Today would have been Shakespeare's 450th birthday, so to celebrate let's delve again into the Pathe archive to see how it was marked in earlier years. Essentially it's a history of the traditional tour around Stratford.
We begin in 1920. You'll notice as we continue through these that Stratford doesn't much change across the century.
Our first proper glimpse of the flag raising ceremony in 1930. Sixty-four nations at this point.
In 1936, the birthday was relegated to few shots in the News in a Nutshell montages. Same as 1935.
In 1938 at the dawn of the Second World War. Merriment in general though a key country has been removed from the flagpoles.
A reigning monarch's first visit to Stratford apparently. Includes tour of birthplace and shots inside the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre of a Julius Caesar rehearsal and greeting Anthony Quayle in costume as Henry VIII.
The annual tradition continues in 1957, now in full colour.
It's 1964, the 400th birthday and here we're in in Techniscope and Technicolor. What looks like the opening of The Shakespeare Centre up the road from the birthplace. The Duke of Edinburgh is there. Frustratingly it looks like its been transferred at the wrong speed obliterating the sound.
Oh, hold on, here's the same thing in black white with sound.
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