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…

If your fellow employees were able to reap the benefits of July 4th being on a Tuesday and took July 3rd off — and even added today for good measure — chances are your workplace will be a veritable ghost town. So much the better, right? There’s World Cup soccer to be watched. Pharmacies Oppose D.C. Cold Medicine Law: Kids getting high off of Sudafed? Basement drug producers using cold medication to make meth? It’s…

If you’re the type who turns to your friends haughtily when they’re jonesing for some Hamlet or Othello and replies contemptuously, “I don’t pay for Shakespeare,” it’s almost your time of year. That’s right, while companies like Folger Shakespeare Theatre and Washington Shakespeare Company are wrapping up their productions, and we’ll have to wait until 2007 for the amazing Shakespeare In Washington extravaganza, we still have options to get our Bard fix, and we don’t…

Editor’s Note: This preview of the Olney Theatre Center’s Summer Shakespeare Festival comes to us from Missy Frederick, who has joined our staff to write about theater. DCist appreciates, heck, even admires the egalitarian nature of the annual Shakespeare Theatre Free For All’s ticket giveaway madness that went down last month. The getting up early, the waiting in line for hours, then the returning to the amphitheater well in advance of curtain time only…