How Shakespeare has been used in various movies or television shows?

Answer 1

References in films to Shakespeare can fall into two categories: Extensive references to Shakespeare's life or works as a key element of the movie's plot, or casual references to Shakespeare or short quotations in dialogue or titles.

Kenneth Branagh's movie Much Ado about Nothing does not contain Shakespeare references; it is a film entirely based on and adapted from a Shakespeare play. Movies like She's the Man (loosely based on the situation in Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night) do not refer to Shakespeare, they use parts of his plots. These should be described as adaptations, not references.

Movies where Shakespeare or his works are key to the plot include Shakespeare in Love (Romeo and Juliet), The Dresser (King Lear), Renaissance Man (Hamlet), Theatre of Blood (Several Plays), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Hamlet).

Movies which contain casual references to Shakespeare in the title include To Be or Not To Be (Hamlet), Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country (Hamlet, same speech)

Movies which contain casual quotations from Shakespeare are innumerable but include Withnail and I (Hamlet, What a piece of work is man), The Last Action Hero (Hamlet, To Be or Not to Be)

Answer 2

Let me count the ways. I interpret the question as how Shakespeare has influenced movies and TV, so I have excluded direct movie and TV adaptations of Shakespeare plays.

Movies:

1) Forbidden Planet --- 50's science-fiction version of The Tempest.

2) Tempest --- 80's modern version of The Tempest.

3) Ran --- Japanese version of King Lear directed by Akira Kurosawa.

4) O --- Modern version of Othello.

5) West Side Story --- 50's musical version of Romeo and Juliet, with street gangs called the Jets and the Sharks standing in for the Capulets and the Montagues.

6) Theater of Blood --- Truly gory horror movie from the 70's with Vincent Price as an actor taking revenge on his critics by killing them in Shakespearean ways.

7) Highlander II: The Quickening --- This movie has a comical scene with Sean Connery appearing onstage during a production of Hamlet, but he does not know it is a play.

8) 10 Things I Hate About You --- Teen comedy adapted from The Taming of the Shrew.

Television Shows:

1) Star Trek (1966-69) borrowed heavily from Shakespeare.

"Dagger of the Mind" took its title from a line in MacBeth.

"Whom Gods Destroy" took its title from a line in Julius Caesar.

"By Any Other Name" took its title from a line in Romeo and Juliet.

"Elaan of Troius" took its title from Helen of Troy, but its plot has been compared with The Taming of the Shrew.

"The Conscience of the King" had numerous Shakespearean references and conveyed a Shakespearean sense of irony and tragedy.

2) Star Trek: The Next Generation and had an episode called "Perchance to Dream" which is a line from The Merchant of Venice.

3) The Twilight Zone (1959-64) also had an episode called "Perchance to Dream," and another episode called "The Quality of Mercy" which is also taken from the Merchant of Venice. An episode called "The Purple Testament" takes its title from a line in Richard III. An hour-long episode called "The Bard" has Shakespeare conjured up from the past by magic to assist a Hollywood hack writer.

4) Gargoyles (animated Disney series in the 90's) had MacBeth and three witches as characters, along with Oberon, Titania, and Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream.

5) Gilligan's Island had an episode in which the castaways make a musical version of Hamlet. In another episode the Professor says, "Something is rotten in Denmark," paraphrasing a line from Hamlet. And in another episode, Mr. Howell says, "My kingdom for an orange," paraphrasing Richard III who offers to trade his kingdom for a horse.

6) The Wild Wild West (1965-69)--- US Secret Service agent Artemus Gordon is a a big fan of Shakespeare, and several episodes had Shakespearean references.

7) Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964-68) In the episode "The Deadly Dolls" Vincent Price says, "Whom gods destroy they first drive mad," a line from Julius Caesar.

8) Band of Brothers --- Television miniseries took its title from a line in Henry V.

Answer 3

The works of Shakespeare have been used as the basis for more movies than those of any other writer. The Internet Movie database lists seven hundred and eighty-eight movies or television productions based on Shakespeare's work, from a short silent film in 1899 to eleven films currently in production which have not yet been released, three of which are based on the play "The Tempest"

The IMdb lists 245 films in the last 25 years alone. Some of the better known ones include Kenneth Branagh's Henry V (1989), Much Ado About Nothing (1994), and Hamlet (1996), Baz Luhrman's Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes (1996), Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night (1996), Al Pacino's Merchant of Venice (2004), Julie Taymore's Titus (based on Titus Andronicus) with Anthony Hopkins (1999), A Midsummer Night's Dream with Michelle Pfeiffer and Kevin Kline among others (1999), Ian McKellen's Richard III (1995), Lawrence Fishburne's Othello with Kenneth Branagh (1995) and most recently Hamlet with Dr. Who star David Tennant (2009).

Some movies which adapt Shakespeare's plots using new dialogue, character development and plot points include 10 Things I Hate About You (based on The Taming of the Shrew), O (based on Othello), and the Kurosawa movies Throne of Blood (Based on Macbeth) and Ran (based on King Lear) and hundreds and hundreds of others. One of the movies alleged to be derived from a Shakespeare plot which is farthest from its supposed original is The Lion King (supposedly based on Hamlet, although the supposed "Hamlet" character is not ordered to remain in his uncle's court, does not feign madness, is not spurned by his girlfriend at her father's request, is not visited by friends who are really spies for his uncle, does not put on a play to test the king, does not conduct a long interview with his mother in which he berates her for marrying his uncle, and indeed, she does not appear to have married him willingly or possibly at all, so he has nothing to complain to her about, does not kill his girlfriend's father, who is not a character in the film, does not have a girlfriend who goes mad and kills herself, does not contemplate suicide even briefly, does not fight with his girlfriend's brother, because she doesn't have one, and finally SURVIVES the story and becomes king himself, making him no more similar to Hamlet than I to Hercules)

Answer 4

Shakespeare used a large number of varied themes in his work, most if not all of which have also been used in some way or another both before and since. For example, the theme of the corrosive effect of guilt, found in Macbeth, is also apparent in Poe's The Telltale Heart. The theme of the loneliness of the hero, in Henry V, is also found in Batman. The theme of lovers whose backgrounds are different, used in Othello, is also found in the movie Titanic.

Shakespeare's plot elements are also sometime used. The plot device of the difficult elder sister and the nice younger sister from The Taming of the Shrew is used intentionally in the movie/TV show 10 Things I Hate About You (which also may demonstrate the theme of "people who hate love who fall in love anyway" found in Much Ado About Nothing)

Answer 5

Too many to name them all. Renaissance Man, Clueless, The Last Action Hero, Star Trek VI (The title of which is a Quote from Shakespeare), Withnail and I, Shakespeare in Love, To Be Or Not to Be, Freaky Friday, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and 10 Things I Hate About You are some.