Our new RSC Shakespeare website goes live today in anticipation of the imminent publication of the new RSC Complete Works. It is absolutely brilliant. We are already reprinting the book which, when it comes to a large-format 2552 page monster, is a harder task than usual. I wanted a Shakespeare quote about Spring or April as the heading but got diverted by this Browning piece of nostalgia for an English Spring - corny but true. The sun was out this morning and Spring was in the air but not too many chaffinches along the Euston Road.

 Oh, to be in England
 Now that April's there,
 And whoever wakes in England
 Sees, some morning, unaware,
 That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
 Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
 While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
 In England - now!

While on matters English and Springy, Matthew Engel's Extracts from the Red Notebooks is now out and we can all enjoy what Bill Bryson describes as 'marvellous'; about which Jeremy Paxman wrote 'If you don't pick this up and either smile or laugh outright, you'd better check your pulse'; and of which John Cleese characteristically said 'I'm thoroughly fed up with this sort of anthology, but, if you REALLY need one, this is the best I've ever seen'. I agree.

And given today's Shakespearean theme, I turned to the 'Stagestruck' chapter in the book to light upon this hugely politically incorrect advert for repertory actors in 1950:

'No fancy salaries and no queer folk.'