The following discussion concentrates on plays fully produced by KickAss Shakespeare which currently are The Tragedie of Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and Romeo and Juliet.

Twelfth Night, Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, Othello and Hamlet will be fully produced in the near future with the other plays and poems to follow. All the other plays do take advantage of the incredible KickAss Glossary, KickAss FlexSearch and are quickly being updated to include the Primary text alongside the common text.

For Impatient People

Hover over, click or touch underlined words and phrases for modern equivalents.

Display a menu of page-layout options, general settings, and more.
Show the Search Bar. Click the button to return to the normal Command Bar.
Show modern text througout the whole play. Click again to turn modern text off.
Highlight (select) a word and then click this button to display the term in the KickAss Glossary.
Searches for other instances of the current term on the same page.
Searches all pages on the KickAss website for the term. Inlucing plays, poems, and other pages.
Adds the name of the play and 'Shakespeare' to the search term and invokes a Google search

￪￬ Click or touch the up and down arrows to go to the previous or next scene.
Click or touch the current scene title (Act II. Scene i. King Duncan hears...) to display a list of scenes and click one for quick jump.

Note that if the search field is empty KickAss will use the last highlighted (selected) text.

Close the Search Bar and display the normal Command Bar.
Search the page for the entered text. Press repeatedly to move to the next occurrence.
Display the KickAss Glossary entry for the entered word (by default the definitions are displayed in a pop up window).
Google for the term (opens in a browser window). The name of the play and 'Shakespeare' are automatically added to the search term.

More...

From the main options menu(click to see it) you can:

Collapse / Expand all scenes.
Display or hide Common text, First Folio text, Annotations.
Turn KickAss staging on and off.
Turn Simplified text on and off and set whether or not it is highlighted.
Force one or two column mode or leave it set to Auto.
Tell KickAss how glossary entries should be displayed: in a pop up window or in a new browser tab.
Send comments, suggestions and corrections to us. Please do!!!
See the full user guide.
Make the text larger or smaller.
Set and return to a bookmark.

Each play or poem is shown in its entirety in one window for easy navigation and searching.
The KickAss search routines handle many of the differences between modern spelling and syntax and those used four-hundred years ago so entering even will find both even and euen; entering brandished will find both brandished and brandish'd; the different plural forms are considered the same and many other quirks of a changing language are accounted for.
All settings and options are remembered when windows are closed and will be used again next time.

And now for the details

What is KickAss Shakespeare?

In short it is the most readable Shakespeare anywhere.

Above all else the goal of KickAss Shakespeare is to make Shakespeare's plays and poems accessible and readable: readable without being preachy or teachy. The fully produced plays provide instant replacement text for archaic words, phrases and references that are no longer common knowledge. These optional substitutions are not definitions (though they do provide the meaning for the original text) but rather alternate text that allows the flow of the reading to continue uninterrupted.

All KickAss plays and poems provide one-click access to the huge Glossary and growing companion to Shakespeare that has over 20,000 entries with extensive examples and click-able cross-references to where the terms are used in the plays, sonnets and poems.

Alongside the conventional text is the text as it appeared in original publications from the late 1500's and early 1600's so you always have the original spelling, punctuation and syntax available for comparison. We call these texts the 'primary texts'. For the majority of the plays these come from the First Folio published in 1623.

A fully produced KickAss play or poem isn't a book nor is it a static web-page rather a produced KickAss play is an interactive, highly configurable presentation with the essential goal to make Shakespeare readable. When Shakespeare is readable enjoyment it isn't far away.

Modern Text

KickAss readability starts with in-line, modern text that is displayed when you mouse over or touch underlined text (here the modern text is highlighted in blue)

The substituted text is not a definition or explanation but rather replacement text which makes reading easier. (And this modern text can be turned on phrase by phrase, speech by speech or for the whole play at once as explained below).

Showing Modern Text for a Speech

To display the modern text for one speech click or touch the speakers name.
To return to traditional text click or touch the name again.
When modern text is displayed hovering over it will show the original text.

The box on the left below displays the traditional text for one speech. As you mouse over or touch underlined phrases they will automatically change to modern text. But if you want to see the whole speech with the modern text click on the speakers name as shown in the second box.

Showing Modern Text for the Whole Play

Click the button on the command bar to show modern text. Note that the button changes to a check mark indicating that modern text substitution is active.
(The green background in these two images is just for this demonstration.)

