LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM: Five centuries after they were written, the works of England's most famous playwright William Shakespeare have been brought up to date - making them understandable for the youth of today.

Satirist Martin Baum has taken the Bard's Elizabethan language that schoolchildren often find impenetrable and reworked 15 of his plays in a new compendium, "To Be Or Not To Be, Innit: A Yoof-Speak Guide to Shakespeare".

Using the sloppy syntax and enunciation of some youngsters that is the bugbear of older generations, Shakespeare's tragedy "Hamlet", for example, becomes "'Amlet".

And his famous line "To be, or not to be?" becomes "To be or not to be, innit?"; the state of Denmark is no longer "rotten" but "minging".

"The Two Gentlemen of Verona" have become "geezas" and Romeo, one of the star-crossed lovers of "Romeo and Juliet", now pines for his "fit b*tch Jules".

"Verona was de turf of de feuding Montagues and de Capulet families," according to the synopsis of the classic story of young love spurned in the language of the street.

"And coz they was always brawling and stuff, de prince of Verona told them to cool it or else they was gonna get well mashed if they carried on larging it with each other."

Baum insists on his website that the abridged versions retain the essence of the originals, including "the important sexist, duplicitous, cross-dressing and violent moments that made William Shakespeare well wicked".

"I'm not on a crusade or anything but if it can help generate an interest in Shakespeare I can't see that as a bad thing," he was quoted as saying by the Bournemouth Daily Echo newspaper in southern England.

"I know it will rankle with the intellectuals. I gave it to one who told me that they felt guilty that they found it funny."