Downloadable Shakespeare

January 19, 2006 3:22 PM

Shakespearefilter. One of my vices is collecting productions of Shakespeare's plays (particular Hamlet). I recently stumbled across this theatre group who have put two shows up online for download and I was wondering if anyone knew of any others which are available anywhere online. I can't imagine that this is the only group doing this. Ideally I'm looking for those in the canon which are produced less often such as Cymbeline or Measure for Measure hopefully in mp3 format.

Incidentally I have tried googling but typing in something like 'shakespeare production mp3 download' throws up half a million hits. I thought I'd try the word of mouth approach.

posted by feelinglistless to media & arts (6 comments total)

I don't know if it's available online, but my favorite rendition of Taming of the Shrew is available at Amazon. It stars Marc Singer (of "V" and "Beastmaster" infamy), and is done with a minimalist set and an extremely jovial style.
posted by thanotopsis at 3:39 PM on January 19, 2006

Yes! My way-too-awesome friend has done this with Richard II, and is about to do another play (but don't wait on it: they are Dangerously Slow Productions). Richard II is pretty rare, this is mp3 format, and, oh yes, it's free.

The cool hook is that she's never met the other cast members. You record your part on your microphone; other Shakespeare freaks from the internet record their parts on theirs; you mash up the lines in order and voilà: You have a completed play, and you've never met your costars.
posted by booksandlibretti at 3:46 PM on January 19, 2006

booksandlibretti: Thanks, that's really intriguing. And with Derek Jacobi's best wishes...
posted by feelinglistless at 3:54 PM on January 19, 2006

If BBC productions aren't too mainstream or been-there-done-that for what you want, you can download several them here. Appears to have most the plays, including Cymbeline and Measure for Measure. I didn't bother to watch all 2.5 hrs of Measure for Measure and 3 hrs of Cymbeline, but they appeared intact at the start. Not sure they're supposed to be publicly available there based on the production video copyright notice, actually, but for now they work.

The files are streaming RM format, but there are utilities which will directly convert those to MP3 or another standard file format. I just pulled four minutes of Cymbeline from the page directly into an .AVI file using the Real7ime utility. Looked fine.
posted by mdevore at 3:32 AM on January 20, 2006

This is the most awesome question I think I've ever seen.
posted by stoneegg21 at 9:10 AM on January 20, 2006

Awesome in what way -- and I don't mean in the 'funny how?' sense.
posted by feelinglistless at 2:30 PM on January 20, 2006