About Shakespeare Morris

Who are we?

The Shakespeare Morris Dancers have a special connection with the nearby village of Bidford-on-Avon. We dance a variety of Cotswold Morris traditions collected from villages around the Midlands and Oxfordshire including Bidford, Adderbury and Lichfield.

Shakespeare Morris has the priviledge of wearing the heraldic family crest of the house of John Shakespeare, William Shakespeare's father, by kind permission of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. The gold & black shield familar to visitors to Stratford which shows a 'shake spear' or in historic terms, a left leaning spear. 

Our History!

Shakespeare Morris was formed in 1959, out of a Church Fellowship, whose lay preacher promoted Folk Dancing at the associated Primary School. The founder members of the the group in 1959 were scholars of King Edward VI Grammar School, the school where Stratford's own William Shakespeare was educated in the mid 16th century. 

Our morris tradition has been extensively researched since 1965 by Phillip Taylor, Shakespeare Morris' long suffering musician for many years, assisted by Tony Parsons, the great grandson of Edwin Salisbury {1869 - 1931}, the foreman of the 1886 Shakespearean Bidford Morris Dancers. We first danced the Bidford-upon-Avon tradition in 1974 at the English Folk Dance & Song Society Albert Hall Festival.

Since our founding, Shakespeare Morris has been members of The English Folk Dance and Song Society, which was founded in 1911 by Cecil Sharp who is proclaimed as the 'single most important figure in the study of folk song and music'. We were admitted into the national association of men's morris clubs, The Morris Ring, in 1965, after organising a Ring Meeting in 1964 for the Shakespeare Quatercentenary Celebrations, the first meeting of The Morris Ring of England ever to be staged by a non member club. In 2016, on the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, women officially began to dance with Shakespeare Morris and since then we have been a mixed side.

We are proud to have strong ties with the nearby village of Bidford-on-Avon, with its early 15th century bridge and where Shakespeare apparently went drinking and awoke the next morning and told his friends "No I have drunk with “Piping Pebworth, Dancing Marston, Haunted Hillboro’, Hungry Grafton, Dodging Exhall, Papist Wixford, Beggarly Broom and Drunken Bidford” and so, presumably, I will drink no more."

What we do around the year!

One of our main date in the calender is Shakespeare's Birthday Celebrations which takes place on the weekend closest to William Shakespeare's birthday on the 23rd April. We also assist in Stratford-upon-Avon's English pomp and circumstance with the May Day celebrations, the Stratford Mop Fair and the Christmas Lights turning on.

Since 2024 we have our Day of Dance where other Morris sides are invited to dance around Stratford and we raise money for the Shakespeare Hospice, recently our 2025 Day of Dance raised a total of £810 and we had a total of 12 other morris sides join us.

Not only do we dance in Warwickshire but also in national events away from Stratford such as National Morris Weekend in Evesham, the Bromyard Folk Festival in Herefordshire, The Saddleworth Rushcart in Oldham and we even went to Helmond in the Netherlands!