Shake, Mr. Shakespeare

Synopsis: Musical short. Created as a tie-in for Dieterle and Reinhardt’s A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM (1935) the film imagines a hybrid between Shakespeare and swing music. An assistant director is told to read all Shakespeare’s works in order to mine them for potential film plots. Falling asleep on the job, he dreams of various Shakespearean characters coming to life from the pages of giant books and singing and dancing in celebration of their "goin’ Hollywood." The characters appearing include Romeo, Juliet, Juliet’s Nurse, Puck, Peter Quince, Hamlet, Old Hamlet’s Ghost, Falstaff, Antony, Cleopatra, and Macbeth. Shakespeare appears toward the end of the film to object, but he is quickly convinced by his characters to join a big song and dance routine. Includes passing references to a number of familiar Shakespearean scenes including Hamlet’s "to be or not to be" soliloquy, Romeo and Juliet’s balcony scene, Hamlet with Yorick’s skull, and Enobarbus’ speech on Cleopatra’s barge.
Language: English
Country: United States
Medium: Film
Technical information: Black-and-white / Sound
Year of release: 1936
Duration: c20

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Notes: The short is included in the dvd extras on Dieterle’s A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM (1936) available from amazon.ca (region 1 only).

The film is made available only to students and faculty of the University of Wisconsin. Researchers should contact the librarian to enquire about the possibility of an on site viewing.

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British Universities Film & Video Council