COVER STORY : Chronicling the Bard’s Forays Into Film

Very recently in a museum in the Netherlands, a film historian found a one-minute scene from “King John,” dating back to 1899.

To Kenneth Rothwell, co-author of “Shakespeare on Screen,” it was “like the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.”

Coming only six years after Thomas Edison made the first successful motion picture, “The Sneeze,” the “King John” scene initiated the question of how to translate William Shakespeare onto the big screen. It seems Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree filmed a scene of the signing of the Magna Charta--a scene that isn’t really in the play.

Still, there is a certain irony to recording Shakespeare--noted for his poetic skills--on silent film. George Melies did abbreviated versions of “Hamlet” and “Julius Caesar” in 1907. In 1916, D. W. Griffith, father of “The Birth of a Nation,” directed “Macbeth”--a box-office bomb.

But it was the advent of sound that put the poetry back in Shakespeare’s drama. Rothwell credits “The Taming of the Shrew,” with Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, as the first full-length feature. The 1929 talkie runs 68 minutes--hardly “full-length” to many purists, who measure the quality of an adaptation by the number of lines retained from the original text.

“Even on stage there’s a lot of cutting in Shakespeare. It’s not just filmmakers that do that,” Rothwell argues, but adds, “I’m one of the wrong people to talk to because I’m an enthusiast.”

All told, Rothwell’s 1990 book lists 675 filmed versions of Shakespeare, including teleplays, cartoons, shorts and scenes taken from the plays.

“Hamlet” is far and away the leader with 80 versions. “Romeo and Juliet” trails with 61, “Othello” with 48, “Julius Caesar” with 40 and “King Lear” with 39.

There are 71 documentaries, plus spinoffs of all kinds. “To Be or Not to Be” was a screwball comedy by Ernst Lubitsch, centered around an acting troupe. There are musicals: “Kiss Me Kate,” “West Side Story” and a rock-opera version of “Othello” called “Catch My Soul.” And those who consider Shakespeare sacred text had best avoid the pornographic 1986 version of “Twelfth Night.”

Rothwell spent more than a decade compiling the data for “Shakespeare on Screen,” and another two years writing the text. The University of Vermont English professor spits out film references more quickly than most people can recite their phone numbers.

“Then there’s ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ 1935. . . . (It’s) wonderful, with James Cagney, Mickey Rooney, Joe E. Brown,” he says.

James Cagney as Bottom? Mickey Rooney as Puck? Oh, yes. Hollywood executives made many unique casting choices.

In 1936, a 36-year-old Norma Shearer and 46-year-old Leslie Howard played the star-crossed teen-age lovers in “Romeo and Juliet.” Marlon Brando played Antony in a 1953 version of “Julius Caesar.”

And then there are the “quirky” versions of Shakespeare. Rothwell has applied for a grant just to write about those.

“The Tempest: By William Shakespeare as Seen Through the Eyes of Derek Jarman” (1980), for example, shows a full-grown Caliban breast-feeding on his sow mother. In his book, Rothwell calls it “one of the most revolting spectacles ever filmed.”

Or there’s the gay, punk version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1984) he saw in London a few years ago, where Hermia pairs up with Helena and Lysander with Demetrius.

But gender-bending is a tradition with Shakespeare, from the days when men played all the roles in the Globe Theater to the 1920 German version of “Hamlet,” where Swedish actress Asta Nielson played the title role.

“This is quite a remarkable film. It’s been one of my favorites for a long time,” Rothwell says. “It’s not as laughable as it seems. It’s based on a book (E.P. Vining’s “The Mystery of Hamlet”) that argues that for reasons of state, Hamlet is a woman raised by Gertrude as a young man.”

Shakespeare has also attracted some of the highest-regarded actors and directors in film history. Laurence Olivier directed and starred in “Henry V” in 1944, “Hamlet” in 1948 and “Richard III” in 1955, and acted in “Othello” in 1965 and “King Lear” in 1983.

Orson Welles, who never made any money from his Shakespearean pursuits, did a surreal “Macbeth” in 1948, “Othello” in 1952, and examined the character Falstaff (from “Henry IV, Part I,” among others) in the 1965 “Chimes at Midnight.”

Franco Zeffirelli, perhaps best known for his Shakespeare films, made “The Taming of the Shrew” in 1966 with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton; “Romeo and Juliet” in 1968 with Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting; “Otello,” Verdi’s opera of Shakespeare’s play, in 1986, and “Hamlet” in 1991 with Mel Gibson.

From Italy to India, Germany to Ghana, Spain to Brazil, filmmakers have brought Shakespeare to the screen. Akira Kurosawa made versions of “Hamlet” (“The Bad Sleep Well”) and “King Lear” (“Ran”) in Japan, while Grigori Kozintsev adapted the Bard in the former Soviet Union.

Still collecting data, Rothwell is updating “Shakespeare on Screen” and working on another book about Shakespeare movies--a theoretical way to classify them all.