Click again to show original text.

Typical Layout

1 Scene Heading. Click the small button to the right of any scene heading to collapse or expand that scene. When collapsed only the Introduction to the scene will be displayed.

2 Narrations. Introductions to acts, scenes and other places which provide the necessary background to better understand what is going on. Often this is information a 16th century play-goer would consider common-knowledge.

3 Speech. A single speech by one of the characters. To the right of the speaker's name is the speech number and to the left of the text are the line numbers. Both speech numbers and line numbers increment from the start of the work to the end for easy lookup. Text in read is either classic (and often very simple) stage directions or KickAss staging designed to make the action more comprehensible.

4 Primary Text. Contains the best source text available for the play in the original spelling, punctuation and syntax. Typically (for more than half the plays) this is the text published in the First Folio edition of Shakespeare's plays published in 1623 - seven years after Shakespeare's death. None of the primary texts for the plays were supervised by Shakespeare and all have certainly undergone numerous changes known and unknown from what Shakespeare wrote - even before they were first performed.

5 Annotations. Additional information about terms and references mentioned in the texts. Some annotations have links to further information such as articles in Wikipedia.

6 Main Control Bar. The main Control Bar is always displayed at the bottom of the screen and provides access to all KickAss features.

The Main Control Bar

7 Menu Button. Expands the main menu on the left side. Clicking it a second time closes the menu. The menu contains options for changing the layout, how glossary entries are displayed (in a pop up or in a new window), expanding and collapsing all scenes, sending comments to KickAss Shakespeare and much more.

8 Search Button. Activates the main search control bar that overlays the main control bar (see below).

9 Modern Text Toggle. Quickly toggles the display of modern text for the whole play. When modern text is active for the whole play the icon changes to a check mark . Click the check mark to cancel modern text mode.

10 Quick Glossary Text. Provides a quick way to look up a term in the KickAss Glossary. Simply highlight or select a word or phrase - a word is best - and then click this button to display the glossary entry.

11￪￬ Next / Previous Scene. Clicking an arrow moves to the top of the current scene or the previous / next scene as appropriate. Navigation of the scenes wraps around e.g., if the top of the play is displayed and the up arrow is clicked or touched KickAss jumps to the last scene in the play.

12Act 1. Scene 1... Current Scene / Scene List Bar. Display the act / scene numbers of the currently displayed text. Click anywhere on the text to display a pop up list of all the scenes and other data. Click on any scene to jump directly to that scene.

Using the Search dialog

13 Cancel Search Bar. Hides this search bar and shows the normal command bar.

14Kerns↕ Search Field. Enter a word or phrase to search for and then click one of the three buttons to the right to search the page, the glossary, or the Internet for the term. If this field is empty and KickAss will attempt to the last word that was selected as the search text. This is quite handy when searching, especially the glossary, repeatedly for different words.

15 Page Search. Searches the page for the text in the search field (or the last selected word or phrase). The results of the search will be displayed on the right side of the search bar. If the there are multiple hits, pressing the button will cycle between them.

16 Glossary Search. Searches and displays the term in the KickAss Glossary. By default the result is displayed in a pop up window along with definitions of related words. The results can be displayed in a separate window instead of a pop up by clearing Glossary in pop up check mark on the options menu (click the Menu Button to display the options menu.

17 Internet Search. Combines the search term with the full name of the play and the word Shakespeare and performs a Google search in a separate window.

Accessing Settings and Options

Use the Options menu () at lower left of play pages for more options including:

which versions of the text (common, prose, original source) appear in which column - or are hidden.
where annotations appear - or are hidden.
whether special text (text that has a modern form available) is underlined.
whether displayed substitutions are highlighted with a different color.
whether common words (e.g. Irish Soldiers for Kearns) are substituted.
and much more, click different options to see changes made in the text.

Actions also appear on the menu including:

expanding and collapsing all scenes.
adjusting the text size.
setting and returning to bookmarks.
sending suggestions and comments to Falstaff at KickAss Shakespeare.
specify which character speeches to display e.g. such as just the three witches.

Showing only specific characters

Use the Select Characters command from the advanced options menu to specify which characters should be displayed (e.g., only the speeches of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, or only the speeches of the three witches).
When the option is clicked a list of characters will be presented from which you can choose which should be included in the play.