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

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
1968: Peter Hall

This production is really exceptionally odd. The text of the play is treated fairly conventionally, but the dialogue is occasionally rushed and difficult, less as a result of the way the lines are actually delivered than as a result of their cutting — generally regarded as jerky and poor.

Most striking, perhaps, is the very dated visual aesthetic of avant-garde late-1960s filmmaking — rapidfire changes of perspective, shallow-field shots with blurry backgrounds and an assortment of rather cheap-looking effects that don’t really seem to accomplish anything relevant to the story. The sets and costuming, too, bespeak the 1960s more than anything else. The nominal Athens of this play is clearly an English country house of the 18th or 19th century, and the fairies are all portrayed in stages of undress, and in various skin hues of a rather repellent silvery green more evocative of lizards than of the fair folk of English legend.

Nevertheless, the cast is quite noteworthy, and they deliver their lines quite well; the film is worth seeing if only to see the young Diana Rigg, Judy Dench, Ian Holm, Helen Mirren, and David Warner, all of whom went on to achieve considerable prominence in other Shakespeare and non-Shakespeare productions in later years.


Bottom: Paul Rogers

Demetrius: Michael Jayston

Egeus: Nicholas Selby

Flute: John Normington

Helena: Diana Rigg

Hermia: Helen Mirren

Hippolyta: Barbara Jefford

Lysander: David Warner

Oberon: Ian Richardson

Philostrate: Hugh Sullivan

Puck: Ian Holm

Quince: Sebastian Shaw

Snout: Bill Travers

Snug: Clive Swift

Starveling: Donald Eccles

Theseus: Derek Godfrey

Titania: Judi Dench