THE TUDOR DYNASTY THROUGH
Shakespeare's Eyes
Exploring history from the inside is always an incredible experience, but when you see it through the eyes of one of the greatest authors ever lived, it becomes something simply extraordinary ... and full of twists.
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BRINGING TOGETHER A PASSION FOR HISTORY AND LITERATURE
It all started with the request from a friend of our first client who wanted to travel to the UK to visit some Tudor Palaces and other buildings of that same period.
It was a straightforward request and simple to fulfil, but we suggested a completely different approach, probably because it was too simple. One that transformed an average luxury trip into an immersive real-life documentary with the couple travelling at the centre of it all.
After hearing our initial idea, the couple was seduced, and we started preparations. The first step was to bring in a team of historians and experts in the work of William Shakespeare. Then we spent more than three weeks researching everything we could about the Tudors and Shakespeare. And only then, we started the creation of what we think was our first masterpiece.
The first step in our ten-day historical adventure was London, where we created a sort of "prelude" to the main experience.
It all started with a normal visit to the Portrait Gallery that soon became not so normal as we arranged for several secretive doors to open and the couple to discover what visitors never see in a museum. With a curator of the museum and an art historian specialising in Tudor history, we retraced the story of the Tudor Dynasty, starting with the Wars of the Roses using the collection of the Portrait Gallery (including their reserves).
Our next step in the prelude of the trip (day 2) was an exceptional visit to the British Library to see what is believed is William Shakespeare's only surviving manuscript. This was the perfect opportunity to dive into Shakespeare's life, work and legend.
With the two parts of our tale in place, our adventure could begin with a trip to Stratford-Upon-Avon to follow in William Shakespeare's footsteps and discover the Elizabethan England he lived in, which coincides with the dawn of the Tudor Dynasty.
From there, we retraced Shakespeare story and explored the rivalry between the House of Lancaster and the House of York that bloodied medieval England for over a century and culminated in the defeat of King Richard III at the ballet of Bosworth Field in 1485 and the ascension of Henry Tudor to the throne of England as Henry VII.
During our visits to several key landmarks of the Wars of the Roses and the Tudors, we used Shakespeare's plays Henry VI (all three parts) and Richard III as the storyline to our tale.
All the way long, we mixed history with Shakespeare's imagination while discovering historical sites, many of which are completely unknown to most people. Among other things, we organised a private visit to the Tower of London to uncover the Princes in the Tower's disappearance and understand the fall of Thomas Moore and Anne Boleyn. Finally, in Hampton Court Palace, we created a spectacular private event focusing on Shakespeare's Henry VIII.
A TRIP LIKE A DOCUMENTARY
From the moment we started crafting this trip, it became apparent we needed to create a unique narrative if we wanted to have a chance to bring back to life the historical characters of such a saga.
With the assistance of 3 historians and a renowned theatre company specialising in Shakespeare, we spent more than a month doing historical research and scouting places to put together all the elements we needed. Then, we created a real-life documentary storyline where all the pieces came together with the couple travelling uncovering the different parts of some historical "mysteries".
Instead of organising simple visits as most will do, we went beyond to create a fully immersive historical adventure to go back in time and discover some of the most extraordinary and fascinating figures in English history.
