LYRICS
All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players... This famous quote from As You Like It describes perfectly a festival starting today, which celebrates that play's famous author. As part of the World Shakespeare Festival, all of the Bard's plays will be performed in just six weeks – but they won't be in Elizabethan English. The 37 plays will be in 37 different languages. It will be a rare opportunity to hear Romeo and Juliet's balcony scene delivered in Arabic or Hamlet's 'To be or not to be' soliloquy in Lithuanian. And as for Richard III's famous speeches... they will be in Mandarin. Audiences will also get the chance to watch Love's Labour's Lost in sign language, which brings a new meaning to the term blank verse. The Globe theatre on London's Southbank, a faithful recreation of Shakespeare's own theatre, will be living up to its name as over 600 actors from across the world come to tread its boards. The Globe's artistic director Dominic Dromgoole, said: “A Globe by the Thames is where the wonderful cultural and imaginative journey of these plays began. Another Globe by the Thames is honoured to be inviting Shakespeare back home, dressed in the clothes of many different peoples.” If there is a defining aim of the festival it is to present England's national dramatist as 'the world's playwright'. As Michael Boyd, the artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company put it: "Shakespeare is no longer English property." The celebrations will also include an exhibition at the British Museum and a digital project, myShakespeare. The festival was launched today with a new sonnet by Mark Ravenhill. The events are the start of an exciting cultural year for Londoners. The Shakespeare festival is just one of the items in London's Cultural Olympiad – the series of events that aim to do for culture what the Olympics does for sport.