Shiver me timbers

The Ghosts of Lynn

Goodnight, sweet prince,

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

Hamlet

 Act 5, Scene 2

The town of Lynn, once Bishop's Lynn and then, thanks to Henry VIII, King's Lynn, might possibly be related to Dublin and Lincoln, through their connection with pools of water, which may have been used to collect salt. It probably isn't related to Linford Christie, Gary Winston Lineker, my old cock linnet, or Der Lindenbaum, 

Am Brunnen vor dem Tore,

Da steht ein Lindenbaum;

Ich träumt’ in seinem Schatten 

So manchen süssen Traum,

But those are other stories.....  What you may be surprised to know is that there is a very plausible connection to William Shakespeare, probable author of such witticisms as:

We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

The Tempest 

Act 4, Scene 1

And what, I hear you cry, is this? The Swan of Avon, washed up on the banks of the Great Ouse?

Sweet Swan of Auon! what a sight it were

To see thee in our waters yet appeare,

And make those flights vpon the bankes of Thames,

That so did take Eliza, and our Iames!

Ben Jonson

Yes, well, the likelihood is giant. And its footprint is in King Street, in St George’s Guildhall, which is owned by the National Trust and managed by King’s Lynn Borough Council and which is now confirmed to be the oldest working theatre space in the country.....

Until recently the interior of St George's Guildhall looked like this:

Currently, it looks like this:

And you may visit it any day (except Sundays) until August 31st to see and hear about the history of the building (built in 1419 and containing the largest area of 15th century timber floor in the country).  

So, what's this got to do with his Bardship, you moan? Well, this is the thing. Tim FitzHigham, Creative Director of the archaeological project to restore the theatre, has this to say: These are the boards used by Shakespeare’s company during the plague closures of 1592/3, making it a site of international cultural significance.....

And for proof we have....?  Well, this is what the Guildhall's website has to say:

There has been a long tradition that Shakespeare played at the Guildhall in King’s Lynn. People in King’s Lynn were told this by their parents who were told this by their parents and grandparents. This is not new. For example, in 1766 the pub next to the Guildhall (now called Shakespeare House) was named the Shakespeare Pub and had a picture of Shakespeare on the front of it to reflect these links. There are several things which support the oral tradition of the town. In 1592/3 the company associated with Shakespeare, the Earl of Pembroke’s Men, were paid to play in King’s Lynn when the theatres in London were shut due to the plague. At this time Shakespeare was an actor as well as a writer according to a work by Robert Greene of 1954 [1594?   Ed.] calling Shakespeare an ‘upstart crow’ [Not to be confused with D Mitchell's creepy smug TV stuff.  Ed].

Shakespeare’s comedian Robert Armin [Not to be confused with his grate nuncle, Idi.  Ed]  was born in King’s Lynn one street from the theatre..... Armin was a very close collaborator of Shakespeare’s and was the first person to play many of the most famous comedic roles Shakespeare created ['Til Deaf us do part; Dad's Barmy; Faulty Powers; et al. Ed]. Documents from Shakespeare’s lifetime reference an event that occurred in the theatre in ‘Linn, Norfolk’ which is said to have inspired Shakespeare to write part of the plot of Hamlet....

So, it is more than a random chance that Shakespeare actually ducked through this doorway (notwithstanding the semblance that they could be bricked up - Crollalanza era un mago!):

And maybe even this one:

Peered out of this window:

Stepped through this passageway:

And took the air (or had a pipe) in this courtyard:

Which includes an Art Gallery in memory of Lord Fermoy, whose wife provided for the until recent theatre seating, thereby ensuring the survival of the building through the latter part of the twentieth century and into the current secolo..... 

If it be now, ’tis not to come: if it be not to come, it will be now: if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.

Hamlet

Act 5, Scene 2

All the world's a stage

And all the men and women merely players.

They have their exits and their entrances; 

And one man in his time plays many parts.

As You Like It

Act 2, Scene 7

So, what else was there in Lynn 400 or so years ago?

The Minster and Priory Church of St Margaret, St Mary Magdalene and all the Virgin Saints was founded as a Benedictine Priory in 1101 by Herbert de Losinga, the first Bishop of Norwich. For 400 years it was the monks’ home as well as the Parish Church for the town. It was always known as St Margaret’s and would not have been very different, despite efforts by H8 [You mean Henery the Eighth; not hate, surely?  Ed] in Shakespeare's time from what we see now:  

I am one who loved not wisely but too well.

Othello

Act 5, Scene 2

[No.... that's a different story....Ed.]

So we also have the largest chapel-of-ease in England, St Nicholas Chapel (rebuilt between 1380 and 1410 but currently closed because of a problem with one of the roof beams [Elf and Safety gone mad?  Ed]) which would have been architecturally (if not from a glassware point of view) much as it is now.

