There will also be productions of Julius Caesar, starring Ray Fearon and Adjoa Andoh, and Much Ado About Nothing, starring Meera Syal. What is more, 2012 is the year the freshly rebuilt Shakespeare Memorial Theatre will play host to West End bad boy Mark Ravenhill, author of Shopping and F***ing, as writer in residence, as well as being the last year in the long reign of the leading duo at the venue, the artistic director, Michael Boyd, and the executive director, Vikki Heywood.
Shakespeare will also feature in cinemas with the Ralph Fiennes-directed production of Coriolanus.
"Shakespeare is probably the best known person in the world. His work is uniquely robust. It provides such an extraordinary palette from which to tell universal stories," said Heywood. While it is hard to come up with proof of Shakespeare's interest in competitive sport (wrestling in As You Like It perhaps, fencing and archery, yes, and maybe the gift of tennis balls in Henry V), for Heywood a Cultural Olympiad without the Bard was always unthinkable.
The die was cast for Stratford when Boyd met Jude Kelly, the creator of London's cultural bid for the Games and she asked him to consider producing a Shakespeare festival.
"I thought London would never get the Olympics," recalled Boyd. "Then in July 2005 I heard the Red Arrows flying overhead and I thought, 'Oh my God, we have!"'
In 2006 Boyd shepherded the company's year-long Complete Works festival, but he remains in awe of 2012.
"It is in danger of being the largest performance arts festival that has ever happened anywhere," he said. He and his team have commissioned thousands of performers, with a vast geographical reach.
The festival already embraces events in London, Birmingham, Newcastle/Gateshead and Edinburgh, but it will also work with companies visiting from all over the globe.
Applications for Boyd's job close early next month but he is not sure the festival should be seen as his Shakespearean swansong.
"No, it's a flight of swans going down the river. And a stimulus for the next generation, I hope."
The celebration will pivot on Shakespeare's birthday - which also happens to be St George's Day - when, as Geraldine Collinge, the director of events and exhibitions at the RSC, explained, a version of Womad, the international music festival, will arrive on the banks of the Avon:
"It is going to be challenging, as the festival will run for such a sustained period, but we are getting there."
Boyd is to work most directly on a production of Pericles - a difficult play, but one of the director's favourites. He is passionate about the company's responsibility to schoolchildren.
"Shakespeare is not just for private schools. There is no getting around the fact it is difficult, but when children perform it, they conquer it and that means they own a bit of high-status culture. There is a confidence then, and a pride that leaks even into their maths," he said.
Once the snow melts and spring arrives in Stratford, then, complete with festival tea towels, but mostly with Shakespeare's potent ideas, the festival looks likely to match the promise of sonnet 98:
"When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim / Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing."
- Observer
