Citizens of Tomorrow, Be Forewarned

Here's THE masterpost of free and full adaptations, by which I mean that it's a post made by the master.

Anthony and Cleopatra: here's the BBC version

As you like it: you'll find here an outdoor stage adaptation and here the BBC version

Coriolanus: Here's a college play, here's the 1984 telefilm, here's the 2014 one with tom hiddleston

Hamlet: The Kenneth Branagh 1996 Hamlet is here, the 1964 russian version is here and the 1964 american version is here. THe 1964 Broadway production is here, the 1948 Laurence Olivier one is here. And the 1980 version is here. Here are part 1 and 2 of the 1990 BBC adaptation. Have the 2018 Almeida version here.

Henry IV: part 1 and part 2 of the BBC 1989 version. And here's part 1 of a corwall school version.

Henry V: Laurence Olivier (who would have guessed) 1944 version. The 1989 Branagh version here. The BBC version is here.

Julius Caesar: here's the 1979 BBC adaptation, here the 1970 John Gielgud one.

King Lear: Laurence Olivier once again plays in here. And Gregory Kozintsev, who was I think in charge of the russian hamlet, has a king lear here. The 1975 BBC version is here. The Royal Shakespeare Compagny's 2008 version is here. The 1974 version with James Earl Jones is here.

Macbeth: here's the 1961 one with Sean Connery. Here's the 1971 by Roman Polanski, with spanish subtitles. Here's the 1948 www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljZrf_0_CcQ">here. The 1988 BBC onee with portugese subtitles and here the 2001 one). The 1969 radio one with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench is here and the 1966 BBC version is here. The Royal Shakespeare Compagny's 2008 version is here.

Measure for Measure: BBC version here.

The Merchant of Venice: here's a stage version, here's the 1980 movie, here the 1973 Lawrence Olivier movie, here's the 2004 movie.

The Merry Wives of Windsor: the Royal Shakespeare Compagny gives you this movie.

A Midsummer Night's Dream: have this sponsored by the City of Columbia, and here the BBC version.

Much Ado About Nothing: Here is the kenneth branagh version and here the Tennant and Tate 2011 version. Here's the 1984 version.

Othello: A Massachussets Performance here, the 2001 movie her is the Orson Wells movie with portuguese subtitles theree, and a fifteen minutes long lego adaptation here. THen if you want more good ole reliable you've got the BBC version here and there.

Richard II: here is the BBC version

Richard III: here's the 1955 one with Laurence Olivier, and here's the 1995 one with Ian McKellen. (the 1995 one is in english subtitled in spanish. the 1955 one has no subtitles and might have ads since it's on youtube)

Romeo and Juliet: here's the 1988 BBC version.

The Taming of the Shrew: the 1988 BBC version here, the 1929 version here, some Ontario stuff here and here is the 1967 one with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

The Tempest: the 1979 one is here, the 2010 is here. Here is the 1988 one.

Timon of Athens: here is the 1981 movie with Jonathan Pryce,

Troilus and Cressida can be found here

Titus Andronicus: the 1999 movie with Anthony Hopkins here

Twelfth night: here for the BBC, herefor the 1970 version with Alec Guinness, Joan Plowright and Ralph Richardson.

The Winter's Tale: the BBC version is here

Please do contribute if you find more. This is far from exhaustive.

(also look up the original post from time to time for more plays)

Oh, I have additions!

A Misdummer Night Dream: Here’s the 2013 globe production (the one with The Kiss, you know it)

Romeo and Juliet: Here’s the one that was going to be a stage show and then lockdown happened so they filmed it! Stars Josh O’Connor and Jessie Buckley

Okay, I'm collating everything from the comments because I love this so much!

