Play On! Shakespeare in Silent Film

Play On! Shakespeare in Silent Film presents a curated look at Shakespeare on the big screen from cinema's infancy. Instead of telling one story, it stitches together scenes from early film adaptations of King Lear, Twelfth Night, Hamlet and Richard III, and The Merchant of Venice, alongside less frequently filmed works like Henry VIII and The Winter's Tale. Viewers encounter short, silent performances that rely on gesture, facial expression, and intertitles to convey language. The result is a mosaic rather than a single plot, showing how stage language translates to moving pictures and how audiences responded to this radical new way of seeing Shakespeare.

Directed by Jane Giles and released in 2016, the film compiles archival clips that trace early Shakespeare cinema from theatre to screen, drawing on versions of King Lear, Twelfth Night, Hamlet and more. These selections reveal a range of styles across decades.

Box office figures for this release are not publicly reported, reflecting its festival and educational circuit footprint rather than a wide commercial run. Some clips come from celebrated stage film collaborations, while others are rare fragments recovered from archives.

Critically the project reads as a celebration of cinema history rather than a conventional narrative, inviting viewers to consider how silent era performances shaped modern Shakespearean storytelling. The mix of actors, intertitles and varied production values highlights both limits and possibilities of early screen adaptation, offering thoughtful lens on history.

Play On! serves as a cultural time capsule, preserving early performances that shaped later Shakespeare on screen. By juxtaposing names from the silent era like John Gielgud and Asta Nielsen, it illuminates how film opened Shakespeare to new audiences.