Yesterday, Saturday 20 April, I was lucky enough to go on one of the Guildford Shakespeare Company’s Sonnet Walks. Armed with maps, our small group was guided from the tourist office across North Street...where our guide sent us on our way with fifty lines from the Comedy of Errors. After that, we rambled round the city centre on a one-hour route, taking in a total of nine locations, hearing some Shakespeare performed for us at each one. Sensing our arrival, ordinary-looking people put down their iPhones, tapped us for charitable donations, woke up on park benches and proved to be quite extraordinary as they gave us some of the most beautiful and inspiring lines in English literature. Some we all knew, some we didn’t...but we each received a sheet of all the sonnets and extracts at the end so we could reread at our leisure.
The Sonnet Walks are a marvellous event, performing Shakespeare in a very unique way and doing a lot to show why his work is still valuable four centuries after it was written. They are being held today too (Sunday 21 April) and leave from the Guildford Tourist Information Centre at fifteen minute intervals throughout the afternoon. Tickets are priced at £12.50 (that’s about £1.40 per performance and well worth it!) and are available by calling the TIC on 01483 444 334.
