William Shakespeare, birthday tributes and reading guides

April 23 marks William Shakespeare's traditional birth and death anniversary, and publishers and writers released reading guides, essays, and discounted editions to coincide with the date. Cambridge University Press's New Shakespeare series historically featured a Picasso drawing of Shakespeare on its covers, while Penguin promoted playful imagery including a wizard-hatted penguin with the phrase "let chatgpt do it." Essayists such as Gabby Hutchinson Crouch published pieces treating Shakespeare as a fictionalised character, and readers highlighted lines like "Hell is empty and all the devils are here" and "In war, events of importance are the result of trivial causes." The round-up of editions, recommendations, and scholarship offers an easy entry point for new readers and fresh angles for scholars debating authorship and interpretation.