Try free for 30 days

A 30-day trial plus your first audiobook free.
1 credit/month after trial—to buy any title you like, yours to keep.
Listen all you want to a selection of thousands of Audible Originals, audiobooks and podcasts.
$16.45 a month after 30 day trial. Cancel anytime.
The Lunatic, the Lover & the Poet cover art

The Lunatic, the Lover & the Poet

By: Brian Bedford
Narrated by: Brian Bedford
Free with 30-day trial

$16.45/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $6.90

Buy Now for $6.90

Pay using voucher balance (if applicable) then card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions Of Use and Privacy Notice and authorise Audible to charge your designated credit card or another available credit card on file.

Publisher's Summary

Brian Bedford's hugely successful one-man show is both an actor's celebration of Shakespeare and an act of Shakespearean scholarship. Bedford explores the emotion and psychology behind Shakespeare the man as well as Shakespeare the playwright. In amusing, enlightening, and persuasive style - and with the use of quotes from several of Shakespeare's sonnets, narrative poems, and plays - Bedford uncovers the tragic, the comic, and the passionate guise of perhaps our greatest and most revered playwright.

In this recording Bedford includes selections from The Tempest, As You Like It, Love's Labour's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Henry VI, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Measure for Measure, King Lear, The Winter's Tale, Macbeth, Titus Andronicus, and Richard II.

A CBC Broadcast Centre solo performance featuring Brian Bedford.

Recorded in front of a live audience at the Glenn Gould Studio, Toronto, in March of 1995.

©2017 Brian Bedford (P)1995 Canadian Broadcasting Company

Critic Reviews

“A study in the tension between civilized surface and savage instinct, this play is itself a satisfyingly primitive entertainment with an intellectual veneer.” (Ben Brantley, The New York Times)

What listeners say about The Lunatic, the Lover & the Poet

Average Customer Ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.