Shakespeare, tourism and our literary heroes
William Shakespeare may be considered as the finest playwright in the English language, but when he put his pen down he was also a shrewd businessman, and a tourism puller.
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In Elizabethan London, the original Globe Theatre could accommodate 3,000 people. Commoners paid a penny to stand in the open air, while the gentry parted with as many as six pennies to sit on cushions in the covered galleries. By the time Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616 - 400 years ago last Saturday - he was a very wealthy man.
In today's world he would have comfortably been a millionaire. But it is not Shakespeare’s money that I am interested in. What has brought me on the trail of the famous bard is how his legacy has been harnessed to sustain tourism business.
His hometown, Stratford-upon-Avon, is an international literary tourism destination visited by up to 5 million tourists each year. The wider area known as Shakespeare's England received 9.94 million tourists in 2014. (The whole of Ghana recorded just about 10% of that within the same year.)
From hotels, restaurants, souvenirs and walking tours in London, the Shakespeare brand supports a substantially global business community. The total value of tourism to the local economy is in the region of £635m, which supports some 11,150 jobs. This is definitely not much ado about nothing.
Measure for measure, Ghana also boasts of literary giants whose legacy could generate tourism spin-offs. I have vivid memory of an encounter over a Ghanaian writer in a remote village in Western Uganda.
As part of a group of African journalists we were being introduced to the District Administrator of Hoima Province. When the official learnt I was Ghanaian, he practically broke protocol, ignored the others waiting to be greeted and kept asking me all sorts of questions about Ayi Kwei Armah.
Yes, we have literary heroes and we could do something touristic with the places which are connected to them. Before I even go further let me acknowledge that in the realm of our political leaders not much has been done with this legacy business apart from Nkrumah’s birthplace and to an extent, Hilla Limann’s home town at Gwollu.
But it is a matter of ‘as you like it’. If we chose to, and without getting into a comedy of errors or love’s labour lost, we could create tourism business around places related to the Ephraim Amus, Kofi Awoonors, Kwabena Nketiahs, Ama Atta Aidoos, Kofi Anyidohos, Atukwei Okais, Amma Darko’s, Meschak Asares, Joe DeGrafts, Asare Bediakos, Efo Kojo Mawugbes, Peggy Oppongs, Ruby Gokas, Nana Damoahs, Mariska Taylors, Nii Ayikwei Parkes…
We may not have started well but all's well that ends well. The literary tourism sector has evolved from people’s interest in literature to places that inspired the writing, formed the setting of the literary work or those linked to the writer’s birthplace, home or death.
This type of tourism is based on how a place’s connections to an author or literary locations are used to promote tourist destinations.
In my stay in the Kent area during a visit to England, it cost me a fortune but investing in a solo journey to the novelist Charles Dicken’s birth place at Chatham was such a fulfilling adventure.
It is worth noting that it is not only Shakespeare’s home town that generates the tourism dollar. London is a rich joint for Shakespeare fans since the playwright spent most of his working life moving through the then murky and bohemian world of the Elizabethan city's playhouses. You would get a better picture of this if you
