Richard II
David Tennant as Richard II in a Royal Shakespeare Company production, which you can watch online from 23 April 2016.  ©

Photo by Kwame Lestrade © Royal Shakespeare Company

Wherever you are in the world, you can enjoy the BBC Shakespeare Lives online festival until the end of September 2016.

You can watch the highlights below, and much more, on the festival website, which is co-curated by the BBC and the British Council.

RICHARD II 

Royal Shakespeare Company

David Tennant stars as the doomed Richard II in Greg Doran’s critically-acclaimed Royal Shakespeare Company production, available for the first time online across the world.

TALKING ABOUT SHAKESPEARE

Hay Festival

Through a mixture of new short films and the festival’s extensive archive top authors, actors, academics and thinkers including Stephen Fry, Germaine Greer and Dame Judi Dench explore Shakespeare, his works and his legacy.

SHAKESPEARE ON STAGE, SCREEN AND ELSEWHERE, WITH IAN MCKELLEN

British Film Institute

Sir Ian McKellen shares his unique insights into the problems and joys of interpreting Shakespeare for the theatre, television, radio and cinema.

BEING HAMLET

BBC

Two of the greatest contemporary Hamlets, Simon Russell Beale and Adrian Lester discuss this most celebrated and challenging of roles. Their discussion of the Prince of Denmark fittingly takes place on Danish soil in the elegant surroundings of the ambassador’s residence in London. From Gielgud to Branagh, Olivier to Plummer, they explore the rich variety of approaches to a role to which so many actors aspire.

THE WORKS

Set on a Peckham council estate, this short film, written and directed by Elliot Barnes Worrell celebrates Shakespeare’s timeless themes with a cast headed by Ralph Fiennes. Using only the words of Shakespeare, The Works explores the vast complexities that exist within a community of young Londoners who refuse to be defined by their circumstances.

External links