My 50 favourite Shakespearean performances onscreen and onstage

The 30 list was first published on 29/12/2023. It is now updated. 

In chronological order. 

Robert Shaw as Claudius in Hamlet at Elsinor (1964)  

Michael Aldridge as Pistol in Chimes at Midnight (1965) 

Olivia Hussey as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet (1968) 

Leonard Whiting as Romeo in Romeo and Juliet (1968)

Diana Rigg as Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1968) 

Laurence Olivier as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (1973) 

Jeremy Brett as Berowne in Love’s Labour’s Lost (1975) 

Marc Singer as Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew (1976) 

Ian McKellen as Macbeth in Macbeth (1979) 

Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth in Macbeth (1979)

David Gwillim as Hal/ Henry V in the Henry IV plays and Henry V (1979) 

Anthony Quayle as Falstaff in the Henry IV plays (1979) 

Jon Finch as Henry IV in the Henry IV plays (1979)  

Tim Pigott-Smith as Hotspur in Henry IV, Part 1 (1979) 

Kate Nelligan as Isabella in Measure for Measure (1979) 

Anthony Hopkins as Othello in Othello (1981) 

Bob Hoskins as Iago in Othello (1981) 

Michael Hordern as Lear in King Lear (1982) 

Anton Lesser as Edgar in King Lear (1982) 

Penelope Wilton as Regan in King Lear (1982) 

Michael Pennington as Posthumus in Cymbeline (1982) 

Robert Lindsay as Iachimo in Cymbeline (1982) 

Robert Lindsay as Edmund in King Lear (1983) 

Diana Rigg as Regan in King Lear (1983)

Cherie Lunghi as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing (1984) 

Robert Lindsay as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing (1984)

Richard Briers as Malvolio in Twelfth Night (1988) 

Frances Barber as Viola in Twelfth Night (1988)  

Kevin Kline as Hamlet in Hamlet (1990) 

Ian McKellen as Iago in Othello (1990) 

Imogen Stubbs as Desdemona in Othello (1990)

Helena Bonham Carter as Olivia in Twelfth Night (1990) 

Antony Sher as Leontes in The Winter’s Tale (1999) 

Ian Hughes as Autolycus in The Winter’s Tale (1999) 

Ralph Fiennes as Coriolanus in Coriolanus (2011) 

Vanessa Redgrave as Volumnia in Coriolanus (2011)

Amy Acker as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing (2012) 

Don Warrington as Lear in King Lear (2016) 

Miltos Yerolemou as the Fool in King Lear (2016)

Thomas Coombes as Oswald in King Lear (2016)

Ian McKellen as Lear in King Lear (2018) 

Kathryn Hunter as the Witches in Macbeth (2021) 

David Oyelowo as Coriolanus in Coriolanus (2024) 

Mathew Baynton as Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2024) 

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On the 2018 King Lear, dir. Jonathan Munby and ft. Ian McKellen

How many versions of King Lear have I seen? 

If we exclude Ran (a loose adaptation) and the Kozintsev film (in Russian), 5: the Michael Buffong production from 2016 (ft. Don Warrington), the Jonathan Miller one from 1982 for the BBC (ft. Michael Hordern), the Michael Elliott one from 1982 (ft. Laurence Olivier), the 1971 Peter Brook film (ft. Paul Scofield), and now this one. 

Ian McKellen is excellent as Lear—if Don Warrington’s Lear is a monumental character striving against cosmic forces, Ian McKellen’s Lear, like Michael Hordern’s, is a frail and feeble man in a domestic drama, betrayed by his ungrateful daughters—his performance emphasises the theme of old age and mortality in Shakespeare’s play. One of the finest scenes in the production is between the mad Lear and the blind Gloucester. Look at Lear—an old man, a frail man—as he says: 

“Ay, every inch a king!

When I do stare, see how the subject quakes....”

It is one of the greatest scenes in King Lear and also one of the hardest to play, because of the mix of tragedy and comedy. 

“LEAR […] We came crying hither;

Thou know’st, the first time that we smell the air

We wawl and cry. I will preach to thee. 

GLOUCESTER Alack, alack the day!

