Ref.10555NEARLY 20 children aged from six to ten staged excerpts from Twelfth Night, just yards from where a Shakespeare touring company played, and possibly the bard himself, 400 years earlier.

The summer holiday one-day Shakespeare workshop at the Merchant's House in Marlborough was organised by the Magical Musical Shakespeare group run by Nikki Rowan-Kedge and Angela Rawson.

The couple have run a number of similar workshops in the district previously for school children including a two-day course at Milton Lilbourne.

Ms Rowan-Kedge chooses the script and provides musical backing and Ms Rawson makes all the costumes and designs sets.

Ms Kedge said: "This was very exciting for us to be offered the opportunity to put on a workshop in almost authentic surroundings.

"The great thing about Elizabethan theatre is the freedom to leap from scene to scene with the minimum stage sets and the panelled room of the great parlour at the Merchant's House was ideal for this."

One of William Shakespeare's touring companies is know to have played in the town in the yard of what was the White Hart Inn and is now known as Russell Court, behind the Tudor Tea Rooms.

Historians have never been able to establish whether Shakespeare himself was with the visiting troupe.

The Merchant's House would not have been standing then because in 1653 the town centre was destroyed in The Great Fire of Marlborough.