Your Classroom Survival Guide to Shakespeare Movie Adaptations & Videos

Our high school years coincided with the classics of teen Shakespeare movie adaptations: William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996), 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), O (2001), and while not exactly teen movies, we’ll include Shakespeare in Love (1999) and Ethan Hawke’s Hamlet (2000).

So not only do we have a love of Shakespeare, but we have a fondness for Shakespeare movie adaptations starring teen idols (Leo! Julia! Josh! Heath!). 

Using videos and Shakespeare movie adaptations to supplement your in-class activities is essential. We live in a world where engagement is king, which means we’re constantly looking for videos that will engage our students more than written text, especially when we teach struggling readers. And Shakespeare’s plays are meant to be performed: no reading of the text will ever give us the full experience Shakespeare intended.

While we haven’t taught every Shakespeare play (and thus cannot proclaim to be experts in all the best options), these are the videos and Shakespeare movie adaptations we’ve found most helpful in our classroom.

Videos for Introducing Shakespeare

Shakespeare in Love

We’re going to go ahead right off the bat and say this is for older students only. And the filmmaker takes a lot of creative liberties.

But, if you’re just looking to give your students a taste of the Elizabethan England theater scene, this can be a fun introduction. We used it with a film unit after the exam in our first year teaching AP Literature, and students enjoyed it. If you’re not comfortable showing it in class or you don’t have the time for it, just give it a mention to students: you may be surprised how many of them will check it out on their own. 

Hamlet Adaptations and Supplementary Videos

The Full Shakespeare Movie Adaptation

Hamlet

We only taught Hamlet a couple times, so we don’t have a long list of recommendations, but the Kenneth Branagh version (1996) was our favorite film adaptation. It’s long, but it’s faithful, and the time we made for our students to watch it before digging into the original text was well spent.

Additional Videos

John Green tackles Hamlet at Crash Course, which, of course, we recommend.

Julius Caesar Adaptations and Supplementary Videos

The Full Shakespeare Movie Adaptation

We’re a little disappointed with the options for Julius Caesar (anyone planning to remake this sometime soon?). The Marlon Brando version (1953) is very good, but our students aren’t big fans of anything black and white, so it’s not as engaging as we’d like. But of what’s out there, this is your best bet.

Introductory Videos

We started our reading by showing students Last Minute Book Reports – Fast Julius Caesar! to give them a quick overview of the storyline. Pro-Tip: You might find it helpful to slow down the video playback speed to .75.

Even more helpfully, we showed Kathryn Tempest’s TED-Ed video “The great conspiracy against Julius Caesar” to give students historical background about Caesar and his assassination.

During Reading Videos

This short video about the difference between a republic and a democracy provided helpful background information in Act 1 to help students understand why Brutus was so concerned about Caesar’s growing power.

Between Acts 1 and 2, we showed students an interview from the Royal Shakespeare Company in which actors discuss their interpretation of the conversation between Brutus and Cassius in Act 1, Scene 2. The actors try to get into the heads of the characters, which allows for a helpful review of key points.

After Act 3, we assigned students Flocabulary’s rap version of Mark Antony’s funeral speech (we probably found it funnier than our students did, but that’s okay!).

Review Videos

After each act, we assigned students to watch review videos to make sure they were tracking the key points from the story. For Act 1, we really liked the Shakespeare Today summary, but when we couldn’t find videos for the other acts from them, we used the videos from Course Hero. Initially, we just had students watch the videos at the end of each act’s assignment, but we eventually built in “review days” where students completed Edpuzzles on the review videos and revised their assignments from that act based on teacher feedback.

Additional Videos

There is a wealth of great supplementary content at myShakespeare for several plays, including Julius Caesar. Several scenes include “news interviews” with characters from the play that help students understand not only the events of the play but the characters’ motivations. We assigned the one from Act 4, Scene 2 about Brutus’s and Cassius’s argument during the civil war that followed the assassination.

Macbeth Adaptations and Supplementary Videos

The Full Shakespeare Movie Adaptations

Trying to find a Macbeth adaptation we felt comfortable showing in class was one of the most daunting challenges we faced as English teachers (perhaps a slight exaggeration, but not entirely). Most of the adaptations sexualize Lady Macbeth, the witches, or both; some interpretations, like the Patrick Stewart one, take creative liberties that we were concerned would confuse students. 

