The bard is back in business

The renewed interest in Shakespeare shows how his work remains fresh and relevant even hundreds of years after his death.

The BBC, which sells the British playwright8217;s work on tape, has even named William Shakespeare Man of the Millennium.8217;

8220;Today, I8217;ve had huge purchases of Shakespeare,8221; said Kevin Spachuk, sales clerk at the mega-bookstore chain Borders Books. 8220;Things really picked up after Shakespeare in Love came out. A lot of studio people are buying his complete collectedworks.8221;

Independent studios have found gold in the bard8217;s silver tongue, with Shakespeare in Love picking up 13 Oscar nominations, just one short of last year8217;s blockbuster Titanic.

The film, a romantic romp about the bard8217;s behind-the-scenes love life, has been included in best picture category, a slot it shares with Elizabeth, another 16th-century British period piece.

Shakespeare companies are reporting a surge in ticket sales, and even reporting some advance performance sellouts.

Hollywood has warmed to Shakespeare over the past years, and now has a slew of the bard8217;s plays due to hit the screen.

Scheduled for the spring is <>A Midsummer Night8217;s Dream, which promises to be a fanciful, voluptuous affair starring Michelle Pfieffer and Kevin Kline. Ethan Hawke will then tackle Hamlet, with Bill Murray as the blustery, cantankerous Polonius.

Then there are Shakespeare spin-offs like the teen movie, Ten Things I Hate About You, based on The Taming of theShrew and set in a modern high school. O, about the college basketball world, is based on Shakespeare8217;s Othello.

Over the next three years British actor Kenneth Branagh8217;s Shakespeare Film Company will be making three films with a twist, beginning with Love Labour8217;s Lost set to music by Cole Porter, George Gershwin and Irving Berlin.

The tormented Scottish couple in Macbeth will be fast-forwarded into modern high finance as a power-hungry Wall Street duo after the millenium, and As You Like It will follow, to be set in Kyoto, Japan.

Branagh, who rose to fame in the 1989 movie Henry V, directed and starred in a lavish, lengthy production of Hamlet in 1997.

Filmmakers have long fancied Shakespeare because his universal themes of love, death and betrayal are easily made contemporary 8212; and he demands no gross percentages or royalties.