I blame David Garrick, the 18th-century actor who kick-started the cult of Shakespeare reverence that has led to Stratford-upon-Avon becoming England's most popular tourist attraction outside London. Before his three-day 1769 jubilee celebrating all things Shakespearean, he wrote, Stratford was "the most dirty, unseemly, ill-paved wretched town in Britain". A few decades later, rival custodians were squabbling over the Bard's furniture and selling off fragments of his supposed writing chair as though it were the true cross.
While you can brew Shakespeare tea in an Anne Hathaway's cottage-shaped teapot and drink it from a Macbeth mug, quaffing it down with Bardic biscuits and of course flicking off the crumbs with any number of Will-themed teatowels, today's mania for branding extends beyond the iconic face with the high forehead and quizzical eyes stamped on to every Stratford chattel. The land itself is now dubbed Shakespeare Country, a fantastical realm made up of Historic Warwick, Royal Leamington Spa, Shakespeare's Stratford-upon-Avon and poor Kenilworth, which makes up for its lack of an official qualifier with a fantastic ruined red sandstone castle. For atmospherics, it's probably the best of the bunch; Elizabeth I thought so, visiting in 1575 for a grand fireworks display and water-borne pageant held in her honour. The young Shakespeare may also have been in attendance, and might have taken inspiration from the evening for Midsummer Night's Dream.
Uncertainty is the keynote here; one panel in the brisk, engaging exhibition at Shakespeare's Birthplace contained not one piece of definite information. We can't be exact about Will's origins, but he's everywhere in Stratford now; there are five houses to visit, plus his resting place in Holy Trinity Church, which also has a modest contemporary bust and the font in which he was, "in all probability", baptised (and which spent part of its life languishing in a nearby garden). Of the five, the Birthplace is the most meaningful site of pilgrimage: you are literally walking in Shakespeare's footsteps, as the guides hiss, gesturing at the unchanged stone floor. With its window carved with the names of generations of visitors, it also charts the evolution of the Shakespeare phenomenon. Then there's Hall's Croft, which housed Shakespeare's daughter; Nash's House, next to the site of his retirement home; New Place, which belonged to his granddaughter; and Mary Arden's House, said to be his mother's birthplace.
The mile's walk west to Shottery to see Anne Hathaway's Cottage, a real gingerbread affair, is a welcome respite from the crush of gift shops and B&Bs. Whether visited by a lovesick genius or not, the preserved 16th-century interiors are well worth a view. A guide with an almost insane passion for etymology used each stick of furniture to swell our word power, illustrating stopgap with the wooden plug used to seal the bread oven, threshold by the layers of hay spread for insulation until they obstructed the doors, sleep tight by the meshes of ropes supporting the mattresses, boardroom and boardgame by the wooden board laid out to serve as a table top... I could go on (she did). She also provided a handy tip on the best way to clean a chimney: drop a chicken down it. Apparently, in darkest France, they do it to this day.
Back in town, the marriage of heritage and mammon reaches its apogee in a Byzantine-style mosaic of the Bard over the entrance to the local HSBC bank. Advent means lights, shows, spending - and Shakespeare Country is styling itself as the ideal realm in which to combine Christmas shopping with culture. The most tasteful Bardic gifts are to be had at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre: books, diaries, earrings modelled on Shakespeare's own (as he favoured a simple gold hoop, you could argue that most earrings are modelled on Shakespeare's own, but my mother had her heart set on them). Though much of the shopping has an inevitable tourist bias, you can find the usual high-street stores, as well as some good independent shops - and as it's off season, the streets aren't too frenzied.
