Hay Festival in Wales will celebrate Shakespeare's 400th anniversary with a series of special events and a new digital platform.
Talking About Shakespeare is a web-based platform featuring short films from leading actors, academics, playwrights, directors, poets and novelists. The site has been launched, but Hay will add films to it throughout the year from its various events.
Some of the people who will be talking about Shakespeare are Judi Dench, Benedict Cumberbatch, Toni Morrison, Stephen Fry, Germaine Greer, Simon Schama, Jeanette Winterson, Tom Stoppard and Maxine Peake.
This year's Hay Festival will feature a number of events to mark the anniversary. Former Doctor Who writer Russell T Davies will talk about his film adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream with Maxine Peake, who plays Titania, while RSC Deputy Artistic Director Erica Whyman will speak about her own production about the same play and RSC Artistic Director Greg Doran will discuss Shakespeare's legacy.
There will be talks from leading academics, as Simon Schama examines his myths of England, James Shapiro focuses on the year 1606, Germaine Greer talks about poetry, Gillian Clarke discusses King Lear and Jerry Brotton talks about Shakespeare and the Orient.
Writers Howard Jacobson, Jeanette Winterson and Tracy Chevalier will talk about their contributions to the recent Hogarth retellings of Shakespeare and leading Shakespeare academic Stanley Wells will introduce his anthology of Shakespeare essays alongside Margaret Drabble.
Films from the Hay Festival will appear on Shakespeare Lives, a joint resource from the BBC and the British Council.
Hay Festival Director, Peter Florence, said, “here’s the thing—that Shakespeare articulates what it is to be human: to love and lose all to passion, to desire power and risk life for it, the riotous comedy of our lives and our frailties, with language more revealing than any other—he knows our hearts.”
Hay Festival runs from 26 May to 5 June 2016.