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All’s Well That Ends Well
Antony and Cleopatra
As You Like It
The Comedy of Errors
Coriolanus
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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

1985: Elijah Moshinsky

2000: Kenneth Branagh

2011: Dominic Dromgoole

2015: Robin Lough

2016: Jake O’Hare, Jennifer Sturley

2017: Barry Avrich


Love’s Labour’s Lost
1985: Elijah Moshinsky

The BBC Shakespeare Plays version of Love’s Labour’s Lost is an outlier in the whole series, in that it is one of the few that is explicitly set at some other time. Most of the comedies are rendered in Elizabethan dress or something rather more generalized; this, by contrast, is decked out in Age of Reason costume and settings, with powdered wigs and fussy Scientific-Revolution props suitable to the Philosophe, which was, I think, the conceit behind the decision. The brief philosophical isolation of the four gentlemen of Navarre recalls the same notion in Marivaux’s Triumph of Love. The background music, as well, is suitable to the same period, and the songs are mid-classical in style, like late Mozart, Haydn, or early Schubert. While this kind of time-and-place transference works far less reliably in the histories, here it is effective; the Rococo mannerisms answer the fussy delicacy of the verse and the verbal sparring in the play.

Beneath the surface, though, the performance is extremely solid throughout, and the players are all in good form. Mike Gwilym and Jenny Agutter (Berowne and Rosaline) deliver a crackling banter that recalls the sparring of Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado about Nothing, but more mannered and not quite as consequential. Gwilym played several other roles in the BBC Plays series and here captures the role quite brilliantly; Agutter, known from such things as Logan's Run and an early production of The Railway Children, matches him phrase for phrase and gesture for gesture. Maureen Lipman (who has had a long and storied career) brings a genuinely royal presence to the role of the Princess, while David Warner plays the buffoon Don Armado with as much absurdity as one typically sees, but with more warmth.

I a generally favorably inclined toward the productions of the BBC series, but this is decidedly one of the better, and for reasons I did not entirely expect ahead of time. It may encourage one to rethink the play at least somewhat. That in itself is perhaps something of an achievement.


Adrian: Jay Ruparelia

Berowne: Mike Gwilym

Boyet: Clifford Rose

Costard: Paul Jesson

Don Armado: David Warner

Dull: Frank Williams

Dumain: Geoffrey Burridge

Ferdinand, King of Navarre: Jonathan Kent

Holofernes: John Wells

Jaquenetta: Paddy Navin

Katharine: Petra Markham

Longaville: Christopher Blake

Marcade: Valentine Dyall

Maria: Katy Behean

Moth: John Kane

Rosaline: Jenny Agutter

Sir Nathaniel: John Burgess

Spring: Linda Kitchen

The Princess of France: Maureen Lipman

Winter: Susanna Ross