Shakespeare application reaches all documents

ISTANBUL- Hürriyet Daily News

Documents related to Shakespeare are cavailable through a smart phone app.

Thousands of documents and artifacts related to Shakespeare have been made available through a smart phone app developed by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and Coventry University’s Serious Games Institute, bbc.co.uk reported.

“Eye Shakespeare” features items previously unavailable to the public such as images of a lock of the bard’s hair.

Project aims to reach wider audience
David Hopes, a research fellow at the Stratford-upon-Avon-based trust, said the project aimed to reach new audiences, according to bbc.co.uk. The documents featured in the app are currently kept in a secure vault in Stratford-upon-Avon and were scanned and photographed for the program.

They include Shakespeare’s birth and death records, the court record of the purchase of New Place in Stratford-upon-Avon as well as the only surviving letter written to him.

Images of a lock of hair belonging to Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway, and a die found during a recent archaeological dig at New Place have also been featured.

According to bbc.co.uk, the app cost £500,000 to develop with the help of a grant from the Technology Strategy Board.

Hopes said it also had an augmented reality feature.

“Visitors will be able to hold the phone up in Stratford and the technology within it will be able to visualize Shakespeare’s first home as it was then,” he said.

Tim Luft, director of Coventry University’s Serious Games Institute, said developers would be adding more content to the app over the summer.

“Millions of people visit Stratford every year and yet the trust’s collection of internationally and historically significant artifacts and documents has remained unseen to the vast majority of them,” he said.

“We hope the app will prove a hit with visitors to Stratford and will also play its part in boosting tourism in the region.”