Shakespeare: The Animated Tales

List Price: $79.99 Buy For: $71.99
Usually ships in 24 hours


Add to Cart


Compare New & Used Prices From All Available Merchants:

Starring: Alec McCowen
Rated: Unrated
Type: DVD
Studio: Ambrose Video
Release Date: 2004-07-06
Running Time: 300 minutes
Winner of 3 Emmy Awards these exceptional animated stories have been designed to introduce children and young adults to some Shakespeare's most popular works. Each play has been animated in it own unique style by the exceptional talents of the leading directors of Russia's Christmas Films. Actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company and stars of stage and screen, including Antony Sher, Joss Ackland and Jenny Agutter, provide voices for the characters which were recorded and produced by BBC Wales. In Russia, art and animation has long been used as a veiled form of satire, education and political protest. This has inspired scores of Russian animators to develop fascinating and highly individual techniques, a prolific kaleidoscope of styles from which the animation artists were chosen for these stories of Shakespeare-The Animated Tales.

Giftbox Contains 12 Animated Plays on 4 DVD's: The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Richard III, Romeo & Juliet, Othello, The Winter's Tale, Macbeth, Taming of the Shrew and Twelfth Night

Great for learning & loving the Bard!
I wrote an entire curriculum for my 6th graders a few years ago introducing them to Sharkespeare in the best way I knew how...through video and in-class plays. These used to run on HBO, if I remember correctly, and that's where they caught my attention. Marrying these videos with some in-class skits and some of the other "modernized" Shakespeare movies (Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night's Dream with Pfeiffer) really opened up my kids eyes to what Shakespeare was saying in his poetry/plays. My 6th graders just loved it and it helped them be confident when the word Shakespeare came up! I highly recommend these for anyone that needs to get to know the Bard. It was really fun for me, too, I might add!

Nice to have, but...
I grew up watching Shakespeare The Animated Tales on Discovery Kids Latin America... back when it was for kids and not babies.
Anyway, it's nice to get to see it again, and some of the animation is pretty cool (e.g. Hamlet episode). I also have a predilection for the stop motion episodes.
Despite the decent digital transfer of the video, the sound is poor. I have to watch the discs on the highest volume possible, and even then it's hard to listen to it in parts.
Also, the $70+ price tag is a turn-off, when even 13-episode series range from $20-35.

HIt and Miss--mostly miss
Many of these animated tales are laughable and are certain to make kids dread the Bard. While fans of animation might marvel at some technical achievements, it much like film buffs marveling at the technical achievements of Birth of a Nation--impressive, but practically unwatchable.

Hamlet falls into this category--although easily the greatest [except perhaps Lear] of Shakespeare's tragedies, it is reduced here to dreary animation that looks like something one might create for Adobe Flash.

Despite desperately wanting this to be a highly recommended series, I have to say you're better spending your money elsewhere.

Shakespeare: The Animated Tales
As a high school English teacher, I'm always looking for ways to make Shakespeare accessible to a generation who could sometimes seem to care less about classical literature. The joy of this series is that it includes all of the most popular plays, and every one is done in a different style of animation celebrating some of the world's greatest artistry. The few that I've previewed have been presented very well. The language is maintained, and the graphics help to bring it all together. They're very much like graphic novels, if you've had the chance to view some of those.

Anyone interested in trying to make Shakespeare come alive would be interested in these DVDs. They make great examples for the differences in interpretation, also!

Shakespeare:The Animated Tales
I did not like the "animation" at all..
It spoilt the text of the plays..

I will rate this item 0 stars!! Yes that bad..