Shakespeare put a portable edition of the plays and poetry on the iPhone. Developed by Readdle with PlayShakespeare.com, the free reader made the text available in the same device people already carried for calls and messages. This restored January 29, 2009 entry covers that early reading app, with later developer announcements identified by date.
What the reading experience offered
In its July 2009 announcement, Readdle described a collection of forty plays plus poems and sonnets. Readers could adjust the font size and colour, move through a page by scrolling or tapping, and turn the device for landscape reading. These are documented features of the edition discussed that July, rather than a claim that every control was already present in January.
A 2010 retrospective from Readdle places the free app’s launch in August 2008. It also discusses a later Pro edition; those later additions should not be confused with the original free reader.
A useful way to study on a small screen
For a short reading session, choose one scene and keep track of the act, scene and speaker. If a passage will be used in an essay or rehearsal, compare it with the edition required by your teacher or director: punctuation, spelling and line numbering can vary between editions.
A pocket copy is particularly useful for returning to a passage after seeing it performed. Reading a speech aloud, then checking the surrounding exchange, often gives more context than saving an isolated quotation. These are study suggestions, not claims about annotation or audio features in the old app.
The archive records an early mobile reading tool. Present-day availability and compatibility of that original edition have not been verified.