From vivienlacroix:

Much Ado about Nothing: Here is the Free Shakespeare in the Park version with Danielle Brooks as Beatrice (From 2019)

Hamlet: Here is the 1921 silent film in which Hamlet is a woman (don’t get your hopes up though it’s extremely sexist and heteronormative)

A Midsummer Night‘s Dream: here is the 2019 National Theatre version (With Gwendoline Christie)

From partywithponies:

Here is the Shakespeare's Globe/Roger Allam/Colin Morgan version of The Tempest! (From 2013)

From ryfkah

"Двенадцатая ночь" (Twelfth Night), a Russian film from 1955 (with subtitles)

Twelfth Night (1986), a filmed version of an Australian stage production with baby Geoffrey Rush as Andrew Aguecheek

From chekovsphaser:

This drive has 4 Globe productions Midsummer 2013 and Tempest 2013 (Both above), and then As You Like It 2009, and Love's Labour's Lost 2010

From maa-pix:

Twelfth Night: the 1998 version, "Live From Lincoln Center" on PBS, directed by Nicholas Hytner, with Helen Hunt, Paul Rudd, and Kyra Sedgwick. Part One, Intermission interview with Nicholas Hytner, and Part Two. Also here. (Absolutely fantastic version, best I've ever seen.)

From everybody-dies-at-least-once:

Andrew Scott's Hamlet: Almeida (2018)

King Lear at Shakespeare Festival NYC (1974) w/ James Earl Jones, Paul Sorvino, and a young (very sexy) Raul Julia here

Then I made a Google Drive for the ones that I have that I haven't seen elsewhere on the list:

They are also all Globe productions: MacBeth 2020, Romeo and Juliet 2009, Romeo and Juliet 2019, The Merry Wives of Windsor 2019, and The Winter's Tale 2018.

And then finally MIT has this super cool repository of performances from around the world and some of them have videos https://globalshakespeares.mit.edu/

In my (unsuccessful) quest to find The Hollow Crown, I also found a few other of the histories, so here's Richard II with Sean Connery, Richard II with Ian McKellan, and a stage play of Richard III

Also, if anyone has a version of the lockdown Romeo and Juliet mentioned above or the Olivier or McKellan Richard IIIs, the current links are broken and the productions sound very cool!

I might kiss you my friend for that work. I awoke from my slumber to find that the post had become popular again and there was way too much notes attached to it for me to read them all.

I am not joking when I say that this version is Shakespeare as it was meant to be performed. It is fucking hilarious.

OMG, how did I not know about this?

The original link is now behind a paywall so use the internet archive link here!

i am once again asking you to watch the 2019 shakespeare in the park production of much ado about nothing

lmfaooo

Illustrations by Ferenc Pintér for Shakespeare’s Macbeth. 2001.

Sada Yacco as Ophelia. Japan, 1904

oh! I have to tell you guys a great story one of my professors told me. So he has a friend who is involved in these Shakespeare outreach programs where they try to bring Shakespeare and live theatre to poor and underprivileged groups and teach them about English literature and performing arts and such. On one of their tours they stopped at a young offenders institute for women and they put on a performance of Romeo and Juliet for a group of 16-17 year old girls. It was all going really well and the girls were enjoying and laughing through the first half - because really, the first half is pretty much a comedy - but as the play went on, things started to get quiet. Real quiet. Then it got up to the suicide scene and mutterings broke out and all the girls were nudging each other and looking distressed, and as this teacher observed them, he realised - they didn’t know how the play ended. These girls had never been exposed to the story of Romeo and Juliet before, something which he thought was impossible given how ubiquitous it is in our culture. I mean, the prologue even gives the ending away, but of course it doesn’t specify exactly how the whole “take their life” thing goes down, so these poor girls had no idea what to expect and were sitting there clinging to hope that Romeo would maybe sit down for a damn minute instead of murdering Paris and chugging poison - but BAM he died and they all cried out - and then Juliet WOKE UP and they SCREAMED and by the end of the play they were so upset that a brawl nearly broke out, and that’s the story of how Shakespeare nearly started a riot at a juvenile detention centre

Apparently something similar happened during a production of Much Ado at Rikers Island because a bunch of inmates wanted to beat the shit out of Claudio, which is more than fair tbh

honestly Shakespeare would be so pleased to know his plays were nearly starting brawls centuries into the future

I played Claudio once and I fully support this

“When we took Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” into a maximum security woman’s prison on the West Side…there’s a scene there where a young woman is told by a very powerful official that “If you sleep with me, I will pardon your brother. And if you don’t sleep with me, I’ll execute him.” And he leaves the stage. And this character, Isabel, turned out to the audience and said: “To whom should I complain?” And a woman in the audience shouted: “The Police!” And then she looked right at that woman and said: “If I did relate this, who would believe me?” And the woman answered back, “No one, girl.” And it was astonishing because not only was it an amazing sense of connection between the audience and the actress, but you also realized that this was a kind of an historical lesson in theater reception. That’s what must have happened at The Globe. These soliloquies were not simply monologues that people spoke, they were call and response to the audience. And you realized that vibrancy, that that sense of connectedness is not only what makes theater great in prisons, it’s what makes theater great, period.”

