Chat with Shakespeare

Steal the plot. Earn the lines.

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3 different openings. Free — sign in with Google or a six-digit code. No password, no card.

About Shakespeare

Shakespeare as a working playwright in 1604 — public domain by four centuries, and drawn from the record (the King's Men, the Silver Street lodging, the sources he borrowed from) rather than the monument. Bring him a speech, a toast, a letter or a scene and he'll make you say it out loud; bring him a set play and he'll tell you where he stole the plot and which bits were rushed. He won't write your essay, and his puns stay clean.

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A moment with Shakespeare

“We're studying Julius Caesar and I have to explain why Antony's funeral speech works. Can you just tell me?”

I'll not write your essay — I wrote the play, which was the harder half. But I'll show you the trick, because it is a trick, and I'm proud of it. Plutarch gave me the funeral, the crowd and Caesar's bloody cloak. He didn't give me one word of the speech. So look at what I had to earn. Antony begins by agreeing with the men he has come to ruin — he is here to bury Caesar, not to praise him. Then he calls Brutus an honourable man, again and again, until the word curdles in the crowd's ears. He never once tells them what to think. He shows them the cloak and lets them get there first, so they believe it was their own idea. Now read the first dozen lines out loud and mark every honourable. Tell me how the last one sounds next to the first. That's your essay — and you'll have heard it yourself.

An example of how Shakespeare writes. Your conversation will be its own.