LEAR When we are born, we cry that we are come

To this great stage of fools…”  

The scene of Lear holding Cordelia’s body also brought tears to my eyes—“Why should a dog, a horse,”—Ian McKellen’s voice breaks—“a rat have life, and thou no breath at all?”.

It is a great performance. 

And yet, the production as a whole doesn’t quite work for me. I’m not sure why. Perhaps King Lear looks wrong in modern dress. Perhaps the problem is simply the rest of the cast—in the Michael Buffong production, I love Miltos Yerolemou as the Fool, Rakie Ayola as Goneril, Debbie Korley as Regan, Thomas Coombes as Oswald; in the Jonathan Miller version, I love Penelope Wilton as Regan, Brenda Blethyn as Cordelia, Anton Lesser as Edgar; in the Michael Elliott production, I love Robert Lindsay as Edmund and Diana Rigg as Regan (even if the whole thing fails because Laurence Olivier’s performance as Lear lacks power)—in this production, none of the rest of the cast delivers a strong, memorable performance, none leaves a lasting impression. Danny Webb as Gloucester, Claire Price as Goneril, Kirsty Bushell as Regan, Anita-Joy Uwajeh as Cordelia, Luke Thompson as Edgar, James Corrigan as Edmund, Lloyd Hutchinson as the Fool, and so on—they’re all pale, all weak, all forgettable. The only one who does something that could be interesting is Kirsty Bushell—more than other Regans I have seen, she explicitly portrays the character as sexually aroused by violence—it’s perhaps unfair for her that I have seen Diana Rigg and Penelope Wilton in the role, but at least she takes a different approach, at least she makes one think about Regan’s sadism. 

The rest are just bland. Not awful as such, just lacklustre and uninspired. 

Should you watch it? Perhaps, for Ian McKellen, but that’s all. 

Instead, watch Lyndsey Turner’s Coriolanus from 2024, with David Oyelowo in the titular role. Now that is a magnificent production, one that makes you feel exhilarated, one that makes you think great Shakespeare productions still exist, one that makes you realise that, despite ideology and all the other nonsense, Shakespeare will prevail.  

David Copperfield: some thoughts on characters (with mention of Tolstoy)

1/ Now that I’ve finished reading David Copperfield after about 6 weeks (though I did take a break and spent a few days reading The Sorrows of Young Werther) and so far mostly written about Dickens’s writing style, I should jot down some thoughts on the characters. 

The greatest character in David Copperfield is, without doubt, Uriah Heep. Repulsive Heep! Fawning, obsequious Heep! Scheming, villainous Heep! From his physical attributes to his voice, to his personality, to his evil—this is one of the most memorable villains in fiction.

After that, the most brilliant characters in the book are Betsey Trotwood, Miss Mowcher, and Rosa Dartle. The Murdstones and the Micawbers and Mr Dick are also very good—only Dickens could create such characters and give them so much life, so much presence—but I especially love these three. All those detractors who sneeringly say Dickens only creates caricatures, that he cannot write characters with depth—have they not seen Betsey Trotwood? And Miss Mowcher? As we often see in Dickens, Betsey Trotwood first appears as a caricature and gradually becomes a complex, multifaceted character: when we first see her, she’s an eccentric woman, an intimidating woman who terrifies everyone and keeps yelling “Donkeys!”, fighting donkeys off the little piece of green before her house; but she changes, she grows, she develops; the intimidating woman turns out to be a generous great aunt, a pitiful wife, a wonderful woman, and she is especially lovable in her gentleness towards Dora. 

Dickens does something similar with Miss Mowcher, except that it’s more extraordinary: Betsey Trotwood has lots of space to develop throughout the novel, whereas Miss Mowcher is a minor character who has about two big scenes. When we first see her, she’s a dwarf hairdresser and a friend of James Steerforth—she’s witty, she’s talking nonstop, she’s captivating David’s attention and also ours. 

“… ‘No,’ said Steerforth, before I could reply. ‘Nothing of the sort. On the contrary, Mr Copperfield used—or I am much mistaken—to have a great admiration for her.’

‘Why, hasn’t he now?’ returned Miss Mowcher. ‘Is he fickle? Oh, for shame! Did he sip every flower, and change every hour, until Polly his passion requited?—Is her name Polly?’

