LONDON Mar. 11 —— The Guildhall School presents “Go, make you ready”, a new work based on Shakespeare’s sonnets and plays devised by the School’s Head of Voice and renowned Shakespeare expert Patsy Rodenburg. The production opens in London on Friday 18 March before touring China in April.

“Go, make you ready” forms part of Shakespeare400, a consortium of leading cultural, creative and educational organisations, coordinated by King’s College London, which will mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 2016. Through a connected series of public performances, programmes, exhibitions and creative activities in the capital and beyond, partners will celebrate the legacy of Shakespeare during the quarter centenary year.

The work of William Shakespeare changed British theatre, language. His sonnets of 1609 give an insight into his intellectual and personal passions. Using the sonnets as springboards into his creative and personal life, this new, devised piece explores the theatre, acting, passions and politics of Shakespeare’s life.

The story centres on Anne, Shakespeare’s wife, and takes place on the evening of 22 April and into the morning of 23 April 1616. It moves between two settings: the theatre and Shakespeare’s home, in Stratford. All the text in Go, make you ready is Shakespeare’s, taken from his sonnets and scenes from some of his plays, apart from some names and passages from the Elizabethan Book of Common Prayer, but these are words that Shakespeare would have spoken or heard.

Patsy Rodenburg says: “Although I started with the sonnets as an educational tool I became very intrigued by their content. It seems to me that Shakespeare is practising or intensely exploring themes in his sonnets that resonate all through his plays. They seem to feed and impact his theatrical work. Themes like the misuse of power, the tension between conditional and unconditional love, the balance between man-made and divine justice and unrequited love. These themes are woven into personal relationships. This ability to write the epic alongside the personal is one of Shakespeare’s great theatrical achievements. The publication of the sonnets has also worried and engaged me. How did Anne, his wife, react if and when she read them?”​