خلاصه داستان : شاه لیر، پیر و خسته، پادشاهی خود را بین دخترانش تقسیم می‌کند و به اعتراض‌های عشقی آنها به او اهمیت زیادی می‌دهد. وقتی کوردلیا، جوان‌ترین و صادق‌ترین، از تملق بیهوده به پیرمرد در ازای لطف خودداری می‌کند، او را تبعید می‌کند و برای حمایت از دختران باقی‌مانده‌اش روی می‌آورد. اما گونریل و ریگان هیچ عشقی...

King Lear, old and tired, divides his kingdom among his daughters, giving great importance to their protestations of love for him. When Cordelia, youngest and most honest, refuses to idly flatter the old man in return for favor, he banishes her and turns for support to his remaining daughters. But Goneril and Regan have no love for him and instead plot to take all his power from him. In a parallel, Lear's loyal courtier Gloucester favors his illegitimate son Edmund after being told lies about his faithful son Edgar. Madness and tragedy befall both ill-starred fathers.

خلاصه داستان : پس از درگذشت پادشاه دانمارک - پدر هملت - برادرش کلودیوس تاج و تخت را صعود می کند ، که بیوه خود را گرترود به عنوان همسرش می برد. هملت با شبح پدرش ملاقات می کند و می آموزد که توسط کلودیوس کشته شد.

Shakespeare's 17th century masterpiece about the "Melancholy Dane" was given one of its best screen treatments by Soviet director Grigori Kozintsev. Kozintsev's Elsinore was a real castle in Estonia, utilized metaphorically as the "stone prison" of the mind wherein Hamlet must confine himself in order to avenge his father's death. Hamlet himself is portrayed (by Innokenti Smoktunovsky) as the sole sensitive intellectual in a world made up of debauchers and revellers. Several of Kozintsev directorial choices seem deliberately calculated to inflame the purists: Hamlet's delivers his "To be or not to be" soliloquy with his back to the camera, allowing the audience to fill in its own interpretations.