The Elfin suddenness with which she pounced upon me with this question, and a searching look, quite disconcerted me for a moment.

‘No, Miss Mowcher,’ I replied. ‘Her name is Emily.’

‘Aha?’ she cried exactly as before. ‘Umph? What a rattle I am! Mr. Copperfield, ain’t I volatile?’

[…] ‘Very well: very well! Quite a long story. Ought to end “and they lived happy ever afterwards”; oughtn’t it? Ah! What’s that game at forfeits? I love my love with an E, because she’s enticing; I hate her with an E, because she’s engaged. I took her to the sign of the exquisite, and treated her with an elopement, her name’s Emily, and she lives in the east? Ha! ha! ha! Mr Copperfield, ain’t I volatile?’” (ch.22) 

She has such a vivid existence that I would be happy even if she stayed the same. But later, Dickens removes the layer and lets us see the real Miss Mowcher: 

“Miss Mowcher sat down on the fender again, and took out her handkerchief, and wiped her eyes.

‘Be thankful for me, if you have a kind heart, as I think you have,’ she said, ‘that while I know well what I am, I can be cheerful and endure it all. I am thankful for myself, at any rate, that I can find my tiny way through the world, without being beholden to anyone; and that in return for all that is thrown at me, in folly or vanity, as I go along, I can throw bubbles back. If I don’t brood over all I want, it is the better for me, and not the worse for anyone. If I am a plaything for you giants, be gentle with me.’” (ch.32) 

A magnificent scene, an unforgettable character. 

But even with the characters called caricatures, the ones who don’t have another side and don’t change, Dickens makes them so individual and gives them such a vivid existence that they cease to be mere types. Just look at them. Mr Murdstone is not just a cold, hard man who breaks his wives and reduces them to a state of imbecility. Mr Micawber is not just a poor man who keeps getting into financial troubles. Dickens gives them all individual voices and phrases, and thickens his characterisation with such details, such “unnecessary” details that they feel full of life within the world of his book. 

Among those characters who don’t change, who don’t have another side is Rosa Dartle. Throughout the novel, she remains the same as a haughty, snobbish, and bitter woman who loves James Steerforth and has burning hatred in her heart for everyone else, especially for Emily but also for Steerforth. But she suffers, and that pain gives life to the character. 

Later in Little Dorrit, Dickens goes further as he creates several characters—mostly women—who nurse a grievance and destroy their own lives because of it, such as Miss Wade, Fanny Dorrit, Harriet Beadle, Mrs Clennam, and so on. They’re in a prison of their own making. 

2/ I have called Dora Spenlow insufferable, and she is, but she is redeemed in her last moments—she gains awareness at last, and it’s a moving scene.

In an earlier blog post, I wrote that the second half of the book was less enjoyable. I still think that way, despite Uriah Heep. There’s a magical quality, a fairytale-like quality to the childhood section of the book that is absent in the adulthood section. More importantly, I think the adulthood section suffers because of Dora and because of David Copperfield. 

Let’s compare Dickens and Tolstoy. Levin is Tolstoy’s self-insert in Anna Karenina—I know some readers don’t like Levin, but this is not a flattering portrayal of himself—Levin sometimes gets silenced in debates and cannot argue his points, he recoils at his brother’s suffering and becomes helpless, he’s hot-tempered, he keeps questioning everything and continues to question even after his conversion at the end of the book, he has many flaws… 

If Pierre, as some people say, is Tolstoy’s self-insert in War and Peace, that is also not a flattering portrait—Pierre may be a good man, a lovable man, but he initially engages in all sorts of debauchery; he is weak-willed, naïve, idealistic, and impressionable; he jumps from one idea to another… I think it’s better to say that Tolstoy puts himself into Pierre, Andrei, and Nikolai, and all these characters are flawed and full of weaknesses—Andrei can even be quite cold and cruel. 

I’d go even further: I’d say that there’s something of Tolstoy himself in the main character of The Kreutzer Sonata. Many people hate this novella because they see the similarities in some ideas between the two, because they see Tolstoy as a misogynist. But Tolstoy is obviously not Pozdnyshev: he’s not a (wife) murderer, and Pozdnyshev would never be able to write Anna Karenina. What Tolstoy does in The Kreutzer Sonata is that he examines his own ideas about love, sex, men and women, and pushes his own ideas to the extreme—to use Ibsen’s phrase, he sits in judgement on himself—and he is utterly brutal about it. 