There are, of course, craft fairs and festive extravaganzas aplenty, with retail extending its dread reach into more rural areas. "Far from the madding crowd" and five minutes from junction 15 of the M40, Hatton Country World Farm Park is as appalling as you would expect anywhere insecure or bombastic enough to name itself four times to be. While the scary snowmen may cow the children into silence for a bit and there are guinea pigs to be petted in daylight hours, it's only worth visiting if banana holders and ornamental knitted cacti are high on your shopping list this Christmas. Unbelievably, the detrimental effect on local shops of out-of-town retail parks such as this extends beyond a 100-mile radius. Go instead to one of Warwickshire's excellent farmers' markets, where local producers sell what they've made: as well as meat and vegetables, the fruit gins, honeys, wine and fudge on display were gift foods you'd actually want to eat. Chomping on pork baps sliced from a whole roasting pig in the middle of the market, we truly felt in the groundling spirit.
Warwick Castle also has a bad case of Christmas cheer combined with historical confusion; we spent the day there dodging Victorian policemen, hostlers and a slightly frightening old man with a penny farthing and an unfortunate catchphrase ("Are you going to sit on it, then?"). The castle typifies the British commercial engagement with the past through medieval feasting and "surprise encounters" with highwaymen, as though history were one great Adam Ant video. However, though it must be sheer hell in high season, with room to move the displays (waxworks by Tussauds, mock-ups of medieval and Victorian domestic life, ghost stories and warlike speeches on audio loop) are diverting, the peacocks are intriguing and the castle is magnificent. Even the armoury, with its couture headwear, is interesting - an 1840 shakoe crowned with an enormous feather duster, a funerary helmet bearing a large model swan - and you're given the chance to heft a sword or try on a visor. There's a decent amount of information available, combined with approachable factoids for the young or frivolous (my favourite: that Edward II's punitive fines of 40p failed to keep the toes of shoes under 2in long; by the end of the 14th century, they had reached lengths of 18in). I'm sorry to have to report, though, that the torture chamber is "not accessible to wheelchairs".
Escaping into Warwick - a "perfect country town", according to Pevsner - we were pleasantly surprised to find a fantastic Sunday lunch at the Rose & Crown, opposite the Museum on the Market Square. A pub that has been modernised without being ruined, it offers everything from traditional roasts to 'build your own' deli plates.
If the staged sets throughout the castle are lavish and detailed (the young Winston Churchill gazing out over a Victorian drawing room; a medieval cat twitching its tail among a pile of blankets and halberds), the Falstaffs Experience, back in Stratford, is, quite frankly, taking the piss. It sounds like the worst example of heritage kitsch, and we found ourselves there through a combination of masochism and hypothermia. A ramshackle old building in Sheep Street called Shrieves House Barn, it turned out to be a cheerfully amateur journey through Stratford's history (the noses on the waxworks are truly terrible) and a brilliant comic subversion of the heritage industry. It concentrates on history's best bits: plague, witches, ghosts - anything that requires dry ice and plastic rats, really - and concludes with a surreal 'strange but untrue' room in which objets trouvés are captioned with museum gravitas. My enjoyment was only marred by Falstaff (for it was he) trying to sell me a Shakespeare video.
Theatre is the point of Stratford; this season the RSC's equivalent of panto is CS Lewis's The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, dramatised by Adrian Mitchell, while Coriolanus, running until January, is an enthralling, engaging, bloody production, and the best Shakespeare I've seen this year. Its climax is stomach-churning, but we'd already decided on an after-play supper at the Dirty Duck, a cosy gourmet pub five minutes' walk down Southern Lane. Book a table, or the cast will have nabbed it; or, remembering how close Birmingham is, try Hussains on Chapel Street for fantastic Indian food in an olde English environment. And by all means shop - but resist the urge to present your loved ones with wooden trenchers (£12.95) or umbrellas covered with quotes from Shakespeare (£9.99) this year. Give them theatre vouchers instead.
Useful information
Stratford tourist information centre
01789 293127
Shakespeare Country
Official website.
National Association of Farmers' Markets
Stratford: First and third Saturdays of the month.
Kenilworth: Second Saturday of the month.
Warwick: Third Friday of the month.
Royal Leamington Spa: Fourth Saturday of the month.
Hatton Country World Farm Park
Falstaffs Experience
01789 298070
