I’m a stay-at-home dad, and I need something to keep my brain active despite hours of Pocoyo and Yo Gabba Gabba! Last year we subscribed to Amazon Prime - mostly for the free shipping, but what sealed the deal was that it includes free streaming of all seasons of all series of Star Trek. Now, I’ve been a Trekkie since the early ‘80s, and I was a freshman in high school when the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered. That same year, Mrs. Gagel had us read Julius Caesar in English class. When I read Mark Antony’s soliloquy over Caesar’s body, (Julius Caesar III.i.255-275) I was hooked. Over the many years since then, I’ve gotten a degree in English, read all the plays, listened to them as audio plays, and watched every film production of Shakespeare’s plays that I could get my hands on.
Eventually it occurred to me that I should see what Shakespeare plays were included in Amazon Prime. It turns out there are quite a few, but not the whole collection. As you may guess, there are many different versions of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, but nothing for The Two Gentlemen of Verona. I added all I could find to my watchlist, and then decided I ought to go about this in some sort of order. Perhaps the order in which they were written.
A search on the internet found shakespeare-online.com had a page showing the chronology of Shakespeare’s plays (http://www.shakespeare-online.com/keydates/playchron.html). Unfortunately, I had to face the fact that this meant starting with the Henry VI series - some of Will’s worst plays. I checked my old Riverside Shakespeare (which I still have from college), and the list there is pretty much the same. Henry VI. I checked Amazon Prime. No Henry VI. No Richard III. No Comedy of Errors (although it seems most sitcoms eventually use A Comedy of Errors as an episode title). It seems there’s a band named TItus Andronicus with a video on Amazon Prime, but their stuff isn’t Shakespeare.
If I stick to Amazon Prime, I’ll have to start with the Richard Burton/Elizabeth Taylor version of The Taming of the Shrew, which is OK, but I’d have to skip the first six plays to get there. I’d decided not to buy any DVDs for this project because, well, I’m a stay-at-home dad and that would run in to some serious money. I could ask friends and family to loan me their Shakespeare DVDs, but that would at best supply me with half a dozen copies of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (the Leonardo DiCaprio/Claire Danes version) and maybe the Kenneth Branaugh Henry V that I already have. The project was starting to look impossible.
How can I watch Shakespeare’s complete plays for free? On a weekly visit to Toddler Storytime at my local public library the obvious solution struck me. A quick search on Minerva (http://minerva.maine.edu), Maine’s online library catalog, and I was back in the game. I requested Henry VI, part 2, and it arrived at the library a few days later. If you aren’t fortunate enough to live in Maine, I’ll bet your state’s libraries have a similar system. In Maine we can request virtually any book, DVD, or other material from practically any public library in the state, and it’s transferred to your local library free of charge (just do your part and return it on time. Librarians want you to use their services and don’t ask for much in return. Overdue books are one of the few things that can make them grumpy). Suddenly I realized I could potentially watch multiple versions of each play (I mean why not? My only deadline is when the toddler goes to Kindergarten).
So I was up to my third version of Taming of the Shrew when I thought this might make an interesting blog. I’ve been wanting to write something, and the structure might just keep me on track. After 400 years, it may seem like there’s nothing much left to say about Shakespeare, so I’ll probably repeat what others have said, but at least I’ll be saying something.
So here’s my plan: Watch all the film versions I can find of all the Shakespeare plays in the order they were written. The films must be either the exact Shakespeare play or widely recognized as a retelling of the Shakespeare play (So Kiss Me Kate and Strange Brew both count). Since my budget for this is $0, the movies will have to be either available for free from the library or included in my Amazon Prime subscription unless I happen to already own them.
Before I watch them, I’ll read the notes about them in the Riverside Shakespeare and the Oxford Shakespeare. Since I have the Oxford Shakespeare on my Kindle, I’ll read the text of the play as it appears there (The Riverside Shakespeare is awfully big to lug around with me).
Then I’ll write up what I think of each version.
Of course, I’ve already watched Henry VI parts I, II, and III, Richard III, The Comedy of Errors,Titus Andronicus, and The Taming of the Shrew, so I’ll have to come back to them later.
