From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.

I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folgers director.

This podcast is called See What I See.

For most of us, seeing Shakespeare means experiencing live actors in a theater.

But for more than 100 years, Shakespeare's words, plots, settings, and characters have also been

brought to life on film.

Shakespeare on film has never been like Shakespeare on stage.

In the earliest years of the medium, it simply couldn't be.

Then, as film matured, directors realized that the medium offered new ways to tell Shakespeare's

stories that were impossible to reproduce on stage.

Along the way, trends like multiplex theaters, the rise of independent films and teen comedies,

and directors from Orson Wells to Lawrence Olivier to Julie Tamor and Joss Whedon have

reshaped and reimagined Shakespeare.

For the past 45 years, Samuel Crowell, Professor of English at Ohio University, has been

writing and teaching about Shakespeare on film.

We brought him here today to offer a broad overview of the subject he is interviewed by

Rebecca Shear. This day is called the Feast of Crispian. He that outlives this day and comes safe

home will stand at tiptoe when this day is named and rouse him at the name of Crispian.

You've written that the greatest explosion of Anglo-American films based on Shakespeare's plays

came out in the last decade of the 20th century.

And that's more than we'd seen in something like 100 years.

What was it about that period of time that made it so rich in Shakespeare film adaptations?

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