Shakespeare Plays Available in Video Format
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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

1929: Sam Taylor

1967: Franco Zeffirelli

1976: Kirk Browning

1980: Jonathan Miller

1982: Peter Dews

1983: Peter Dews/John Allison

1988: Richard Monette

2013: Toby Frow

2017: Barry Avrich


Adaptations

1953: Kiss Me, Kate

1958: Kiss Me, Kate

1994: Aida Zyablikova (animated)

1999: 10 Things I Hate About You

2003: Kiss Me, Kate

2005: ShakespeaRe-Told: The Taming of the Shrew


Related

2015: Shakespeare Uncovered, Season 2, Episode 1


ShakespeaRe-Told, Episode 3: The Taming of the Shrew
2005: David Richards

This is one of a sequence of Shakespeare plays retold and reimagined with modern language and modern situations. Of the set of four plays (the others being Much Ado About Nothing, Macbeth, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream), it’s probably not the weakest, but it’s not the best either. Parents or teachers should definitely exercise caution here, though, since it goes rather further into some issues of sexuality than many would like, and also employs a fair amount of crude language and corresponding gestures.

In this version, Katherine Minola is a powerful member of Parliament, but neurotic, impatient, and almost universally feared, being prone to ferocious (and crude) tantrums on air and in person. Her sister Bianca is a super-model, with a rather libertine lifestyle, superficially sweet to everyone but self-absorbed under the surface.

The circularity of the production is illustrated by the fact that the Petruchio character (who shows up at the wedding in women’s garb) liberally quotes Shakespeare (including The Taming of the Shrew). Katherine’s father is scarcely heard of, but her mother appears on the scene, played by none other than Twiggy — herself one of the first supermodels of the 1960s.


Barman: David Weber

Bianca Minola: Jaime Murray

Elaine: Kate Russell-Smith

French Waiter: Yves Aubert

Harry Kavanagh: Stephen Tompkinson

Italian Lady : Addoloraca Romano

John Naps: Simon Chandler

Journalist: Samuel Oatley

Katherine Minola: Shirley Henderson

Lawyer: Kish Sharma

Lucentio: Santiago Cabrera

Mrs Minola : Twiggy

Petruchio: Rufus Sewell

Scary Yob: Paul McNeilly

Speaker: Geoffrey Whitehead

Tim Agnew: David Mitchell

Tranio: Federico Zanni

Translator: Peter Kelly

Vicar: Bruce Mackinnon

Vincentio Bentivoli: Alex Giannini