Shakespeare Screenplays

A great deal of thought goes into the hand-crafted preparation of each and every of the Shakespeare Screenplays, from knowing the needs of today’s TV- and film-centric actor to the venerable script itself. Every time we produce a new Shakespeare Screenplay, we have the actor and the production in mind, and we pay homage to Shakespeare with every issue.

We start with the text version of an accurate script, checking each raw script for authenticity and precise language and directions.

The text is then “poured” into Microsoft Word, where all of the editing and the final creation of the PDF file takes place. The Word document itself is formatted to match today’s industry standards for script margins, gutters, headers and footers.

One line at a time, the script’s character names are then hand-formatted to be centered and capitalized. Minor characters names, as was Shakespeare’s custom, are originally in sentence-case format, and are then individually capitalized to match modern TV and film script standards.

Each dialogue block is then crafted to match the narrower columns of standard screenplay scripts, leaving plenty of room for notes, yet retaining the initial letter capitalization of each of Shakespeare’s penned lines. Prose is re-flowed in block style, but rhyming lines are kept in easy-to-read poetic format.

The stage direction is left justified, again, to USA/BBC standards, and each act and scene are separated by page breaks, leaving more space for notes and more breathing room for the actor to take in the lines and action.

The lines themselves are given their space, avoiding breakage across pages. In cases where the lines are longer or are lengthy monologues or soliloquies, another script standard is employed, the (MORE) and (cont.) indicators. This is used to give a visual warning to the actor that their line continues on the next page.

Once the script has been edited for format, it is then proofread and converted to a PDF file for placement in this repository.

As you can see, each Shakespeare Screenplay is treated with the utmost respect for the author, and the utmost care for the cast and crew.