“All the worlds a stage” (As You Like It, II.vii) ! Well, at least the banks of the Thames will be for an entire weekend next April in commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. Shakespeare’s Globe announced last week that they will be celebrating the life (and death) of The Bard with an exhibition dubbed ‘The Complete Walk’, consisting of a 2.5 mile walk between Westminster and Tower Bridge. Along the walk will be 37 large outdoor cinema screens, each showing a series of original 10-minute film pertaining to one of Shakespeare’s plays, filmed on the location that the play is set in.
Running over the weekend of the 23rd and 24th April 2016, the films will be shown for free and have been produced with the Mayor of London and the British Council as part of its 2016 Shakespeare Lives programme. Boris Johnson demonstrated his excitement for the project, claiming “Four hundred years after his death, Shakespeare is a titanic figure, whose work still resonates with people of all ages and backgrounds. That is an incredible feat and one that will be rightly celebrated across the world next year.” Hear, hear Boris!
Dominic Dromgoole, artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe, added: “Shakespeare spent half his life in London, wrote all his plays there, and presented them all beside the Thames…We think it is suitable and fitting that the huge range of his work should be celebrated 400 years after his death in a big free public event, utilising the very latest technology, along a public walkway beside the same dirty old river, so rich with history.” Well Will, looks like you’re coming back in style!