ABSTRACT
A teacher who screens a video of a Shakespeare play as part of a teaching strategy preparing, for example, students for public examinations, will inevitably be seen by some colleagues to be taking an easy option. Watching Shakespeare re-produced can stimulate active reading, both of the images on the screen and of those conjured in the theatre in the mind’s eye, and can produce a productive debate concerning, amongst other things, textual fidelity and the construction of meanings. Although copyright problems probably prevent the showing of some televised Shakespeare in schools or colleges, one of the developments of the decade has been the availability of video recorders in the majority of households. Students of Shakespeare on film and television can benefit from considering not only what is omitted from the printed text, but also what has been added to it by the director.
