Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus.
Our bodies are our gardens, to which our wills are gardeners

Othello

Digging for Shakespeare offered a radical alternative to the traditional remembrance garden, created to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.

The project took the form of a promenade trail through Roedale allotments, close to the former home of James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps—a renowned nineteenth-century Shakespearean scholar, eccentric collector and notorious practical joker.

From his self-styled “rustic wigwam”, a series of interconnected sheds on the outskirts of Brighton, Halliwell-Phillipps gathered and hoarded information about Britain’s most celebrated playwright. He cut and pasted his discoveries into meticulously assembled scrapbooks and obsessively curated a vast collection of Shakespearean rarities.

The image of the garden runs throughout Shakespeare’s work, revealing his intimate knowledge of growth, propagation, grafting, pruning, ripening, weeding and decay. Across the plays, the garden becomes a shifting metaphor: for the cultivation of human desire, the health of the body and the condition of a nation or corrupt kingdom.

Throughout Digging For Shakespeare, audiences encountered Halliwell-Phillipps, vividly embodied by Spanish performer Guillermo Weickert Molina; attended a fascinating miniature lecture by local historian Charles Nicholl; and embarked on a quest through the allotments to discover twelve distinctive sheds.

Each shed represented a month of the year, offering seasonal gardening advice from its owner alongside a Shakespearean character captured in yarn and an accompanying horticultural quotation from the plays.

The experience culminated in a surreal procession, followed by tea, cake and a communal seed swap.

Deliciously understated promenade piece unearths the story of beccentric Shakespeare scholar James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps – Lyn Gardner – The Guardian