We’ve embedded the complete chart below–visit AppNewser to download free copies of all these plays.

If you want all these poems and plays in a single place, you can download a free copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. If you don’t feel like reading a whole play, try Shakespeare’s Sonnets.

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A new film adaptation of Romeo & Juliet, directed by filmmaker Carlo Carlei, will hit the UK on October 25, 2013. According to Indiewire, the movie currently does not have a US distributor.

We’ve embedded the trailer above–what do you think? Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes wrote the screenplay. Oscar-nominated actress Hailee Steinfeld portrays fair Juliet and LOL actor Douglas Booth plays Romeo.

The supporting cast includes Sideways actor Paul Giamatti as the gentle Friar Lawrence and Gossip Girl actor Ed Westwick as the hot-tempered Tybalt.

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Melinda Hall hopes to raise $1,500 for the 3rd Annual Shakespeare’s Birthday Sonnet Slam. This event is scheduled to take place in New York City on April 23, 2013.

Above, we’ve embedded a video about the Kickstarter project–what do you think? Here’s more about the project:

We are back to produce Shakespeare’s Birthday Sonnet Slam 2013 where 154 Readers of all ages will recite all 154 Sonnets on stage at the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park. The event is free to the public but there are producing costs involved to rent the equipment and videotape it for possible inclusion in the film project How Shakespeare Changed My Life.

Welcome to our Kickstarter Publishing Project of the Week, a feature exploring how authors and publishers are using the fundraising site to raise money for book projects. If you want to start your own project, check out How To Use Kickstarter to Fund Your Publishing Project.

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Over the next year, the New York Shakespeare Exchange will create 154 videos inspired by the sonnets of William Shakespeare. The group raised $49,255 on Kickstarter to fund the project.

If you want to prepare for this momentous marathon, you can download a free copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Above, we’ve embedded one of the group’s prototype sonnet videos–what do you think? Check it out:

For the entire year leading up to Shakespeare’s 450th birthday, we will release, to a global audience, internet videos of all 154 sonnets, performed by 154 different actors in 154 unique locations throughout the five boroughs of New York City. The culmination of the project will be marked by the release of a full Sonnet Project Anthology, complete with special features exploring the textual nuances of the language, behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with the creators and actors.

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Tony Award-nominated actress Condola Rashad will portray Juliet Capulet. This particular production will feature William Shakespeare‘s infamous starcrossed lovers as an interracial couple.

In an interview with the New York Times, director David Leveaux explained this casting decision: “I’m not about to turn a contemporary version of Shakespeare into a sociological or political point. We know there are families from one background or another who would reject their children getting together with someone from another group. Romeo and Juliet reject that notion.”

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Happy National Poetry Month!

To kick off this month-long celebration, we’ve dug up a video featuring actor David Tennant reciting William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18.” Tennant recorded this reading for Touch Press’ 2012 iPad app, “The Sonnets.”

What’s your favorite Shakespearean sonnet? While many have come to know Tennant for playing the tenth incarnation of Doctor Who, he is also a respected stage actor. In the past, he has acted in productions of Hamlet (playing the Meloncholy Dane himself) and Love’s Labours Lost (portraying Lord Berowne).

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In a special Google Docs demonstration online, you can collaborate on a story with Charles Dickens, Friedrich Nietzsche, William Shakespeare, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allan Poe.

As you type your text into the demo box, these writers will add little flourishes and quotes to your story.

We created a short story with the help of Dickens and Nietzsche, click on the image embedded above to see the collaboration in action. Who will you write with? (Link via)

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The Avengers director Joss Whedon adapted William Shakespeare‘s comedy, Much Ado About Nothing, as a modern-day retelling. The trailer is embedded above–what do you think?

A limited release date has been set for June 07, 2013. The film has already screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Glasgow Film Festival. As we previously reported, Whedon shot the entire movie at his own home in 12 days. Here’s more about the film from NPR:

As I watched Much Ado About Nothing, I had the distinct thought, “I wonder whether this is the future.” Not the future, of course — I don’t believe we’re anywhere close to the end of the blockbuster, nor do I believe we’re necessarily entering a new age of Shakespeare — but a big piece of the future. Big films have gotten so big, expensive films so expensive, that all of the risk has to be drained out of them, which often leaves behind a dried-out version of whatever was originally intended.

