MOSCOW, June 3 /TASS/. A monument to English playwright William Shakespeare may appear on one of Moscow’s streets, Mikhail Shvydkoi, the Russian president’s special envoy for international cultural cooperation, told journalists on Friday.

Though Russia’s political relations with Britain are extremely complicated for the moment, the two countries have never interrupted their cultural ties, Shvydkoi said. He added that the Moscow government was studying a possibility of installing a monument to Shakespeare in the Russian capital at the British authorities’ request.

"There is a monument to [Russian poet Alexander] Pushkin in Britain and there is a memorial to [another Russian poet Mikhail] Lermontov in that country. Now, the British have asked us to install a monument to Shakespeare in Moscow," the Russian president’s special envoy said. After all, William Shakespeare is considered to be the best foreign playwright in Russia.

"By the way, not a single country in the world [except for Russia] has roadside cafes called "At Hamlet’s" or "At Juliette’s"," Shvydkoi joked. However, he hesitated to say when exactly the Shakespeare monument might be unveiled in Moscow. Shvydkoi said that the British authorities would announce a contest among young Russian sculptors for the monument’s design and creation.