Date: 2008 Posted by:Connor Ratliff Credits: Conceived and produced by Connor Ratliff and Jeff Falzone Cast: Connor Ratliff (William Shakespeare) Duration: 6.21
BardBox has already Chris Rozzi and Billy Harper as comedians who post videos in the guise of William Shakespeare. Now we have Connor Ratliff exhibiting similar intimations of grandeur. Ratliff publishes videos on the comedy channel Funny or Die, in several of which he plays a William Shakespeare facing up to the modern world, while being smugly proud of his reputation. Here we are privileged to witness Shakespeare writing a new play. Act One sounds like the Bard has resorted to soap opera, but Act Four promises to be quite exciting. Then we get the off-screen interviewer asking Shakespeare if this change in his style isn’t going to upset his traditional fan base, to which Shakespeare sturdily replies that “Shakespeare is like a shark – he has to keep moving forward”. Those old plays, they took forever to write – now he produces seven a day. My hat is off to thou.
Date: 2004 Posted by:TheRealDanStrange Credits: A Daniel Strange filme Cast: Dan Strange (himself), Evanne Larsonne (‘Shakespeare’) Duration: 2.14
Just how annoying might it have been, or might it be, to know the real William Shakespeare? Struggling writer Dan Strange finds out when he turns to Shakespeare for advice. “What percentage of the time would you say it was easy for you?” he asks. “I don’t know, like, 98, 99% per cent of the time” comes back the unwelcome reply. Never blotted out a line either.
Daniel Strange has only posted a few such mini-dramas centred on life’s frustrations, and ought to produce a few more. A droll vignette, with some strong language.
It is all too easy to sigh at yet another American middle school English project where the class has been encouraged to demonstrate that Shakspeare can be fun by producing a YouTube video. You may sigh even more at the all-too-obvious choice of rap, something whose novelty factor wore out years ago.
And yet, and yet. Look again. This is a terrific video. It displays such enthusiasm for the task in hand, which is to make a rap video out of the story of Hamlet. The lyrics are sharp, the editing is good, the music is strong, and the performances are goofy but dedicated to the cause. Care has been taken to make the individual scenes varied. In common with many such video spoofs, the titles are done in MTV-style, while the subtitles are helpful. Shakespeare himself turns up in the car for the chorus (“Hamlet here with my boy Shakespeare”) – he’s the one with a skull in his hand. It’s a fine English project that brings out such delight in recognising the vitality of the play.
Date: 2007 Posted by:billyharper11 Credits: Created by Billy Harper Cast: Billy Harper (William Shakespeare) Duration: 3.05
William Shakespeare, he likes nothing better when he’s relaxing at home with some friends to start singing songs and playing some air guitar. Here he invites us all to join in the party and sing along with Lynryd Skynryd’s ‘Sweet Home Alabama’.
British comic performer Billy Harper has played Shakespeare in a variety of comedy music modes on YouTube, miming to songs with some skill. There’s Shakespeare rapping to Vanilla Ice’s ‘Ice Ice Baby’, Shakespeare doing his Barry White impression, and Shakespeare as Snoop Dogg. Irresistible stuff.
Date: 2007 Posted by:HarassedTofu Credits: Directed, filmed and edited by Kimberley Durkin, for Harassed Tofu Productions Cast: Eggs (voices by Kimberley Durkin) Duration: 5.01
Rudimentary (to say the least) animation with eggs, telling us the story of Shakespeare’s Stratford home life, starting from the point where the young Shakespeare is taken to see a play and becomes besotted by the theatre. The film ends poignantly with the death of his son Hamnet (yolk is spilt), commemorated by words from King John (Act 3 Scene 4), ‘If that be true, I shall see my boy again’, while Carmina Buruna plays in the background. Cracking.
Date: 2006
Posted by: crozzi Credits: Created by Chris Rozzi Cast: Chris Rozzi (William Shakespeare) Duration: 2.08
Were William Shakespeare alive today, would he be blogging? Of course he would, and he’d probably become so engrossed by its spurious attractions that he’d never get round to writing any plays. Whether his blog, or vlog, would be like this one, who can say? I like to think that it might have been. American comedian Chris Rozzi portrays Shakespeare as posting his ’semi-daily’ thoughts on modern living. Here, Shakespeare is baffled by the modern absurdity that is fantasy football. Elsewhere, Shakespeare tells us about the worst job he ever had (dancer in a jail cafeteria), on the need to teach children to fight (because when adults they’ll just want to hug), on professional wrestling (not Olympic wrestling, that’s just embarassing), his new diet plan (you’d only be able to eat in the shower) and agonising on why no one watches his vlogs. And there are several more. Gentle, silly humour with astute timing.
Date: 2006 Posted by:srowan Credits: Created by Alex Mueller and Scott Rowan. A Row 1 Production Cast: Scott Rowan (William Shakespeare), Jenna Johnson (Anne Hathaway), Callie Parks (Francis Bacon, Actress), Griffin Ransdell (Bully no. 1, Messenger), Alex Mueller (Bully no. 2, Actor), Bill Rowan (Papa Shakespeare), Sandy Rowan (School Teacher), random people (extras) Duration: 11.33
We first encounter William Shakespeare in a modern day American small town setting. He is sitting on a bench, when a quill feather flutters down beside him. He tells his life story to a girl sitting on the next door bench, who initially ignores him. We learn that as a child he loved to read, and learned about his ancestor who fought in the Wars of the Roses (“I don’t know why anyone would want flowers that bad”). Encouraged by his sweetheart Anne Hathaway, William learns to write and write and write. He joins the Lord Chamberlain’s men acting troupe and marries Anne. Then his father dies, and William writes a play inspired by his father, which he will call Hamlet (named after his father’s favourite meal of ham omelettes). The girl on the bench advises him to use some words he had just uttered (“Alas, poor York peppermint…”) in his play. Her name is Francis [sic] Bacon.
This is a remarkably accomplished 11-minute amateur parody of Forest Gump, telling instead the life of William Shakespeare. The music from the film helps, and it’s not a difficult film to parody, but such care has gone into recrafting shots from the original and duplicating its tone. It doesn’t tell us much about Shakespeare, except maybe to hint that his life for us now is, much like Forest Gump’s, little more than a blank onto which we imprint our own expectations of a national figure.
Date: 2008 Posted by:poetryanimations Credits: Created by Jim Clark Cast: Robert Donat (voice) Duration: 1.34
A slightly unsettling animation in which a portrait of William Shakespeare is seen to deliver the ‘Fear no more the heat o’ the sun’ speech from Cymbeline (Act 4 Scene 2). The animation was created Jim Clark, who has made a speciality of creating similar animations of portraits of poets ‘reading’ their work (Wilfred Owen, John Keats, T.S. Eliot etc). In this instance, Shakespeare’s words are provided by a recording of the British actor Robert Donat. The image is protected at various points with a spoiler.
Jim Clark has also produced a similar animation of Shakespeare reciting ‘All the world’s a stage’ from As You Like It and Hamlet’s advice to the players, animated to a c.1919 Edison sound recording by Harry E. Humphrey.
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