What the Hay!? Shakespearean Silliness at Hay Festival 2016

Starting with The Big Bard Question: If you met Shakespeare, what would you ask him? We put this to a range of star speakers, including Maxine Peake, Salman Rushdie and Russell T Davies.

Making Hay - the best of Shakespeare from the 2016 Hay Festival
Watch full sessions, clips and other highlights from Russell T Davies to Ruby Wax, Malorie Blackman to Marcus Brigstocke and Jonathan Dimbleby to Jeanette Winterson.

What would you ask Shakespeare?

Everything you ever wanted to ask (almost!)

As ever, Hay offered up an impressive array of speakers - and the BBC was there to capture anything Shakespeare. Our star line up included the academic, such as Germaine Greer and Jonathan Bate; and also the artistic with RSC Artistic Director Gregory Doran, writer Russell T Davies and actors Maxine Peake and Paapa Essiedu.

But there was more besides, and no shortage of laughs and lighter moments...

The worst 'knock, knock' joke Shakespeare never told

RSC artistic director Gregory Doran on how changing words can be compunctious

Schama Chameleon

The historian has a brief turn at cabaret to help us brush up our Shakespeare

Paapa Essiedu's take on 'To be or not to be...'

The actor takes us through his thoughts when tackling that famous speech.

Radio 3 presenters Sean Rafferty (or should that be 'Ruff'erty?!) and Clemency Burton Hill joined happy Hay-goers in dressing up and getting into the Bard spirit...

Check out our snazzy 'Ruff Stuff' gallery.

Sean Rafferty, presenter

Clemency Burton Hill - Presenter

James Shapiro talks to Jerry Brotton
The author of 1599 offers an intimate portrait of one of Shakespeare’s most inspired moments: the year of King Lear, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra
Russell T Davies and Maxine Peake
Watch live as the former Doctor Who show-runner talks about his passion project, the BBC film of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream, with one of its stars, Maxine Peake
Maxine Peake, Paapa Essiedu and Jerry Brotton
Two of the greatest modern Hamlets talk about the role. Maxine Peake played Hamlet in Sarah Frankcom’s production and Paapa Essiedu is playing Hamlet now at the RSC. They talk to the author of This Orient Isle, Jerry Brotton, who is the Shakespeare adviser to the Hay Festival
Salman Rushdie, Kamila Shamsie, Valeria Luiselli, Juan Gabriel Vasquez
The novelists celebrate the 400th anniversaries of Cervantes and Shakespeare and the stories that they have written around them
Germaine Greer
As part of Hay Festival’s big Shakespeare 400 Celebrations, the writer and lecturer discusses the playwright’s poetry
Imtiaz Dharker and Gillian Clarke
The British poets respond with their own poems to their choice of Shakespeare’s 14-line poems. They introduce and read the original sonnets and their own newly commissioned work
Jonathan Bate
Why are we celebrating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death? Who and what are we celebrating? How did Shakespeare get from there (the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage) to here (the global icon) and where will he go in the next hundred years?
Malorie Blackman talks to Julia Eccleshare
The author pays tribute to Shakespeare’s 400th anniversary with her new novel inspired by Othello. Her tale blends a love story with a sci-fi twist in an original space-age adventure
Gregory Doran
The Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company discusses Shakespeare’s legacy in 2016, the 400th anniversary of his death
Jeanette Winterson
The novelist and essayist celebrates the work and gift of the playwright. Her latest novel The Gap of Time is a retelling of The Winter’s Tale
Simon Schama
The historian examines Shakespeare’s making of the myths of England. He hymns the Histories, the kings and the commoners, the band of brothers, and the spirit of Shakespeare’s greatest knight, Sir John Falstaff.