William Shakespeare (1564-1616), an English poet and dramatist, is the most famous writer in the English language and the most widely performed dramatist in the world. His plays have been translated into all major languages and are performed regularly in both English and translation. His many popular works include Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Othello, Midsummer Night's Dream, and King Lear........... For 33 years until his retirement in 2008, Kent Richmond (translator) taught composition, critical thinking, literature, and linguistics for the English Department and American Language Program at California State University, Long Beach. His primary academic interest is adult second language acquisition and the role that vocabulary learning plays in that process. His latest book Inside Reading 4 (Oxford University Press, 2009) is part of a reading/vocabulary series that won the 2008 David E. Eskey Award for Curricular Innovation from the California Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. The magazine Inside CSULB featured Kent as the author of the month, in April 2008. He retired from CSULB in 2008 after 33 years of teaching. Drawing on his background in applied lingustics and literature, Mr. Richmond has taken on the task of writing verse translations of Shakespeare plays in contemporary English. By applying his detailed knowledge of Shakespeare's iambic pentameter, he can give his translations an authenticity that the available prose translation's lack. He has completed translations of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet Caesar, King Lear, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, and Macbeth. He is now working on Hamlet.