Oskar Eustis

david tennant as benedick in much ado about nothing

anyway i am eternally obsessed with the fact that shakespeare was out here dragging benedick for having one (1) braincell in 1599

KING SHIT

oh my GOD

HOLY FUCK

Richard II + his crown 👑👑

catherine tate and david tennant performing genders (plural) in much ado about nothing (2011)

Hamlet, illustrated by John Austen (1922)

catherine tate and david tennant performing genders (plural) in much ado about nothing (2011)

shakespeare characters having weird reactions to deaths: macbeth / hamlet / julius caesar

sorry to be pedantic outside of the tags but i love these as exhibits a b and c of why the “shakespeare is meant to be performed” cliche is real; on the page they look wild but actors know how to read the embedded stage directions

two of these examples can’t be shared lines of iambic pentameter (both gertrude’s line and brutus’ are already rushed and irregular at eleven syllables, so laertes and cassius both get their full ten beats for two or three words) and one of them doesn’t have to be (macduff and malcolm’s lines add up to ten beats indicating that it’s shared but no one will call the scansion cops on you if you split it into two and divvy up the extra ten syllables between them, which imo is the more playable option)

remember that verse is symphonic and that those extra syllables are notes in the orchestration of the scene— they have to go somewhere, either into beats of rest or sound. there’s a lot of ways to score any of these moments but one possibile notation for the first is

MACD: your royal father’s murdered.

(rest/ rest/ rest/ rest/ rest/)

MAL: oh.

(rest / rest / rest/ rest/ rest/) ...

by whom?

all that silence affords the director a moment to let a lightning-fast scene (the entire cast pouring onstage in ones and twos, yelling over each other at varying levels of authenticity) come to a screeching halt, and the severity of the situation set in. for the actor it’s playable as all hell, and ultimately very human: the kind of raw shock that makes you ask stupid questions. you get the same thing with laertes. tbh i’ve always found “drowned? (rest / rest /) oh. (rest / rest / rest / rest/ rest /) .....where?” to be utterly goddamn devastating in how realistic it is, bc what else can you say to that? if someone told you with no warning that your sister drowned, what else would come out of your mouth in the moment but something stupid and mundane? oh. ..........where did it happen?

the other notable similarity in these three moments is the use of un-words: two ‘o’s and a ‘ha’ (they aren’t meant to be pronounced exactly like “Oh” or “Ha”; traditionally shakespearean un-words are performed as unarticulated sounds, sighs, groans, exhalations etc). un-words leap out to the actor because it is a character rendered speechless. i made a post a few weeks ago about how big of a deal it is when people written by william shakespeare dont have words for what they’re experiencing/when the pain is so big that even in a metanarrative universe where you are only the words you speak you are forced to admit that something is unspeakable, and every “o” or “ha” or “ah” etc is a moment of this horror, this defeat at the hands of your own medium

it’s a rich moment for actors because in classical text it’s frowned upon to act “outside” of the line (to waste vocal qualities on things that aren’t words, ie to take a pause from speaking your richly layered monologue to let out a pained exhale. “act on the line” says your director, smacking you on the knuckles with a copy of freeing shakespeare’s voice), it’s diva-y and amateurish to take more syllables than you’re given. but when you’re given the space of ten beats for “ha portia”, who will dare call you a scene hog for stretching that “ha” into five notes of agonized, wordless noise?

in the same way that lear’s “howl howl howl” is very much not just the word ‘howl’ said three times these moments demand full, shattering vulnerability from the actor, a dive into the place in the body where pain lives. maybe laertes and malcolm really do say “oh.”, quiet and childlike, or maybe that ‘o’ is a stand-in for the all-air sound that shakes out of you when you get punched in the lungs and try to talk through it, or for that deep animal groan you heard that made you think what was that before you realized it was coming out of your own throat

anyway you get what i mean. you wouldn’t look at a blueprint and say you saw the house, you wouldn’t read the sheet music and say you heard the symphony, etc