The set often highlights both agreements and disagreements, both of which can be interesting in their own ways. If many critics agree about the features, effectiveness, and/or ineffectiveness of a particular film, that fact is itself worth knowing. However, if they significantly disagree, that fact is also worth realizing. Individual readers can then decide how their own responses compare and/or contrast with the reactions of the critics cited and summarized.

By providing plot summaries (by a variety of scholars) of individual plays at the beginnings of individual entries, this set eliminates the need to repeat plot summaries already given by the individual critics whose works and ideas are cited. Instead, the set focuses on the “meat” of their individual arguments.

This means that the summaries of specific critical responses are lean and efficient. Practically every sentence of each summary of criticism contains at least one significant idea. In fact, an effort has been made, in many summaries, to use semicolons to pack as many specific ideas as possible into particular sentences. Many sentences are thus essentially (and deliberately) lists of key ideas so that readers can often get a very full sense of the topics discussed in a particular essay or a specific section or chapter in a book. And they can do so quite quickly.

At the same time, actual quotations from critics are often used to give readers some sense of their individual styles, methods, and even personalities. Some critics, for instance, seem determined to be as charitable as possible when assessing films; a few, however, can seem consistently harsher in the ways they approach their jobs. Readers who make their way through an entire entry or who (perhaps) read through the entire set will definitely come away with a sense of distinct critical “voices.”

The set is full of facts, not just opinions. Entries often discuss, for instance, how many individual lines (or percentages of lines) have been pruned away when adapting a play into a film. Critics also sometimes discuss, for example, which particular versions of a play (such as quarto, folio, “bad” quarto, etc.) have been used to make a specific film. Readers will also learn, in many cases, how the lives of particular directors helped influence the kinds of films they made and the ways those films were shot as, for example, in the intriguing information about the use of staircases in Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet.

Readers will get a strong sense of the historical and other contexts surrounding the making and initial reception of various films, including some of the reasons why, for instance, Olivier’s Henry V differs so much from Kenneth Branagh’s later version of the same play. Readers will also come away with a strong sense of which directors and actors have played especially crucial roles in the development of “Shakespeare films,” which can in fact be seen almost as a distinctive kind of filmmaking.

They can profit from seeing how scores of scholars and critics have reacted to different films in different ways, including by reading which films have been most (and least) praised and for which reasons.

They can use the reactions of the quoted scholars and critics for “guided viewing,” that is, for developing a sense of “what to look for,” not only in individual films but in films in general, such as different kinds of shots and distinctive camera angles, different kinds of sets and costuming choices, different styles of acting, etc.

They can, in particular, see how different films have presented the same play in distinct ways (and often with very divergent results) and can thus develop a stronger sense of how variously the same play can be read, interpreted, and, quite literally, imagined.

They can see how responses to particular films have evolved and sometimes radically changed over the years and how that evolution reflects larger historical, cultural, and sociological changes.

They can be alerted to the existence of “hidden gems”—films that have been widely praised by critics but that have not, perhaps, received the broad attention they deserve.

They can examine how the same directors (such as Orson Welles or Kenneth Branagh) have approached particular films and kinds of films during the course of their careers.

They can also explore how different directors have approached the same play (such as Macbeth or Hamlet) in different ways, looking both for continuities and differences in a given director’s developing career.

They can gain insights into some of the differences between watching, say, a major motion picture as opposed to an adaptation filmed in a television studio, or the differences between these kinds of productions and, perhaps, a production filmed before a live audience, either inside a theater or in some outside venue, such as a park or an open-air theater.

They can trace how different prominent actors, for example, Anthony Hopkins, have contributed to specific Shakespeare films or approached different Shakespearean roles and thus gain a better sense of that performer’s skills as an actor.

They can gain a better appreciation of how particular technological advances in such matters as sound, color, special effects, etc., have contributed to the effectiveness of Shakespeare films over the years.

They can better appreciate why certain films have been considered “groundbreaking” or especially influential for various reasons.

They can get a stronger sense of how different kinds of film genres—such as Westerns, film noir, screwball comedies, and so on—have influenced Shakespeare films.

They can build a stronger sense of the vocabulary, methods, and analytical approaches used by “professional” viewers to assess the traits and effectiveness of films.

They can see which plays have been either least or most often filmed and can chart changes in the fortunes of various Shakespeare plays in relation to popular culture and the film industry. Few people in the middle of the twentieth century, for instance, might have expected Titus Andronicus to receive the kind of respectful attention it now elicits from directors, actors, and audiences.

They can gain a better sense of how professional scholars and critics have written about Shakespeare films, including the analytical methods they have used, the different critical approaches or perspectives they have adopted, the ways they have made their arguments, and so forth. They can thus learn how to use these different approaches in their own written analyses.

