Announcing Shakespeare Week!
For the week of April 19 through April 26, WritersDigest.com plans to celebrate William Shakespeare and his influence on writing and storytelling with Shakespeare Week!
For the week of April 19 through April 26, WritersDigest.com plans to celebrate William Shakespeare and his influence on writing and storytelling with Shakespeare Week!
While history is filled with influential writers, none may have impacted the English language more than William Shakespeare. Also known as the Bard, Shakespeare is credited with writing more than 30 plays, penning more than 150 sonnets (and actually having a form, the Shakespearean sonnet, named after him), and inventing between 400 and 1,700 words.
To celebrate his influence on writers and readers, we've decided to make the week of April 19 through April 25 Shakespeare Week! In addition to our normal articles and interviews, we'll be slipping in posts about Shakespeare and his connection to writers and writing.
After all, Shakespeare was (possibly) born and died on April 23. But like most things in his life, there's a veil of secrecy about when things did or did not happen. That little bit of ambiguity in his life and works is probably what still makes his writing relevant today.
If you want to start celebrating early, try watching one of Kenneth Branagh's Shakespearean adaptations, like Othello, Hamlet, or—my personal favorite—Much Ado About Nothing. Or watch movies like West Side Story, Forbidden Planet, My Private Idaho, or 10 Things I Hate About You as these are all modern retellings of Shakespearean plays.
And with that, I'll leave you with this popular Shakespearean idiom: "Brevity is the soul of wit."
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Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
