Press reports suggest that the residents of Stratford on Avon, who can never for a moment forget that it was Shakespeare's home village, will have the message rammed home by the plans of a developer - Will Power Holdings - to create a Shakespearean theme park, complete with an Elizabethan village. Discussions are understood to be under way between the developers and the RSC to see whether the projects could be mutually beneficial.
While it may be thought that there's enough Shakespeare in Stratford, theme parks, when well-constructed and marketed, can be a highly popular way of presenting the past to new generations. If the development goes ahead, and the RSC's theatre village does too, then fans of Elizabethan England will be able to enjoy a weekend's total immersion into the sixteenth century.
—by Paul Webb Theatrenow
