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

1960: Michael Hayes

1979: David Giles

1991: John Caird

2010: Dominic Dromgoole

2012: Richard Eyre

2014: Gregory Doran


Adaptations

1965: Chimes at Midnight


Educational

2013: Shakespeare Uncovered (Season 1, Ep. 5)


Henry IV, Part 1
1979: David Giles

This is one of the finest of the BBC Shakespeare sequence of history plays. In its casting, too, it achieves a commendable continuity much like that in both An Age of Kings (1960) and in The Hollow Crown (2012). The cast is largely made up of long-term BBC and RSC troupers; their diction is excellent and their acting credible throughout.

Despite the title (which is conventional for the histories), the emotional and narrative gravity of the play is defined not by the eponymous king, but by Prince Hal (later Henry V). David Gwillim plays the role with less bluster and bravado, and with more nuance,than any other actor I have seen in the role. His inner life is covered with quiet, almost whispered, soliloquies, and gos a long way toward convincing the viewer that his character is not altogether put on, though it is played close and guardedly. There are other approaches to the character, perhaps equally valid, and they deserve to be seen and heard as well. Gwillim’s rendition, however, is to my sense the most congenial and satisfying. It is not free of contradictions, but it embraces and balances them very well.

Two particular players deserve special mention. One is Jon Finch, who was not the product of the Shakespeare-training machinery (chiefly the RADA and the RSC) that produced so many of the age’s other notable actors, but had broken into the playing of Shakespeare with the titular role in Roman Polanski’s Macbeth. In Richard II and both of the Henry IV plays he achieves a remarkably nuanced approach to Henry, as well. He constantly carries his anxiety about being a usurper; at the same time he is eager to establish his dynasty, and is never quite able to undersand the quicksilver wit of his son.

The other is Anthony Quayle, who played in Shakespeare, biblical epics, Lawrence of Arabia, science fiction potboilers (Five MIllion Years to Earth) and popular television (Strange Report); here he plays Falstaff to near perfection. He was not an exceptionally corpulent man in his day, but that much is covered with a body-suit. He manages both the endearing and the repellent aspects of the hedonist knight in both of the Henry IV plays (though he does not play Falstaff in the BBC The Merry Wives of Windsor), which is a more fundamentally comic part).

All in all this and its sequel are exceedingly solid renditions of the Henry IV plays. They are not marked by any strange performative differences such as many modern performances of Shakespeare seem to prize: they are about first-rate story-telling and solid acting, and they are presented with solid but unobtrusive production values. It would be hard to do better as a baseline.


Archibald: John Cairney

Bardolph: Gordon Gostelow

Chamberlain: Douglas Milvain

Earl of Westmoreland: David Buck

Edmund Mortimer: Robert Morris

First Carrier: Mike Lewin

First Messenger: Michael Heath

Henry IV: Jon Finch

Henry Percy: Bruce Purchase

Hotspur: Tim Pigott-Smith

Lady Mortimer: Sharon Morgan

Lady Percy: Michele Dotrice

Mistress Quickly: Brenda Bruce

Owen Glendower: Richard Owens

Peto: Steven Beard

Poins: Jack Galloway

Prince Hal: David Gwillim

Prince John: Rob Edwards

Ralph Moldy: Julian Battersby

Scroop: David Neal

Second Carrier: David Bailie

Second Messenger: Malcolm Hughes

Servant to Hotspur: George Winter

Sheriff: Neville Barber

Sir John Falstaff: Anthony Quayle

Sir Michael: Norman Rutherford

Sir Richard Vernon: Terence Wilton

Sir Walter Blount: Robert Brown

Thomas Percy: Clive Swift