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Here is an excerpt from Mehigan’s annotation: “this poem was written in 2006, while Michael Jackson was still alive. Its title comes from Richard II: “let us sit upon the ground / And tell sad stories of the deaths of kings.” But I wasn’t thinking of death in a literal sense”

The 18th century writer Samuel Johnson has also joined Rap Genius from beyond the grave, his writings explaining William Shakespeare‘s work.

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Did you ever wish for a different ending in William Shakespeare‘s iconic play, Hamlet? Writer Ryan North has raised more than $160,000 on Kickstarter for a “chooseable-path” illustrated version of the famous play, To Be or Not to Be: That is the Adventure.

North promises that his book will contain jokes, sword fights, ghosts and “awesome as a mass noun.” We’ve embedded a video about the project above–what do you think?

Here’s more about the project: “If we reach our goal for the book, I’ll be able to release the book as a professionally-edited, professionally typeset, professionally-designed beautiful volume with a single illustration commissioned from each of these artists, each rendering a different way your story can end. And the more money we raise, the more deaths get illustrated, until we have all 110 deaths done!  You can die a lot in a book like this, and I want to make each time something to look forward to. I want it to be a treat.”

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Breaking Dawn Part 2

We’ve collected links to five free digital books that inspired Stephenie Meyer while she wrote the novels behind the movies. In an interview, Meyer (pictured, via) talked about her favorite authors. She explained:

I’ve been reading books for adults my entire life. Growing up I was an avid reader—the thicker the book, the better.  Pride and Prejudice, Gone with the Wind, The Sword of Shannara, Jane Eyre, Rebecca, etc.  I’m a huge fan of Orson Scott Card, and Jane Austen– I can’t go through a year without re-reading her stuff again.

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In a 2009 essay, New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani wr0te about the books that inspired the President. Here’s an excerpt:

Mr. Obama’s love of fiction and poetry — Shakespeare’s plays, Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick” and Marilynne Robinson‘s “Gilead” are mentioned on his Facebook page, along with the Bible, Lincoln’s collected writings and Emerson’s “Self Reliance“ — has not only given him a heightened awareness of language. It has also imbued him with a tragic sense of history and a sense of the ambiguities of the human condition quite unlike the Manichean view of the world so often invoked by Mr. Bush.

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Here’s more from the release: “Desdemona is an extraordinary narrative of words, music and song about Shakespeare’s doomed heroine, who speaks from the grave about the traumas of race, class, gender, war — and the transformative power of love. Toni Morrison transports one of the most iconic, central and disturbing treatments of race in Western culture into the new realities and potential outcomes facing a rising generation of the 21st century.”

The story focuses on the relationship shared between Othello’s wife and her African nurse Barbary. Morrison became inspired to write the play as a response to Sellars’ 2009 production of Othello. Desdemona first debuted in May 2011 at Vienna’s Theatre Azkent. Productions have ran in Belgium, the United States and Germany. In July 2012, Sellers directed the play at London’s Barbican Concert Hall.

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The modern-day retelling of the Shakespearean comedy screened at the Toronto Film Festival. NPR reports that Whedon shot the entire movie at his own home in just 12 days. He also wrote the screenplay and oversaw the music.

The cast includes many actors he has worked with in the past. NPR listed them all: “Amy Acker (Angel, The Cabin In The Woods) as Beatrice, Alexis Denisof (Buffy, Angel, Dollhouse) as Benedick, Fran Kranz (The Cabin In The Woods, Dollhouse) as Claudio, Clark Gregg (The Avengers) as Leonato, Reed Diamond (Dollhouse) as Don Pedro, and — bless his heart — Nathan ”Joey Buchanan” Fillion (Firefly, Dr. Horrible, Buffy) as Dogberry the bumbling constable.”

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Actor Kenneth Branagh (who plays Professor Gilderoy Lockhart in the Harry Potter films) recited a passage from William Shakespeare‘s The Tempest. A parade of nurses, doctors and child patients with books followed in rolling beds.

Author J.K. Rowling read a selection from J.M. Barrie‘s Peter Pan. After Rowling’s reading, a giant-sized Lord Voldemort popped up. A crew of women dressed as Mary Poppins wielded umbrellas and banished the Harry Potter villain.

Click here to find out when you can watch the opening ceremony in your neighborhood. Follow this link to view photos from the ceremony. What do you think?

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