It’s summertime (well, springtime anyway) and the living’s easy…if you’re a Shakespeare fan.

Theaters in the area have traditionally offered free Bard fare during the year’s warmer months, and with the Shakespeare in Washington Festival drawing to a close at the end of June, Will aficionados have even more options. Here are the highlights:

Shakespeare Theater’s Free For All is always one of the more anticipated theater events of the year. From May 24 through June 3, visitors to the Carter Barron Amphitheater can catch a restaging of one of the company’s hottest productions this year free of cost. This year, they will recreate their wonderfully loopy take on Love’s Labor Lost. Get there early, as seats fill up fast, and bring a picnic. For a complete guide to getting tickets as painlessly as possible, check out our post from two years ago on the topic.

Olney’s own Summer Shakespeare Festival, another free outdoor event, will feature The Tempest this year. The show runs June 21 – July 1, 2007.

And while we might be a little worn out from all the Bard-tastic fare we’ve seen lately, spring and summer should give us a second wind, as some of the Shakespeare Festival’s best offerings are still to come. There’s Studio’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (May 16 – June 24), Synetic’s Silent Hamlet (May 31 – June 17), Folger’s The Tempest (May 9 – Jun. 17) and much more.

Plus, we can’t forget our personal favorite: Tiny Ninja Theater, where a New York-based company will descend on the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage and act out both Hamlet and Shakespeare’s sonnets using… those little ninja figurines found in vending machines. Don’t ask us how; but we’ll be there.