Film and Television

Content Group

Overview

Modern technology has made many classic films of Shakespeare plays readily available on video cassette, DVD, YouTube, and streaming by commercial companies such as Films for the Humanities and TMW Media. From the late nineteenth century attempts have been made to transpose stage performances to cinematic forms now accessible on video, with varied success. Some fragments of the very earliest trials survive, such as Beerbohm Tree’s King John, but the first systematic illustrations available are the surviving Vitagraph series.

On the whole, mere transpositions of stage productions have not done well, but there are some masterpieces from the early talkies era, including such spectacular films as Reinhardt’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Early star vehicles include As You Like It with Laurence Olivier. As a director Olivier established the full potentialities of genuinely filmic rendering of classic Shakespeare plays by his versions of Henry V, Hamlet, and Richard III, which have led to many analogues, such as Kenneth Branagh’s contrastingly pacifist version of Henry V, or the McKellen interpretation of Richard III in a fascist takeover of thirties Britain. Branagh’s Hamlet had more glitter, but often foreign directors did better, as with the dynamic Hamlet of Kozintsev—and his King Lear was more photogenic than Peter Brook’s nihilistic rendering, despite the latter’s excellent performance by Paul Schofield as Lear. The Macbeth of Kurosawa: The Throne of Blood, achieved a memorable cultural transmission from Scotland to the world of the samurai. Roman Polanski’s Macbeth achieved a refreshing vividness with attractive youthful leads. Indeed, all the tragedies have been particularly well favored, such as the Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and Hamlet of Zeffirelli. However, his Romeo and Juliet has been superseded in popular youthful taste by Baz Lurhmann's modernization.

The best later film of a history play is probably Welles’s Falstaff (or Chimes at Midnight), which is a synthesis of Henry IV and Henry V. However, Welles’s cinematic renderings of Macbeth and Othello have received mixed reviews, as has Olivier’s version of his staging of the latter. As for the comedies the rather splashy version of The Taming of the Shrew by Zeffirelli is one of the most conspicuous, rivaled by The Merchant of Venice by Michael Radford with Al Pacino as Shylock. One surprising critical success is Joss Whedon’s 2012 freshly modern-dress take on Much Ado About Nothing, which achieved a subtler impact than Branagh’s glossier version. A similar low-keyed success was Trevor Nun’s Twelfth Night.

There are many hundreds of recorded filmic versions of Shakespeare with a vast bibliography, of which a select version follows. However, these films can best be explored initially via two essential guides to this range of material, both by Kenneth Rothwell: A History of Shakespeare on Screen: A Century of Film and Television (Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press, 1999), and his Shakespeare on Screen: An International Filmography and Videography (New York, NY: Neal-Schuman, 1990).

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Videos

Richard III Act I Scene I Soliloquy - by Laurence Olivier	Richard III: Opening Christopher Marlowe Song	Ian McKellen: Soliloquy (Richard III, I.i)	Olivier Othello 1965: Opening Scene
Olivier’s Othello 1965: Climax	Anthony and Cleopatra with Janet Suzman	Othello: Laurence Fishburne	King Lear Act IV, Scene 6
Peter Hall, 1968, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act III, Scene 2: Judi Dench as Titania	Max Reinhardt's, A Midsummer Nights Dream (1935), Act IV, Scene 1: Oberon and Titania	RSC, Hamlet, 2009, Act I, Scene 2: Patrick Stewart as Claudius, David Tennant as Hamlet	Hamlet, 1948, Act 1, Scene 2: Olivier as Hamlet
Hamlet, 1964: Trailer for Kozintsev film	Beerbohm Tree, King John, Act V, Scene 6: Death of John; 1899: First Shakespeare Film	Vitagraph, 1908, Richard III, Act 1, Scene 2, Silent Film	Taming of the Shrew, Act 2, Scene 1: Early Sound Recording: Edward Sothern and Julia Marlowe

Bibliography

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For more discussion of media treatment of individual plays check bibliographies for each title in the next section of Performance Bibliographies.

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Film and Television

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Please offer comments and suggestions on any aspects the site to: Director Hugh Richmond at richmondh77@gmail.com. See samples at the site Blog.

Comedies

Histories

Tragedies

Romances

Renaissance

Modern Period

Context

Format

Diversity