They can explore how different critics—or kinds of critics—have responded to the same film, characters, and/or scenes of various plays and can use these different responses to help them decide which approaches are most persuasive (and why) and which approaches do the most justice to the evidence provided by the plays themselves.

They can examine the kinds of themes and techniques professional scholars and critics have adopted and can use their findings to develop their own approaches to writing about particular plays.

They can use this set to help them research their own projects; to discover which possible topics and films interest them most; to prepare for exams involving either the films, the plays themselves, particular scenes, or all three at once.

They can learn techniques of comparison and contrast that are so crucial to so much literary analysis, including comparisons and contrasts of different films, film directors, scenes, styles of acting, methods of filming, etc.

They can develop better understandings of various critical methodologies of all sorts and discover which approaches seem most helpful to examining particular kinds of films, characterization, acting styles, themes, and so on.

They can trace the changes in the ways a particular film has been studied and written about over the years so they can consider the kinds of factors that can affect a film’s reception. They can consider, for instance, why some films have simultaneously been both critical successes and box-office flops (and vice versa) and why films that were once considered widely appealing (or unappealing) have changed their reputations over time.

They can develop a stronger sense of how scholars and critics state their arguments in their own words; how their arguments can be efficiently paraphrased by others; which styles of writing are most effective in different circumstances and with different kinds of readers in mind; and so forth.

They can digest an enormous amount of information quickly and efficiently, without having to wade through page after page of unnecessary plot summary.

They can examine the ways professional writers engage in professional dialogue and even disagreement with one another.

They can quickly gather and assemble information to support (or challenge) their own initial responses to a film.

They can gain efficient access to an enormously wide range of views—a range impossible to access by reading simply a few representative books or essays.

Teachers can use this set to help ensure that they are as fully informed as possible about any Shakespeare films (and ideas about them) they may choose to use when teaching a course, whether it is a course on the plays, the films, or both together.

Teachers can use this set when designing courses, course materials, specific writing assignments, and particular exams, question sheets, and more.

They can use this set to prepare lectures, to guide discussions, to create reading and “watching” assignments, and in general to help ensure that their students get as many helpful and intellectually serious experiences out of a class as possible.

Teachers can use this set to widen their own critical horizons by exposing themselves to most of the many different methods that have been developed over the last century for interpreting films (and other kinds of adaptations) insightfully and diversely.

They can use the set to help them make Shakespeare’s works more accessible and interesting to students who, in an increasingly visual culture, may find seeing the plays especially helpful when reading them.

They can use the set to expose students to various ideas and disagreements about the films (and plays) before students actually view a relevant film or read a relevant play, so that students can literally be “on the lookout” for issues to think about as they watch and/or read a work.

Teachers can use this set to help students better understand how, why, and to what degree a play has been cut in length, had its scenes rearranged, and/or had its dialogue altered in ways that are almost inevitable when a play is turned into a film.

Teachers can also use the set to help their students develop skills useful in thinking about other kinds of films and visual media, including television programs, YouTube videos, and even their own film and video projects if they choose to try to film scenes from a Shakespeare play themselves or as collaborative class projects.

Teachers can use the set to help students (especially those interested in acting, directing, set design, costumes, and other aspects of drama) better appreciate the similarities and differences between staging a play in a theater and preparing it for filming. Teachers of drama classes, who often help students prepare productions, can gain ideas about how some of the best directors and other professionals have dealt with the challenges and opportunities Shakespeare’s plays pose and present.

They can also use the set to help students better understand—and practice—such basic kinds of writing as description, analysis, and evaluation.

They can use these books to help students respond to films and other works of art as thoughtfully and as objectively as possible and to resist jumping to simple, immediate conclusions.

Other scholars and critics, working on projects of their own, can use this set to get a quick sense of what has already been written or argued about a particular film, so that the set functions in part as a kind of annotated bibliography of previous work and can prevent unnecessary duplication of work already done.

Scholars and critics can also use this set to easily access a wide range of academic materials, many of them often unavailable—except through interlibrary loan—at even some of the best college and university libraries. (For example, the introductions to “The Production” provided for each of the BBC Shakespeare Plays are very difficult to access, either for sale or in libraries, but summaries of these essays are all included here.) Scholars can use the set to help them decide which materials to request through ILL and which, despite promising titles, may nonetheless be irrelevant to a particular scholar’s special interests.

In compiling this set, every effort has been made to examine materials that are hard to track down, even on online libraries such as archive.org. These include materials from small presses and/or from presses that do not make their books and articles readily available online.

This set can give scholars and critics a quick sense of which topics have already been amply explored (or even “played out”) and which topics invite further exploration.

The set can be useful in tracking critical and scholarly trends; in tracing the work of particular scholars; and in gaining a sense of the development of the entire field.

Scholars or critics just beginning their work on Shakespeare films can use this set as a helpful introduction to much of the work that has already been done, showing how it has previously been carried out and the kinds of possibilities that exist for actual innovation.