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

1916: Ernest C. Warde

1953: Andrew McCullough

1971: Peter Brook

1971: Grigori Kozintsev (Korol Lir)

1974: Edwin Sherin

1976: Tony Davenall

1982: Jonathan Miller

1982: Alan Cooke

1983: Michael Elliott

1998: Richard Eyre

1999: Brian Blessed

2008: Trevor Nunn

2015: Antoni Cimolino

2016: Gregory Doran, Robin Lough

2017: Nancy Meckler, Ian Russell

2018: Alexander Barnett

2018: Richard Eyre


Adaptations

1985: Ran

1987: King Lear

1997: A Thousand Acres

2000: The King is Alive

2002: King of Texas


Production drama

2003: Slings and Arrows (Season 3)


Related

2015: Shakespeare Uncovered, Season 2, Episode 6


King Lear
1971: Peter Brook

This is probably the most stylized and strange of the King Lear productions. It’s a black-and-white film, played in furs, which is probably all to the point, since it’s spun out at a glacial pace as well. It’s directed by one of the most daring (but not invariably successful) directors of the period, Peter Brook. It was Brook who took it upon himself to direct and produce a six-hour miniseries based on the Indian epic the Mahabharata, widely considered (and perhaps correctly) to the be longest epic poem in the world, and perhaps even the longest single work of fiction (though here quantifications fail).

This particular production stars Paul Scofield — Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons (the 1966 Zinneman production). It’s worth seeing, and quite intense, in a rather slow-paced, mind-warping way — but if you can only see one Lear, choose another.


Albany: Cyril Cusack

Cordelia: Anne-Lise Gabold

Cornwall: Patrick Magee

Duke of Burgundy: Søren Elung Jensen

Edgar : Robert Langdon Lloyd

Edmund: Ian Hogg

Fool: Jack MacGowran

Gloucester: Alan Webb

Goneril: Irene Worth

Kent: Tom Fleming

King Lear: Paul Scofield

Oswald: Barry Stanton

Regan: Susan Engel