Now if we go back to Dickens, David Copperfield is a semi-biography and I think we would all agree that David is a nice, tame, whitewashed version of Dickens. The adult David is so dull because he’s too good. Yes, he has some small flaws, he’s a helpless husband just as Dora’s a helpless wife, but it’s tame. The real Dickens was awful to his wife. 

I’m of course not dismissing David Copperfield because of Dickens’s personal life—it’s in many ways a wonderful novel—I’m also not wishing David Copperfield had been a different book, truer to life—I’m merely pointing out what I saw as a difference between Dickens and Tolstoy. 

David Copperfield: “like a convulsive fish”

One of the best things about Dickens is his imagery, especially the way he uses imagery for characterisation.

Sometimes it’s just an amusing image: 

“… the room door opened, and Mrs. Waterbrook, who was a large lady—or who wore a large dress: I don’t exactly know which, for I don’t know which was dress and which was lady—came sailing in.” (ch.25) 

Or: 

“I found Mr Waterbrook to be a middle-aged gentleman, with a short throat, and a good deal of shirt-collar, who only wanted a black nose to be the portrait of a pug-dog. He told me he was happy to have the honour of making my acquaintance; and when I had paid my homage to Mrs Waterbrook, presented me, with much ceremony, to a very awful lady in a black velvet dress, and a great black velvet hat, whom I remember as looking like a near relation of Hamlet’s—say his aunt.

Mrs Henry Spiker was this lady’s name; and her husband was there too: so cold a man, that his head, instead of being grey, seemed to be sprinkled with hoar-frost.” (ibid.) 

But sometimes, with some imagery, Dickens conveys everything you need to know about a character, like this sketch of Miss Murdstone, for example: 

“She brought with her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials on the lids in hard brass nails. When she paid the coachman she took her money out of a hard steel purse, and she kept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had never, at that time, seen such a metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstone was.” (ch.4) 

Miss Rosa Dartle: 

“She was a little dilapidated—like a house—with having been so long to let; yet had, as I have said, an appearance of good looks. Her thinness seemed to be the effect of some wasting fire within her, which found a vent in her gaunt eyes.” (ch.20) 

Mr Waterbrook: 

“I was much impressed by the extremely comfortable and satisfied manner in which Mr Waterbrook delivered himself of this little word ‘Yes’, every now and then. There was wonderful expression in it. It completely conveyed the idea of a man who had been born, not to say with a silver spoon, but with a scaling-ladder, and had gone on mounting all the heights of life one after another, until now he looked, from the top of the fortifications, with the eye of a philosopher and a patron, on the people down in the trenches.” (ch.25) 

Is there a better way to convey the hardness of Miss Murdstone, the gaunt look of Miss Dartle, or the self-satisfaction of Mr Waterbrook? 

You don’t find passages like this in, say, Henry Fielding: 

“They both had little bright round twinkling eyes, by the way, which were like birds’ eyes. They were not unlike birds, altogether; having a sharp, brisk, sudden manner, and a little short, spruce way of adjusting themselves, like canaries.” (ch.41) 

Those are the Misses Spenlow, Dora’s aunts. 

“… these little birds hopped out with great dignity; leaving me to receive the congratulations of Traddles, and to feel as if I were translated to regions of exquisite happiness. Exactly at the expiration of the quarter of an hour, they reappeared with no less dignity than they had disappeared. They had gone rustling away as if their little dresses were made of autumn-leaves: and they came rustling back, in like manner.” (ibid.) 

Especially good is the creation of Uriah Heep. Even the name is brilliant. Heep. Rhymes with creep. Dust heap. Cheap. Uriah Heep has a striking presence from the start, his face described a few times as “cadaverous”, his hands “skeleton hands”.   

“As I came back, I saw Uriah Heep shutting up the office; and feeling friendly towards everybody, went in and spoke to him, and at parting, gave him my hand. But oh, what a clammy hand his was! as ghostly to the touch as to the sight! I rubbed mine afterwards, to warm it, and to rub his off.

