Shakespeare dumbed down in comic strips for bored pupils

Shakespeare's plays are being rewritten as comic strips for pupils who find his poetry boring, it emerged today.

Thousands of teenagers are to study cartoon versions of famous plays such as Macbeth which reduce finely-crafted passages to snappy phrases.

The publishers hope the comics - illustrated by artists who have worked on the Spiderman series - will inspire disaffected readers with a love of the Bard's plays.

This is just stupid. A third of 14 year olds fail to reach targets in key subjects and this is only going to make it worse. We dumb down the exams and now we are dumbing down the rest of the work. When will it end?