Feature: Extracts from all 37 of Shakespeare's plays on show

Visitors to London's Southbank will this weekend be able to see filmed extracts from all 37 of Shakespeare's plays to mark the 400th anniversary of the playwright's death.

The idea of screening all 37 of Shakespeare's plays is the brainchild of the Shakespeare's Globe theater, a replica of a theater of the playwright's era at the end of the 16th century.

A stretch of the Thames embankment, of about three km running from Waterloo Station to Tower Bridge will be the venue for 37 giant TV screens, each carrying a filmed extract of one of Shakespeare's plays along with extracts from silent films from the early days of cinema inspired by the playwright's works.

"On each screen will be a 10-minute short film dedicated to one of Shakespeare's plays and at the heart of each film is a new bit of footage shot somewhere in the world where Shakespeare was imagining he was writing that play," Dominic Dromgoole, the Globe's artistic director, told Xinhua.

The films are free to watch, and will run all day and in the early evening on Saturday and Sunday.

The locations used for the short films are those that Shakespeare imagined in his plays. For instance the Pyramids were the scene for an extract from "Antony and Cleopatra".

Some of the other locations used include ancient ruins in Rome; Areopagus Hill in Athens for "Timon of Athens"; the Forest of Ardennes in Belgium for "As You Like It"; The Houses of Parliament for "Richard II"; Tomba di Giulietta in Verona for "Romeo and Juliet"; Kronborg Castle in Elsinore Denmark for "Hamlet"; Hampton Court Palace for "Henry VIII"; The Tower of London for "Richard III"; Westminster Abbey for "Henry IV".

"Every film is particular in its own way but all provide an essence of that particular play. They give a wonderful overview of the whole of his work," said Dromgoole.

Shakespeare would only have known the settings of his plays if they were in England. All the foreign settings -- like the Pyramids in Egypt or Elsinore Castle in Denmark -- came from his imagination.

Dromgoole said: "The amazing thing was how right the locations were, despite Shakespeare not having been there. We went to the Ardennes to shoot 'As You Like It', and it was a place Shakespeare had never been and it was that ideal landscape, the perfect place for 'As You Like It'. It is the fact that Shakespeare's imagination coincided so brilliantly with the place that is the oddest achievement."

And the filmed extracts are making their own global journey. Different cities around the world have signed up to display the films, often in an imaginative way.

Dromgoole said: "In New Zealand they have talked about showing them in at TV showroom, which would be brilliant because you can show them on the smallest TV screens, you don't have to do them on the scale we are doing them." Endit