The following are recently discovered quotes from interviews that William Shakespeare conducted while promoting various plays, in which he speaks candidly about writing, life, love, and even battling the common cold.
Okay.
“We don’t call it Stratford-Upon-Avon. We just say ‘Stratford.’ I don’t know why anyone would think we’d get so technical. It’s like saying ‘Manhattan of New York.’ ”
He’s right. I live just outside of Stratford-upon-Avon, and no-one here calls it by that name, unless they’re reciting their address. However, since there’s a Stratford in London, if you are in the capital, and you say “I’m going to Stratford,” it would be interpreted as that local area.
Curiously, the town is Stratford-upon-Avon, but the district – the larger area around Stratford for administrative and representative purposes – is Stratford-on-Avon.
Oh, and they don’t capitalize the “upon” or “on,” so the New Yorker made a small mistake there.
And you wouldn’t say Manhattan of New York, you’d say, Manhattan-on-Hudson. There are towns with names like that (Hastings-on-Hudson, for example), so the humor kind of falls flat.
Whatevs.