Another building that was definitely here in the time of WS, is the Red Mount Chapel. It was built in 1485 as a wayside chapel for pilgrims landing at King's Lynn; a place to stop and pray before undertaking the overland journey to Walsingham, or to pray before leaving England after a visit to the shrine. It was/is known as the Chapel of Our Lady of the Mount, and is to be found in The Walks.

Then, although wrecked and suppressed (in 1538) by Enery and his 'enchpeople there would have been at least the Tower of the Greyfriars' Priory:

And while in the late 16th century the Trinity Guildhall housed a prison, the finely windowed first floor would have been there.....

And below stairs in several of the riverside buildings there were cellars which originally may have had direct access to the quayside or even to the river with the potential for rewarding import/export businesses.....

And all compacted into a relatively small area alongside the Great Ouse, making Lynn one of the most important ports in England.  From the 13th century Lynn had been a part of the Hanseatic League, and, though trade had declined by Shakespeare's time it was (and still is) an active port.

With narrow lanes leading to the riverside.

Out, out brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Macbeth

Act 5, Scene 5

Back in the undercroft of the St George's Guildhall, it isn't hard to sense the spirit of Crollalanza in the blind arches and niches, in the ancient timbers and hand-made bricks. Is that the ghost of Banquo?

Prithee, see there. Behold, look! How say you?

Macbeth

Act 3, scene 4

Or does King Hamlet lie there?

Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak. I’ll go no further.

Hamlet

Act 1, scene 5

So....  What does this add up to?  Does it matter?  Well, in my 'umble opinion, yes it does.  We need to recognise our past and to learn from it.  Without history and heritage we are lesser creatures, with little reference by which to gauge our actions. Whether William Shakespeare himself ever actually drew breath in Lynn is, in itself, not necessarily going to alter what we do or think, but to register the continuity of human endeavour and to recognise the achievements, and the mistakes, of our forebears, inevitably makes us richer in many ways.  And had St George's Guildhall been pulled down and turned into a car showroom, for example, we would all be, in some ways, poorer.

Is this nothing?

Why then the world and all that’s in’t is nothing:

The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia nothing,

My wife is nothing, nor nothing have these nothings,

If this be nothing.

Leontes

The Winter's Tale

 Act 1, Scene 2

So, if you can get to see the exposed timbers and be guided round St George's Guildhall you won't regret it. Then, perhaps in 2028, we will all be able to enjoy performances in the restored oldest working theatre in England.  

The rest [For now. Ed] is silence.

Hamlet 

Act 5, Scene 2

*****

For further information, please see:

https://stgeorgesguildhall.com/heritage/

Dedicato alla memoria della nonna di CJS 

(ed anche a CJS stessa)

Lövely Lübeck - Travels in Germany - 5

A little bit of devilry in the night....

It's midnight, and I cannot sleep.  A Schnapps too far, perhaps. Outside there are noises, like the squeaking of rodents.  I draw back the curtain of my hotel room on the third floor above An der Obertrave, Lübeck.  I stagger back, clutching at my palpitating chest, as though a stake had struck my heart. Across the water, framed by a window high in the brick façade of the restored salt warehouses, a figure is waving at me - Count Orlok? aka Max Schreck, aka Nosferatu, aka Count Dracula.....

Or is it Klaus Kinski?

Actually not, as Werner Herzog, in his 1979 remake of the film, used a different window, and Isabelle Adjani a different door.....

Count Orlok takes his coffin home

Lucy Harker sleepwalks with white rats

The moment passes.  I blink and the building is blank again, the sixteenth century salt stores, symbols of the lucrative trade that helped form the Hanseatic League, now filled with clothing, though this is a fairly recent development.

I find a picture of the building from some time in the twentieth century - not that long ago judging by the modern-looking bridge to the right:

And then I check another still from F W Murnau's 1922 film Nosferatu, this time the view from Renfield's office, as the malignant agent tells Jonathon Harker he has to travel to Transylvania to sell the building to Count Orlok (renamed in an attempt to get away without paying Bram Stoker's estate any royalties....)

This is pretty much the view from my window, with glassless blurry eyes. I try to sleep, though the two spots on my neck don't help..... Then the cock crows, and the rising sun illuminates the rooftops of the Salzspeicher, and the gaunt spectre of my dreams vanishes.....

I rise, and scratch the itch just by my jugular, but avoid the mirror for the moment.  It is time to breakfast on marzipan (one of the few foods available here) and explore this World Heritage site (a little older, since its designation in 1987, than the Forth Bridge).