We did think the Michael Fassbender version (2015) was well done (and the most visually attractive adaptation), but its R rating made us reluctant to show it to our sophomores. We did, however, select a few scenes to play, which created opportunities to discuss the filmmakers’ interpretation.

The best version to use in class by far is the Oscar-nominated Denzel Washington version (2021). It’s a fantastic and faithful adaptation that retains the feel of a play. More importantly, we would have no hesitation showing it in class to students of different grade levels.

Additional Videos

John Green has a two-parter at Crash Course that could either introduce the play or a thematic discussion after reading since it includes both background information and some literary analysis.

Free Will, Witches, Murder, and Macbeth, Part 1

Gender, Guilt, and Fate – Macbeth, Part 2

Ben Todd’s three-minute version of Macbeth made for a nice quick overview that students mostly enjoyed, as did Miss C’s Macbeth Characters video. We adored English Psycho Teacher’s summaries of each act. We’re still sad that she didn’t have Julius Caesar summaries we could use!

While we didn’t use it, myShakespeare also has an interactive version of Macbeth with lots of video resources, and our experience with their videos for Julius Caesar makes us think these would be helpful, too!

Romeo and Juliet Adaptations and Supplementary Videos

We used a lot fewer videos when we taught Romeo and Juliet in ninth grade honors, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996). We didn’t show the full version of the modern adaptation, but we did show clips of the scenes we read in class, and our students were definitely engaged.

Again, John Green has a two-parter up on Crash Course that could be used as either a preview or a review.

Of Pentameter & Bear Baiting – Romeo & Juliet Part 1

Love or Lust? Romeo and Juliet Part 2

Twelfth Night Adaptations and Supplementary Videos

We didn’t teach Twelfth Night in the traditional way, but for a few years, we did a post-exam project with it in AP English Literature. We found the 1996 version starring Helena Bonham Carter to be a good adaptation that helped students grasp the humor, and we all loved the 2006 adaptation She’s the Man starring Amanda Bynes and Channing Tatum.

Videos Relating to the Sonnets

We actually used the Crash Course video about Shakespeare’s sonnets in our introductory activities to Romeo and Juliet: we worked with a couple sonnets to familiarize students with Shakespeare’s language. The video provides a great overview of the sonnet form and dives into the different interpretations about the “overarching story” behind the sonnets, particularly the theory about the Fair Youth and the Dark Lady. If you’re planning an extended study of the sonnets, we think this is a great place to start (though some more conservative readers may not appreciate Green’s interpretation).

Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Crash Course Literature

While we initially encouraged students to practice their poetry reading skills aloud in class, we started to move toward audio recordings because the professional readings aided students in comprehension. Given the many hours we spent listening to audio versions of these poems, we thought we’d save you the time and share a few of our favorites for the sonnets.

[Disclaimer: You may want to just play the audio for some of these: the images added to the YouTube videos sometimes took us and our students out of the experience.]

Sonnet 18

Michael York

Harriet Walter

We particularly liked the use of a female narrator!

Andrew Cullimore

This is a great option if you want to show a different take on the popular sonnet and discuss the way a speaker’s inflection can change the poem’s meaning.

Sir John Gielgud

Sonnet 130

Jamie Muffett

Alan Rickman

We LOVE his reading, though it’s also strange to hear Professor Snape reading a love poem.

Tom Hiddleston

There are a lot of YouTube videos featuring Tom Hiddleston reading poetry, and we love them.

Ian Midlane

Allison Strong

Poetry Out Loud is a great resource for student-read poems that might even inspire your students to participate in the program.

Sonnet 138

Jamie Muffett

Tom O’Bedlam

Kate really likes his poetry reading voice—we used it for several poems!

Sir John Gielgud

What can we say? We like him, too!

Daniel Wallace

Finding good Shakespeare movie adaptations and supplementary videos takes work, so we hope sharing the great options that have worked for our students saves you some time. Naturally, we only have videos for texts we’ve taught, but if you’ve got great resources we missed (or for other plays), please share! Reach out to us at [email protected] or on Instagram @threeheads.works.