The Silent Shakespeare

   Last Wednesday, February 20th at 6pm, there was a session entitled      

"The Silent Shakespeare" in room 5.2  

                                                                                                                                                                

Here is a clip of  Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (Silent) 1909 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBVz59edSkM#

King Lear:  thespace.org/items/e00004mn?t=985j

King John thespace.org/items/e00004mj?t=985k

and two silent clips of The Tempest 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcaSB-

http://thespace.org/items/e00004ms?t=984k

You will notice I took most of the videos from youtube.com or this site http://thespace.org/items/s0000edq. 

These were most of the videos that were shown during the session, followed by a brief commentary on the difficulties of transforming Shakespeare's plays into the early cinema. From rich, colorful language into a black and white mute motion picture, relying on the expressiveness of the actors and the music in the background to give life to Shakespeare's words. Furthermore, the importance of photography and the theater were referred to as influences of the early cinematic adaptations of plays and other forms of literature. 

From Stage to Screen was recommended for further studies. Below is a link to an available online version by Google Books http://books.google.pt/books

I found these links for a bit of reading:
SILENT_SHAKESPEARE_press_kit.pdf

collSilentShakespeareHV.html

And this final link about movies
http://tacit.listal.com/movies

a post by Catherine Santos