Unless you follow me on Twitter you may not know I was playing Demetrius in Iris Theatre’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream this last July, in the gardens of St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden, London.

Nor that I curated a 70 minute CD of well-known – and not so well-known sonnets, speeches and scenes of Shakespeare for the British Library, the first of its kind spoken by professional actors, and out March 2012.

I’m about to adapt Venus and Adonis for Roughhouse Theatre & Bath Theatre Royal… and very excitingly, will be beginning work on a new series of books I’ve been commissioned to write for Arden Shakespeare…

Nor indeed, will you know that I am about to leave for Nevada, USA, to start rehearsals to play Hamlet…

It’s going to be an Original Pronunciation production, the first for 400 years, and will open November 1st.

I’ll be keeping an account and diary of the whole process – the first of which will be up very soon – and found via my Twitter feed…

“Before you read the play, go and see it.

Before you go and see it, read Shakespeare on Toast!”

Stewart Ross, judge for the Society of Authors

Ceremony for the Educational Writer of the Year Award 2010
House of Commons, December 2010

After giving a talk and two workshops to the Year 10 students at Oundle School, I came back to London and headed to Shoreditch.

A team from the Museum of London has found the remains of The Theatre, the playhouse built by James Burbage, and dismantled by his actor-son Richard, Will Shakespeare & their Company, one night in 1599. The materials were used to build the Globe playhouse across the river.

The Tower Theatre Company have begun a fund-raising project to build a new theatre around the site, and protect the remains. They asked me to come and speak a sonnet there yesterday.

I performed Sonnet 116 in OP on the Groundlings Gravel – one of very few actors to have spoken Shakespeare – and the first time that accent has been heard there – in 400 years.

A breathtaking moment. I’m a very lucky fellow.

Please head to the The Theatre’s website, and support the project.

The Theatre, Shoreditch

Discussing the difference between performing Shakespeare in RP vs OP (Shakespeare’s accent); then performing Sonnet 116 in RP, and OP; and then reading from the opening chapter of Toast, Schwarzengger’s Hamlet…

Up against some steely competition, including Andrew Gurr’s Shakespeare’s Opposites and AD Cousins’ The Shakespeare Encyclopedia, I’m touched and honoured Toast was up for consideration.

Full details of the other categories, including Jude Law’s Hamlet win for Best Principal Performance, can all be found here…

Following on from the great gig at Peter Parker’s Rock’n'Roll Club last Monday, I had been kindly invited to give the after-dinner speech at the British Psychological Society’s 2010 Conference in the ever-beautiful Stratford-upon-Avon. A terrific evening, with much fascinating post-dinner in-depth analysis of Life, the Universe and Everything Shakespeare with some of the delegates.

Then on Friday I whisked myself over to Tolethorpe Hall – a beautiful manor near Stamford, with a wonderful open-air theatre where the Stamford Shakespeare Society perform, to speak at the Cambridge Welland Valley branch of the English Speaking Union for their annual Shakespeare Literary Lunch!

Last, but by no means least, a wonderful day in London’s Regent’s Park yesterday, running a workshop on Acting Shakespeare for a terrific bunch of young American actors, all members of the Rebel Shakespeare Company, from Salem, MA.

Phew!

And my father, David Crystal, has written a blog-post about it, so touched was he by one of the sequences…

Click here to see the list…

#1 in Books > Poetry, Drama & Criticism > History & Criticism > Drama & Dramatists > 16th to 18th Centuries
#1 in Books > Poetry, Drama & Criticism > Shakespeare, William > Criticism & Study Aids
#2 in Books > Study Books > Undergraduate & Postgraduate > Arts & Humanities > Literature & Drama

Click here to grab a slice for yourself, and Buy The Book…

* The Stratford-upon-Avon Literary Festival on May 1st, at 6.30pm, where I’ll be speaking with Jonathan Bates and Christopher Rush

* The Hay-on-Wye Literature Festival on May 31st, at 9am (Toast will be served)

* The first London Toast talk, at the Notting Hill Waterstones, on June 4th, at 7pm…

More details of these events – and links to their websites – can be found here…

* And hot on their heels, fresh from the oven, the paperback edition of Shakespeare on Toast will be published on 4th June by Icon Books…

In the meantime, a write-up of Toast and growing discussion at Lizzy’s Literary Life:

This is a fascinating read – Shakespeare toasted lightly and buttered, slice by slice, by an author/actor whose passion for the subject shines through.