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
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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
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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

1980: Jack Manning

1982: David Hugh Jones

2011: Christopher Luscombe


The Merry Wives of Windsor
1980: Jack Manning

This is one of the nine plays produced chiefly for school audiences in the late 1970s and 1980s under the optimistically inclusive name “The Plays of William Shakespeare”. All of them are barely adequate in terms of production values, and while some of them have flashes of outstanding acting, this is not one of them: the acting is adequate, for the most part, but if there is any real insight to be brought to this lively but shallow play, it isn’t manifest here.

Acted in traditional costumes on a replica of the Globe theater in Hollywood (not the Globe in London) with fairly traditional sets and costumes, it is not overly cut. Accordingly, it will provide a serviceable representation of the play: the underlying cleverness of the plot is not obscured by any excessive preoccupation with nuance or high concept.

Image quality on the DVD is exceedingly poor — even at minimum magnification, the picture is blurry, and there is an annoying hum behind some of the sound.

Completists may want to see this; as a first approach for students, indeed, one could do worse. The newer Globe production (2011), however, would provide a more or less equivalent approach with superior execution at almost every front.


Anne Page: Lisa Barnes

Bar Lady: Renee Mandel

Bar Lady: Stephanie Seebold

Bardolph: Lanny Broyles

Dr. Caius: Joel Asher

Fenton: Addison Randall

Himself - Host: John Houseman

Host: William Nye

John: David Allen Brooks

Justice Shallow: Phillip Persons

Lord Essex: Les Sula

Man: Brian Sullivan

Mister Ford: Lyle Stephen

Mister Page: Bert Hinchman

Mistress Ford: Valerie Seelie-Snyder

Mistress Page: Gloria Grahame

Mistress Quickly: Dixie Neyland Tymitz

Nym: Paul Aron Scott

Old Man: Keith Blackmer

Pistol: Lee Fishel

Queen Elizabeth: Diane Cameron

Robert: Matt W. Wills

Robin: Lucinda Dooling

Rugby: David Stifel

Simple: Richie Levene

Sir Hugh Evans: Richard Cordery

Sir John Falstaff: Leon Charles

Sir Walter Raleigh: Jeffrey G. Forward

Slender: Eugene Brezany

Spirit of Herne's Oak: Harve Von Lambach