It was such an uncomfortable hand, that, when I went to my room, it was still cold and wet upon my memory.” (ch.15) 

What disgust! The narrator describes the hand again later: 

“After shaking hands with me—his hand felt like a fish, in the dark—he opened the door into the street a very little, and crept out, and shut it, leaving me to grope my way back into the house…” (ch.16) 

He also compares Uriah Heep to a fish again later: 

“… he cried; and gave himself a jerk, like a convulsive fish.” (ch.25)  

The second half of David Copperfield is—I think most people would agree—less enjoyable because the adult David is lifeless and dull, and his love Dora Spenlow is one of the most insufferable characters on God’s green earth. But it is saved—again I think many would agree—by the brilliant characterisation of Uriah Heep, one of the most memorable characters in fiction, obsequious, dishonest, scheming, vile, and just repulsive. 

“… Uriah writhed with such obtrusive satisfaction and self-abasement, that I could gladly have pitched him over the banisters.” (ibid.) 

The pair of Uriah and Mrs Heep together is even better—look at the imagery: 

“Presently they began to talk about aunts, and then I told them about mine; and about fathers and mothers, and then I told them about mine; and then Mrs Heep began to talk about fathers-in-law, and then I began to tell her about mine—but stopped, because my aunt had advised me to observe a silence on that subject. A tender young cork, however, would have had no more chance against a pair of corkscrews, or a tender young tooth against a pair of dentists, or a little shuttlecock against two battledores, than I had against Uriah and Mrs Heep. They did just what they liked with me; and wormed things out of me that I had no desire to tell, with a certainty I blush to think of, the more especially, as in my juvenile frankness, I took some credit to myself for being so confidential and felt that I was quite the patron of my two respectful entertainers.” (ch.17) 

Dickens is wonderful. 

(I am now back in London, having returned from the US).

On being ill, and comforted by classic Hollywood

There was a time when I, whenever ill, wondered if it’s some sort of divine punishment. Now that I’m sick the third time this winter, I see it as a reminder to count my blessings when I’m again in good health. The first time was a bad cold for a week or two in late November or early December, back in London. That led to a sinus infection just before Christmas, when I was in Edinburgh and then in Leeds—half of my upper teeth were in excruciating pain, made even worse by earache and headache—what torture!—I even thought another wisdom tooth was appearing. All that should have built me a strong armour against those invisible devils, but no, I’m now ill again—cold or flu, what’s the difference—and this is my first time in the US. 

But I refuse to be negative: at least the work events in Washington, DC are all done, with flying colours, and now I can indulge in resting my limbs and feeling sorry for myself. 

Anyway, having now got The Criterion Channel, I’ve been discovering and enjoying Claudette Colbert films. On Saturday: It Happened One Night and The Palm Beach Story. On Sunday: Midnight and Cleopatra. Why is she not better known today? I mean, compared to Marilyn Monroe or Audrey Hepburn or Grace Kelly? The first three films are delightful romantic comedies, with witty dialogue and the usual charm of classic Hollywood, proving Claudette Colbert a brilliant comic actress, effortlessly funny and sexy. In What Happened One Night, a spoilt heiress elopes and along the way falls in love with the impoverished reporter who helps her; in The Palm Beach Story, a woman runs away from her noble but non-resourceful husband and tries to catch a rich man to help them both, only to throw away everything as she still loves her impractical husband; in Midnight, a showgirl turns up in Paris and tries to capture a rich man, whilst being romantically pursued by a taxi driver, and in the end realises she wants the poor taxi driver. All these roles are similar and in some way variations of the same kind of character—at least in The Palm Beach Story and Midnight—but Claudette Colbert is always charming, always delightful, not at all stale or repetitive. 

Cleopatra is different. Claudette Colbert’s performance as the sensual, captivating queen of Egypt shows that she can do drama. When I started watching it, I thought it was a disadvantage for the film that my view of Caesar, Cleopatra, Antony… was informed entirely by Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra and those were wonderful plays, but by the end, I was no longer comparing—Cecil B. DeMille’s film stands on its own (even if I wish there were more chemistry between Claudette Colbert and Henry Wilcoxon as Antony), and she is sensual and utterly bewitching. 

If you haven’t seen these films, you should.