Shakespeare in Sign

In the first, a famous Deaf actor named Howard Palmer is dressed in period costume and expresses in his hands and body a translation that closely follows Shakespeare's original text: "heart with strings of steel, / Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe." [...]of Stokoe's work, Bradbury explains, "Deaf people began to see the grammar, poetics, and literary techniques of ASL as being equal to the task of translating Shakespeare." According to Bradbury, in 1865, Henry IV was performed at the Manchester Deaf Institution in England, and "in 1886, a popular British magazine noted a unique production of Shakespeare's Hamlet mounted by the South London Deaf and Dumb Benefit Dramatic Club," which was seen by an audience of six hundred.