Student publishes a new Shakespeare text

William Shakespeare's reputation has little to fear from history, but even so it's nice to know that he has got a Yorkshire student at Northumbria university on his side.

If the Swan of Avon does have enemies, they are likely to be found among schoolchildren forced to study his works on sunny summer days. Should this be your fate, I recommend editions with footnotes by Kitteredge whose expertise at finding hidden dirty meanings in the text is unmatched.

Alex Edwards, who is 22 and from Wakefield, has been dealing with a different type of text: the one which young people flick too and fro with their agile little fingers. He has transposed the whole of Romeo and Juliet's famous Act II, Scene II into text abbreviations and produced it as Were4 rt thou Rmo? It's a flip-page book with the text versions alternating with Shakespeare's actual words; currently a uni project limited edition, but hopefully more widely available soon.

Interestingly, the point is not to celebrate or promote the world of texting, but to show newcomers to Shakespeare how beautiful and powerful the original writing is.

Read more details here.