Staging and Storytelling, Theatre and Film: ‘Richard III’ at Stratford, 1910

The film of F. R. Benson's company in scenes fromRichard III, released in 1911 and now available on the BFI'sSilent Shakespearevideo, was shot on stage in Stratford-upon-Avon, using stock scenery from the Memorial Theatre. Because of this, it is a unique document of Shakespearean production in the period, exemplifying the uneasy relationship between stage and film. The settings can be documented from a number of other sources: the original designs; a photograph of the stage set with the medieval street which appears in two episodes; and a series of postcards – the latter apparently ‘production stills’ of the film.Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew, andJulius Caesarwere also filmed, but have not survived, though the Stratford archives contain some photographic evidence of them. Russell Jackson is Deputy Director of the Shakespeare Institute, the University of Birmingham's graduate school of Shakespeare studies in Stratford-upon-Avon. Recently he has published a translation of a work by Theodor Fontane,Shakespeare in the London Theatre, 1855–58(Society for Theatre Research, 1999), and he is editor of the forthcomingCambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film.