Cameron flipping his grilled pb&j

He then talked about how this is most likely the room that Shakespeare slept in when he stopped in Oxford and visited his friend Davenant. It is highly suspected that he was much more close (wink, wink) with Mrs. Davenant who later got pregnant and named Shakespeare the godfather to her son WILLIAM. An episode for an Elizabethan "Maury."

Tomorrow we get up early for a lecture on "Taming of the Shrew" and right after catch the train to London to see the performance of the play at the Globe Theatre. Because of the busy day we plan to have tomorrow, tonight we had a "family movie night" and watched "David Copperfield" (which Penelope lent to us). We are also planning to take a Dickens tour, so this movie was our way to pre-game that (because none of us actually finished reading Bleak House...we have however used the book to prop up the computer and swat flies.) For dinner, Cameron volunteered to cook and made every one his specialty: grilled peanut butter and jelly with bananas. They were delicious!