YouTube Shakespeare
It is possible that it will not be long before Shakespeare is normally seen first not in the theatre but on YouTube.
To celebrate the bard’s birthday, then, this page will begin to collect links to weird and wonderful Shakespeare-related video clips.
For many they will be a comic respite from more serious academic study, while they could also form the basis for an as yet unwritten thesis on Shakespeare on the tube. What can be said about the cultural capital of a moment, for example, when The Beatles perform Shakespeare which, years later, becomes replayble again and again around the world?
Shakespeare masterclass with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie (Troilus and Cressida)
The Beatles enact a moment from A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1964
- “Television special featuring The Beatles. At the beginning of the show the group performs a parody of the Pyramus and Thisbe scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a 1960′s version of the Globe Theatre complete with thrust stage. Ringo raises a flag on the theatre roof that announces the show’s title, AROUND THE BEATLES. The performance is interrupted by planted hecklers, an odd notion which appears to perturb the screaming fans who believe that the hecklers are criticising their beloved Beatles.” For more information click here.
The Shakespeare Question on the BBC
Gordon Brown’s Shakespearean Drama on the BBC
Rowan Atkinson and Colin Firth (as Shakespeare) in Blackadder Back and Forth
Very random “brief and naughty” history of Shakespeare and his time
Please send in (via email or the Cardiff Shakespeare facebook group) any other clip links that you think should go up.
