Screenplay: William Shakespeare

Direction Akira Kurosawa

Cast Tatsuya Nakadai · Akira Terao · Jinpachi Nezu · Pîtâ

Plot A reinterpretation of William Shakespeare's 'King Lear'. The Lear counterpart is an elderly 16th-century warlord (Tatsuya Nakadai), who announces that he's about to divide his kingdom equally among his three...

Direction Akira Kurosawa

Cast Toshirô Mifune · Isuzu Yamada · Takashi Shimura · Akira Kubo

Plot 'Macbeth' is reimagined as a samurai in feudal Japan. Taketoki Washizu (Toshiro Mifune) is a valiant warrior whose life is transformed by an encounter with a ghostly female spirit. The...

Direction Grigori Kozintsev

Cast Innokenti Smoktunovsky · Mikhail Nazvanov · Elza Radzina · Yuri Tolubeyev

Plot The surface of ceremonies and rituals celebrating the coronation of King Claudius and his marriage to Hamlet's mother leaves the young prince indifferent. Hamlet's melancholic nature finds no relief from...

Direction Robin Lough

Cast Benedict Cumberbatch · Ciarán Hinds · Sian Brooke · Leo Bill

Plot Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, finds out that his Uncle Claudius killed his father to obtain the throne, and plans his revenge.

Direction Orson Welles

Cast Orson Welles · Keith Baxter · John Gielgud · Jeanne Moreau

Plot Sir John Falstaff is the hero in this compilation of extracts from Shakespeare's 'Henry IV' and other plays, made into a connected story of Falstaff's career as young Prince Hal's...

Direction Grigori Kozintsev · Iosif Shapiro

Cast Regimantas Adomaitis · Donatas Banionis · Juozas Budraitis · Oleg Dal

Plot This is a Russian, black-and-white production of the great Shakespearean classic, starring Juri Jarvet. Long-considered one of the greatest and most wrenching tragedies in world literature, King Lear shows that...

Direction Orson Welles

Cast Orson Welles · Suzanne Cloutier · Micheál MacLiammóir · Robert Coote

Plot The story of a man driven mad by the power of his self-contained emotion. A Shakespearean classic. Orson Welles' production began in 1948 but with money in short supply the...

Direction Richard Curtis · Rowan Atkinson · Martin Shardlow · Geoff Posner

Cast Rowan Atkinson · Stephen Frost · Tim McInnerny · Tony Robinson

Plot TV Series (1983-1989). 4 Seasons. 25 Episodes. Set in England at the end of the War of the Roses, we soon find out that the history we know is a...

Direction Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Cast Marlon Brando · Louis Calhern · Deborah Kerr · James Mason

Plot The grandeur of the Roman world and powerful jealousy thunder together in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s famous JULIUS CAESAR. Scheming Cassius (John Gielgud), envious of the honors...

Direction William A. Wellman

Cast Gregory Peck · Anne Baxter · Richard Widmark · Robert Arthur

Plot In 1867, a gang led by James “Stretch” Dawson robs a bank and flees into the desert. Out of water, the outlaws come upon a ghost town called Yellow Sky...

Direction Orson Welles

Cast Orson Welles · Jeanette Nolan · Dan O'Herlihy · Roddy McDowall

Plot Macbeth, a loyal henchman to his crime boss, Duncan, is told by teenage witches that he will one day assume great power. Driven by their prophecy, he plots with his...

Direction Laurence Olivier

Cast Laurence Olivier · Jean Simmons · Basil Sydney · Eileen Herlie

Plot William Shakespeare's tale of tragedy of murder and revenge in the royal halls of medieval Denmark. Claudius, brother to the King, conniving with the Queen, poisons the monarch and seizes...

Direction Kenneth Branagh

Cast Kenneth Branagh · Derek Jacobi · Kate Winslet · Julie Christie

Plot When Hamlet (Kenneth Branagh) returns from his studies to find his father dead, and his mother married to his uncle, he grows suspicious. After being visited by his dead father...

Direction Gregory Doran

Cast David Tennant · Patrick Stewart · Oliver Ford Davies · Mariah Gale

Plot Featuring the original stage cast, the drama focuses on Prince Hamlet having decisions to make following the murder of his father, the King, at the hands of his Uncle Claudius,...

Direction Thea Sharrock

Cast Tom Hiddleston · John Hurt · Julie Walters · Richard Griffiths

Plot Hal is now a responsible monarch as Henry V,his rejection of Falstaff hastening the latter's death. Told by courtiers that,through Edward III,he has a claim to the French throne he...

Direction Dominic Cooke

Cast Benedict Cumberbatch · Keeley Hawes · Ben Daniels · Geoffrey Streatfield

Plot After a long civil war between the royal families of York and Lancaster, England enjoys a period of peace under King Edward IV. But Edward’s younger brother, Richard, resents the...

Direction Dominic Cooke

Cast Benedict Cumberbatch · Sophie Okonedo · Stanley Townsend · Geoffrey Streatfield

Plot The young King Henry returns from his victory in France with his new bride, the ambitious and domineering Margaret of Anjou. The gloating Earl of Suffolk believes that he will...

Direction Laurence Olivier

Cast Laurence Olivier · Ralph Richardson · John Gielgud · Claire Bloom

Plot The third and final entry in Laurence Olivier's Shakespeare triptych, Richard III (1954) is an audacious portrait of a man determined to prove himself a villain. As the personification of...

Direction Dominic Cooke · Richard Eyre · Rupert Goold · Thea Sharrock

Cast Ben Whishaw · Jeremy Irons · Tom Hiddleston · Anton Lesser

Plot A mini-series of adaptations of Shakespeare's history plays: Richard II, Henry IV Parts One and Two, and Henry V.

Direction Franco Zeffirelli

Cast Leonard Whiting · Olivia Hussey · John McEnery · Michael York

Plot Shakespeare's classic tale of romance and tragedy. Two families of Verona, the Montagues and the Capulets, have been feuding with each other for years. Young Romeo Montague goes out with...