They're performing one play by the famous
Bard of Avon (Much Ado About Nothing), and another one by some chap called Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night's Dream), and they're two of the best productions I've seen for a long time.
Anyone who has ever struggled through an exam at school will find welcome relief in this affectionate send-up of the
Bard of Avon.
She taught Shakespeare classes and, at the end of each academic year, organized a party in which students and she dressed up in togas and recited their favorite lines from the
Bard of Avon.
Fittingly Prof Stanley Wells, chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust - whose office lies a stone's throw from where the
Bard of Avon was born in Stratford-uponAvon - produces the nearest thing to a final verdict on the Sanders portrait.
So for those who didn't vote for the
Bard of Avon as the Man of the Millennium, The Shakespeare Revue at Birmingham Rep last week was a treat.
Prof Looney (who wisely insisted his name should be pronounced "loney" to rhyme with honey) claimed that the
Bard of Avon was in truth Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, whose ancestral seat was Hedingham Castle, near Halstead, Essex.
The
Bard of Avon would have liked Batista's playing one of his most famous characters.
No, not the
Bard of Avon but the man who used to be, well, the town clerk of Smethwick.
There's the
Bard of Avon, and Shakespeare, not to mention the great poet Ron.
Or, as the
Bard of Avon might have put it, all was indeed well that ended well.
And just as the
Bard of Avon defined the age he lived in, so the second half of the 18th Century has become known as the Age of Johnson.
With all apologies to "Hamlet" and the
Bard of Avon, that's basically the question before 22,000 Massachusetts personal care attendants.
