A birthday and a wedding have dominated the Shakespearean news cycles (and my Twitter feed) over the past week — Did you celebrate either? Both?

• This past week, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust organized a blogging event in celebration of Shakespeare’s birthday. If you want to catch up with all of the participants, check out the official Happy Birthday Shakespeare site.
• Couldn’t make it to the Blackfriars Playhouse for our birthday party? The Staunton Newsleader has an article and some great pictures from the event.
• The Big Think has produced some more leadership lessons from Shakespeare. Sarah says: This features some of the very items we use in our leadership seminars.
• The RSC is promoting Shakespeare to the under-10 crowd, using some of the same methods and approaches that the ASC employs when working with younger students, particularly at our Midsummer Day Camp.
• A New Zealand teacher has been fired for teaching King Lear — or so the headline reads. The actual details seem a bit fuzzier, as she seems to have been using a modern adaptation. Cass says: I wonder if some of the objectionable bits would have slid by if she’d stuck with the original?
• Big in social media news this week has been the production of Much Ado about Nothing which is using Facebook in its lead-up to explore the relationships in the play and to highlight issues of bullying and gossip.
• Kate Powers, who will be directing A Midsummer Night’s Dream this summer for the ASC Almost Blasphemy tour, talks about her experiences teaching theatre in prisons.
• We don’t usually give time to authorship controversies here, but I like this one because it proposes that Prince William and Prince Harry, through their mother, may be descendents of both Queen Elizabeth I and William Shakespeare.

Finally, I want to wish all the best to the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Their Royal Highnesses Prince William and Princess Kate. “Heaven give you many, many merry days!”