The videotape, whether it represents a Shakespeare film, a made-for-television production or a transfer of a theatrical version, has become the means by which most academics and students study a Shakespeare play. To anyone interested in performances of Hamlet for instance, the RSC shops and catalogues now offer, alongside the expected videos of Olivier's, Zeffirelli's or Branagh's films, videotapes of live stage performances, from Tony Richardson's 1969 production of the play with Nicol Williamson, to John Gielgud's 1964 New York mise-en-scène with Richard Burton. (A film of this had been shot at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre to be shown at a few cinemas across the USA; it was restored in 1995 'for domestic and home viewing'.) No catalogue of available videos of the play includes a version actually designed for the small screen, since none of the BBC titles are currently licensed for home video distribution, but the would-be viewer can always fall back on the half-hour long cartoons provided by The Animated Tales, a very successful series of videos (complete with study guides), geared to the needs of teenagers confronted with a Shakespeare play on their exam syllabus. This series, which recalls Charles and Mary Lamb's similar enterprise of popularisation of Shakespeare's Tales for a public of readers, has so far been translated into thirty-seven languages.

Even such a rapid survey is sufficient to indicate that Shakespeare multimedia is alive and well. Thanks largely to the vogue of new technologies and of video recordings, it is gradually taking over a good part of the Shakespeare industry, which now rests upon a very active educational market. Back in the 1980s, the production of a complete televised Shakespeare by the BBC was already motivated (and financially supported) by the possibility of providing video-libraries of the Shakespeare canon to universities (particularly in America) supposedly deprived of the real thing in the theatre.