William Shakespeare: 2016 is the 400th anniversary of his death

Few cultural figures are afforded quite as many anniversary knees-ups as Shakespeare – then again there’s nothing like being born and dying on the same day to keep you in the calendar. In 2014, the world toasted the 450th birthday of Warwickshire’s most famous son. A new year bringsShakespeare 400, marking four centuries since the playwright’s death.

Chief among the cheerleaders is the Royal Shakespeare Company, whose national tour of A Midsummer Night’s Dream – directed by Erica Whyman – will cast local performers as the mechanicals in every region of the UK. The same play has inspired four leading Scottish institutions to team up for New Dreams, a festival season of performance in Glasgow directed by Graham McLaren.

On the page, after The Gap of Time, Jeanette Winterson’s lyrical retelling of A Winter’s Tale last autumn, comes the next Hogarth Shakespeare edition, Shylock Is My Name, Howard Jacobson’s spin on The Merchant of Venice in February, followed by Anne Tyler and Margaret Atwood’s takes on The Taming of the Shrewand The Tempest in June and October, respectively.

Not to be outdone, Shakespeare’s Globe has commissioned The Complete Walk, new films of all 37 plays to be screened along London’s South Bank, each shot in its rightful location – from Elsinore to the pyramids of Egypt. Titus Andronicusgets a second film treatment in The Hungry, a UK-Indian co-production that is among a raft of anniversary commissions from Film London, fronted by Kenneth Branagh, and the National Archives and King’s College London present By Me, an exhibition at Somerset House telling Shakespeare’s life story in his own words.

On 23 April, Simon Callow hosts a gala concert at the Royal Festival Hall with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Glyndebourne Chorus, while the RSC branches into live TV with The Shakespeare Show, broadcast on BBC2 from Stratford and hosted by one-time Hamlet, David Tennant.

There are rumours that a living Dane, Benedict Cumberbatch, is involved in this paper’s 400th anniversary project – but which Shakespearean stalwart could he be playing next?