POETRY

Ben Crystal with Paul Blezard

Ben Crystal is an actor, author, producer and educator whose passion for all things Shakespeare has taken him from page to stage and from The United States to Japan. A leading exponent of the original pronunciation of the Bard’s works and the original practices of Elizabethan theatre, He was the co-writer of Shakespeare’s Words (Penguin 2002) and The Shakespeare Miscellany (Penguin 2005) with his father David Crystal. His first solo book, Shakespeare on Toast – Getting a Taste for the Bard (Icon 2008) was shortlisted for the 2010 Educational Writer of the Year Award.

In this fascinating interview with Paul Blezard he discusses the joy of exporting Shakespeare, beautifully performs three sonnets and reads a sneak preview of his forthcoming book in which he presciently imagines being marooned alone with only a complete works of Shakespeare for company.