Shakespeare’s classics to be condensed into SMS

"Romeo, Romeo - wher4 rt thou Romeo?" It could be the future of Shakespeare. Dot mobile, a British mobile-phone service aimed at students, says it plans to condense classic works of literature into SMS text messages.

The company claims the service will be a valuable resource for studying for exams.

Academic purists will be horrified. Hamlet's famous query, "To be or not to be, that is the question," becomes "2b? nt2b? = ???"

John Milton's epic poem 'Paradise Lost' begins "devl kikd outa hevn coz jelus of jesus&strts war." (The Devil is kicked out of heaven because he is jealous of Jesus and starts a war).

Some may dismiss the summaries as cheat notes for the attention-deficit generation, but John Sutherland, a university college London English professor who was consulted on the project, said they could act as a useful memory aid.

"The educational opportunities it offers are immense," said Sutherland.

He said the compressed nature of text messages allowed them to "fillet out the important elements in a plot."

But political commentator and author Oliver Kamm said the terse texts were "more than a travesty."

"What you lose with text messaging in literature is what makes literature what it is - the imagery, the irony, the nuance," he said.

Dot Mobile said it planned to launch the service in January, with Shakespeare's complete works available by April.

The texts will be free to subscribers to the company's phone service.