List of William Shakespeare screen adaptations

Other

Television series

• Playing Shakespeare began as two consecutive episodes of the UK arts series The South Bank Show, and developed into a nine-part series of its own. It features director John Barton, then a leading light of the Royal Shakespeare Company, putting a host of actors through their paces. Many of those actors are now household names, including Judi Dench, Michael Pennington, Patrick Stewart, Ben Kingsley, David Suchet and Ian McKellen. The episodes were:
• *The South Bank Show: "Speaking Shakespearean Verse"
• *The South Bank Show: "Preparing to Perform Shakespeare"
• *1. "The Two Traditions"
• *2. "Using the Verse"
• *3. "Language and Character"
• *4. "Set Speeches and Soliloquies"
• *5. "Irony and Ambiguity"
• *6. "Passion and Coolness"
• *7. "Rehearsing the Text"
• *8. "Exploring a Character"
• *9. "Poetry and Hidden Poetry"

• The Shakespeare Sessions : An American spin-off from Playing Shakespeare in which John Barton directs notable American actors in Shakespeare scenes.
• Conjuring Shakespeare : A series of half-hour documentaries hosted by Fiona Shaw, each episode dealing with scenes from a particular play.
• In Search of Shakespeare : A BBC documentary series of four 1-hour episodes, chronicling the life of William Shakespeare, written and presented by Michael Wood.
• Slings & Arrows : A Canadian comedy drama set in the New Burbage Shakespeare Festival, a fictional Shakespearean festival in a small town in Canada comparable to the real-life Stratford Shakespeare Festival. With its entire run written by Susan Coyne, Bob Martin and Mark McKinney, directed by Peter Wellington, and starring Paul Gross, Martha Burns and Stephen Ouimette, it aired in three seasons of six 1-hour episodes each.
• Som & Fúria : A Brazilian adaptation of Slings and Arrows.

Academic

• The "Themes of Shakespeare" series contains straight-to-video short documentaries, each considering the theme of a particular play. The contributors are Professor Stanley Wells, and Dr. Robert Smallwood of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.
• Two lecture series given by professor Peter Saccio were filmed and are commercially available on DVD.

Miscellaneous

• Theatre of Blood. Vincent Price plays a Shakespearean actor who takes poetic revenge on the critics who denied him recognition. He kills his critics using methods inspired by several of Shakespeare's plays: Julius Caesar, Troilus and Cressida, The Merchant of Venice, Richard III, Othello, Cymbeline, Romeo and Juliet, Henry VI Part One, Titus Andronicus, and King Lear.
• The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) by the Reduced Shakespeare Company is a successful West End stage comedy, containing some element of all 37 canonical plays. A film of one of the live performances is commercially available.
• The Royal Shakespeare Company have released a number of videos in the "Great Performances" series, which contain excerpts from stage performances.