‘Deleted’ Shakespeare scenes published to mark 400 years

To mark the 400th anniversary of his death this week, “deleted” scenes from Shakespeare have been published online. Dreamed up by authors including Margaret Atwood and Jasper Fforde, the hitherto unseen passages add zombies to Hamlet and Star Wars to The Tempest.

Goodreads asked the writers, who also include Malorie Blackman tackling Othello, to write the deleted scenes as part of its “Shakespeare Week” celebrations. Fforde, whose fourth book about the literary detective Thursday Next features Hamlet as a character, took on the Prince of Denmark again with an essay about the “earlier ‘problem’ manuscripts of Shakespeare’s most famous work”.