Shakespeare Plays Available in Video Format
Scholars Online Educational Resources

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All’s Well That Ends Well
Antony and Cleopatra
As You Like It
The Comedy of Errors
Coriolanus
Cymbeline
Hamlet
Henry IV, part 1
Henry IV, part 2
Henry V
Henry VI, part 1
Henry VI, part 2
Henry VI, part 3
Henry VIII
Julius Caesar
King John
King Lear
Love’s Labour’s Lost
Macbeth
Measure for Measure
The Merchant of Venice
The Merry Wives of Windsor
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Much Ado About Nothing
Othello
Pericles
Richard II
Richard III
Romeo and Juliet
The Taming of the Shrew
The Tempest
Timon of Athens
Titus Andronicus
Troilus and Cressida
Twelfth Night
Two Gentlemen of Verona
The Winter’s Tale
Shakespeareana

Available versions

1909: Charles Kent, J. Stuart Blackton

1935: William Dieterle, Max Reinhardt

1968: Peter Hall

1981: Elijah Moshinsky

1982: Joseph Papp, Emile Ardolino

1996: Adrian Noble

1999: Michael Hoffman

2010: Bo Bergstrom

2014: Dominic Dromgoole

2014: Julie Taymor

2016: Maxine Peake

2016: Emma Rice

2017: Casey Wilder Mott


Adaptations

1992: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Animated)

2005: ShakespeaRe-Told: A Midsummer Night’s Dream


Related

2015: Shakespeare Uncovered, Season 2, Episode 4


A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Probably no other play in the Shakespeare corpus is as over-exposed as A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It seems that everyone has done a production of it at one point or another. One can only be amazed, therefore, at the play’s resilience and responsiveness to varied handling, and at the extent to which at least most of the filmed versions actually offer something worthwhile to the viewer. None, I think, is flawless, but the fact that it can be approached in so many ways, all of them giving some real value to the story, is a testament to its integrity as a play. Viewing several of them makes a superb case study in why these plays can be treated in so many different ways, while still remaining Shakespeare.

With the possible exception of The Tempest, moreover, probably no other Shakespeare play lends itself so handily to cinematic spectacle. From the earliest attempts at it, there has been a tendency to mine the rich fantastical center of the story to create visual extravaganzas at the limits of available film technology. While arguably this is not essential to the experience of the play as a whole, at the same time it is not at all alien to the mad wonderland we’re invited to visit here, and if it’s not completely undisciplined, it can be quite exhilarating.