Small-Screen Shakespeare

'Small-screen Shakespeare' is a guide to all the Shakespeare productions available for viewing on computer or TV. Peter Cochran gives an expert opinion on the best and the worst, basing his judgements on a lifetime of viewing, teaching, acting and directing --

Peter Cochran first encountered Shakespeare at school, where he played Leontes, and Romeo to the Juliet of Jane Lapotaire. He was also in Trevor Nunns first-ever Shakespeare production (1959), playing Marcellus, the First Player, and the Player King in Hamlet. At Cambridge, where he was President of the Marlowe Society, he played Theseus, Capulet, Borachio, and Elbow in Measure for Measure (directed by Jeffrey Tate), and was a big hit in the usually-considered-unplayable part of Holofernes in Loves Labours Lost. He then joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he was Priam in the London run of John Bartons famous Troilus and Cressida. In rep, he was the Ghost and Fortinbras, Duncan and the English Doctor, Capulet and Duke Senior, Nym in The Merry Wives, Polixenes in The Winters Tale, Hastings, Tyrrell and Richmond in Richard III, and Sir Eglamour in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Twenty-five years of teaching English and Drama followed, during which he taught every major Shakespeare play, most of them more than once. He directed twenty-one Shakespeare productions, including The Dream three times, Twelfth Night three times, Hamlet three times, The Winters Tale twice, As You Like It twice, and Much Ado twice. Peter Cochran is known as a Byron scholar, and has published fourteen books on the poet for Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This is his first book about Shakespeare.