THE popular York Shakespeare Project Sonnet Walks are back for the York International Shakespeare Festival, this time with a wedding theme.

Under the creative control of director Mick Taylor for the first time, Sonnet Walks: The Wedding will be perambulating through York from May 10 to 18 with new choices of Shakespeare sonnets and new additions to the YSP ranks.

Led by a guide setting out from the York Theatre Royal café terrace, walkers will meet an array of characters, each with a story to tell on the hour-long walk. Evening walks will start at 6pm and 6.20pm; Saturday matinees at noon and 12.15pm, and there will be no walks on Sunday, May 12 or Monday, May 13.

Shirley Williams and Emilie Knight will be the Sonnet Walks’ guides and sonneteers; Ian Timmins and Mick Taylor, the ushers. New YSP sonneteers will be Wilma Edwards; Sindy Allen; Sue Harris and junior sonneteer Harry Revell, joining regular participants Nigel Evans, Frank Brogan, Di Starr and Helen Wilson.

YSP stalwart Maurice Crichton says: “There will be two walks each evening led by a guide around a carefully chosen route. Along the way, your group will meet an array of different performers each with a story to share. The walks will last about an hour.

“The Walks are aimed at those aged 14 plus but may be enjoyed by younger folk with the right support from their accompanying adult.”

To entice your attendance, here is a burst of verse from the Sonnet Walks poster:

“The wedding of the year in our city of York,

On the eve of the nuptials, a Sonnet Walk,

Before the couple’s vows, for better or worse,

The course of their love through Shakespeare’s verse.

With supporting cast, and some naysayers,

Come along and meet the Players.”

Suitably inspired? If so, tickets cost £6, £4 for 14 to 17 year olds; two U14s per adult can attend for free.

THE York International Shakespeare Festival will conclude on May 19 with Battle Of The Bard, when 37 plays enter, but only one play will leave.

Festival-goers are invited to see out the festival out with a bang at 8pm that night as York actors champion their favourites for the title of Shakespeare’s Best Play. Will Love’s Labour’s lose? Can Coriolanus win the hearts of the common curs? Will Hamlet’s rivals pop in between the election and his hopes?

Only you, the audience, can decide, at the Dogrose Theatre, the new pop-up space for this year’s festival, hidden in the rafters at Thomas Herbert House, 14 Pavement, York, above the new York Gin shop.

Tickets for Sonnet Walks: The Wedding and Battle Of The Bard are on sale on 01904 623568, at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk or in person from the Theatre Royal box office.

Charles Hutchinson