IN my humble opinion there’s been far too much Shakespeare doing the rounds this summer.

Putting together the leisure section each week for the Worcester News, I have been amazed at the number of theatre companies, both amateur and professional, peddling out the same old plays year in, year out.

The increasing trend for al-fresco theatre is something to be championed, especially when the weather renders the use of an umbrella redundant, but must it always be the ramblings of Will that are given such treatment?

Arts funding is notoriously tight, so it is slightly understandable as to why various versions of Shakespeare’s work are dusted off time and time again to save pennies as the casts are no doubt overly familiar with the lines.

But would a little originality not be a more attractive option to venues and audiences alike?

Try something else, encourage new writing, take a risk and see what the result is rather than relying on a tried-and-tested formula.

My feelings for the Bard are fantastically summed up in a Blackadder sketch that doesn’t quite bother the one-and-a-half-minute mark.

Rowan Atkinson’s title character has a chance encounter with the bearded playwright and dedicates a swift right hook to “every schoolboy and schoolgirl for the next 400 years”.

He goes on to question him while still seated on the floor: “Have you any idea how much suffering you are going to cause? Hours spent at school desks trying to find one joke in a Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Years spent wearing stupid tights in school plays.”

Time travel should be invented for this very purpose alone.

Maybe my disdain for his work comes from the fact that I was one of those poor souls chained to my desk dissecting his poetry and plays until the words made even less sense.

More fool me then for choosing a degree in English literature, which led me down the Bard’s well-trodden and tedious path yet again, often stopping at various avenues that came before in the even darker and bleaker mediaeval and renaissance period.

A little more originality in next summer’s programming would be most welcome, even if just to give me a bit more variety to write about.

He’s been dead for nigh on 400 years – it’s time to move on.