The first stop is at the Western Gate to the city.  It's called the Holstentor [keep taking the Pils], and was built in the fifteenth century.  Actually in real life it is rather wonky, but with the help of Photoshop I have managed to straighten it a bit so you can see how it should look....

The gate [the words inscribed on it mean something like Don't Try and Fly Concord through this Hole] doesn't really stop anyone getting in the city, as there are roads all round it, but it is a statement of the power of the Hanseatic League, of which Lübeck was Queen from the 14th century until the disbanding of the league (following the 30 years war and a Greek referendum) in 1669....

Nevertheless it is still marked by great brick buildings, some of which were warehouses:

Some other types of houses:

Some convents:  

And some churches:

This last image is of the nave of the Marienkirche, which was built between 1250 and 1350 by the town council, who had fallen out with the local Bishop.  It was therefore designed to dwarf the cathedral, and certainly did so, still having the tallest brick vault in the world (126ft, or 38.5m) and being the third largest church in Germany.

The Antwerp Altarpiece in the Lady Chapel (1518)

From 1668 to 1707 Dieterich Buxtehude was organist here, and in 1705 J S Bach walked here from Arnstadt (320 kilometres away) to hear him.  Buxtehude was (probably) born in Helsingborg in 1637, which was then in Denmark (and is now in Sweden, following tectonic plate movement and a referendum).  For reasons now lost to us, Buxtehude was not born in the town of Buxtehude, which has the distinction of being a place Germans use in a phrase meaning to send someone very far away.....

I had the honour of dining in the Buxtehude cubicle in the Ratskeller restaurant (the wine cellars of the Rathaus that is, nothing to do with Dracula's rats), and found this illuminating picture on the wall....

Unfortunately the buildings in the photograph, as well as much of the church, and Buxtehude's Totentanzorgel (Danse macabre organ), were destroyed on the night of Palm Sunday, 1942.

About one fifth of the city's Altstadt was destroyed, and it might have been far worse had not Carl-Jakob Burkhart, Swiss President of the Red Cross, persuaded the Allies to use Lübeck as a port of entry for gifts to British Prisoners of War. 

During the bombing, two bells, weighing about nine tons between them, fell 200 feet from the south tower.  These have been left where they crashed as a memorial to the death toll [ouch!]. 

According to some, the Allies were not the only ones to damage Lübeck....  Thomas Mann  [aka Heinrich Mann's brother] spent his first sixteen years here (then forty years in Munich and one in Palestrina, before exile in Switzerland and the United States) and wrote one of his major works (Buddenbrooks, 1901) about the place and its inhabitants.  This epic novel was based on his own family experiences, and traces its decline over three generations.  The author's description of Lübeck as a mediocre trading centre on the Baltic did not go down well with everyone. Later, a lavish film version was described as the world's most expensive sleeping pill.... 

Buddenbrookhaus - (photography is not permitted)

I have not read the book, but I am working my way through Doctor Faustus, slowly.  I take heart from an article in the Observer about the novelist David Mitchell.  He recommends The Magic Mountain, but he is reading it in real time - ie it will take him three years to read, which is about the time span of the story. Using that as a yardstick, I will be long dead before I finish Dr F..... 

It is now twilight, and the town begins to look lovely (the original settlement was called Liubice, which means lovely), with church spires reflected in the river (despite the intrusion of a canal cruiser....)

Time for a drink, chez Kandinsky, a downtown bar with a kindly staff and faded clientel:

Then something to eat, chez Im Alten Zolln, where the staff treat their guests like favourite grandparents (or so it seemed):

Then a wander through the narrow courtyards that add much to the charm and character of the older parts of the town (I am beginning to like the dark, and I love the idea of Handel belonging to a Gang):

And then, in contrast, passing by the twin peaks of the romanesque cathedral, a huge launchpad of brick aspiration, giving a fresh meaning to the idea of a Bishopric:

Before mingling again with the people who populate this inspiring place:

And, feeling emboldened by the dark, sitting for a while to watch the world go by An der Obertrave, a Schnapps and a Weissbier chaser.... or should that be the other way round?

And then finally, full of the spirit of the place, feeling almost as if I am being watched, and only a tad irritated by the sore on my neck, up the cobbled strasse to Schleswig-Holstein:

It's late when I get back to my hotel, the squealing of rats and squeaking of unoiled bats like creaking floorboards underfoot..... and I have to fumble my way upstairs.....

In the morning, at cock-crow, when it's time to leave, everything seems topsy turvy....

Dear Mum,

I'm in the city of 

Lübeck, in Germany, which is very nice.  The World made it a Heritage Site about thirty years ago, but it was important a long time before that.

By the way, I've made a new friend.....