Showing titles in Shakespeare

How did Shakespeare sound to the audiences of his day? For the first time, this audio offers listeners the chance to hear England's greatest playwright performed by a company of actors using the pronunciation of his time. Under the guidance of Ben Crystal, actor, author of Shakespeare on Toast, and an expert in original Shakespearian pronunciation, the company performs some of Shakespeare's best-known poems, solo speeches, and scenes from the plays.

A brave Scottish general named Macbeth receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia. Forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion, he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler. The bloodbath and consequent civil war swiftly take Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into the realms of madness and death.

A brave Scottish general named Macbeth receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia. Forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion, he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler. The bloodbath and consequent civil war swiftly take Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into the realms of madness and death.

In Richard III, Shakespeare invites us on a moral holiday. The play draws us to identify with Richard and his fantasy of total control of self and domination of others. Not yet king at the start of the play, Richard presents himself as an enterprising villain as he successfully plans to dispose of his brother, Clarence. Richard achieves similar success in conquering the woman he chooses to marry. He carves a way to the throne through assassination and executions.

Sir Ian McKellen, William Squire, Trevor Nunn and Gary Watson perform Shakespeare's play that tells the story of King Henry V of England, focusing on events immediately before and after the Battle of Agincourt during the Hundred Years' War.

Hamlet, which dates from 1600-1601, is the first in Shakespeare's great series of four tragedies. In writing this extraordinary play Shakespeare effectively re-invented tragedy after an interval of roughly two thousand years - you would have to go back to the Greek dramatists of 5th century Athens to find anything of comparable depth and maturity. This production features the voice of Anton Lesser as Hamlet along with a full cast.

This entertaining introduction to Shakespeare's work weaves biographical information with excerpts from 33 of his plays. Informative, well-researched commentary, written by two Royal Shakespeare Company actors, provides a glimpse of the man and little-known lore about his work.

Why Shakespeare? What explains our continued fascination with his poems and plays? In Living with Shakespeare, Susannah Carson invites 40 actors, directors, scholars, and writers to reflect on why his work is still such a vital part of our culture.

King Henry is married to Katherine of Aragon, but he has been smitten by the charms of the queen's maid of honor, Anne Bullen, and is tempted to divorce his dignified and noble wife. Meanwhile, the lords of England resent the influence of Henry's trusted advisor, Cardinal Wolsey, who is gradually drawing power into his own hands. As Katherine and Wolsey suffer their tragic falls, new figures rise to fill their places, but they, too, will be brought low by the inexorable sweep of time and fortune.

This collection contains the following works: Medea by Sophocles Antigone by Sophocles Agamemnon by Aeschylus Eumenides by Aeschylus The Choephori by Aeschylus The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice by William Shakespeare The Tragedy of Romeo And Juliet by William Shakespeare The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare The Tragedy of King Lear by William Shakespeare The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare.

Young King Henry VI has married the beautiful Margaret of Anjou but the new queen is ruthless and ambitious. Supported by the powerful Duke of Suffolk, Margaret plots the overthrow of her enemies, chief among them the Duke of Gloucester. But the Duke of York also aspires to the crown, and the common people, led by Jack Cade, are in rebellion. To the despair of the mild young king, England descends into civil war.

Bianca is beautiful and demure, with a plethora of would-be suitors, but marriage is forbidden until her older sister, Katherina, finds a suitable match. The hitch? Fiery Katherina has sworn to deny the hand or demands of any would-be suitor. That is, until she meets her match in the wily Petrucio. As Katherina’s own sharp tongue is met by Petrucio’s feigned cruelty, the ‘shrew’ apparently capitulates. Or does she?

Jealous conspirators convince Caesar's friend Brutus to join their assassination plot against Caesar. To stop Caesar from gaining too much power, Brutus and the conspirators kill him on the Ides of March. Mark Antony drives the conspirators out of Rome and fights them in a battle. Brutus and his friend Cassius lose and kill themselves, leaving Antony to rule in Rome.

Richard Burton reads Shakespeare's narrative poem about the legendary Lucretia (or 'Lucrece'). The poem tells the story of the Roman leader Tarquin's rape of Lucrece and her subsequent suicide.

An award winning Drama from SmartPass. Unabridged with guided description to set the scene and fill in visual moments.

Antony and Cleopatra (First Folio title: The Tragedie of Anthonie, and Cleopatra) is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The play was first performed, by the King's Men, at either the Blackfriars Theatre or the Globe Theatre in around 1607; its first appearance in print was in the Folio of 1623. The plot is based on Thomas North's 1579 English translation of Plutarch's Lives (in Ancient Greek) and follows the relationship between Cleopatra and Mark Antony from the time of the Sicilian revolt to Cleopatra's suicide during the Final War of the Roman Republic.

King Lear is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare. It tells the tale of a king who bequeaths his power and land to two of his three daughters, after they declare their love for him in an extremely fawning and obsequious manner. His third daughter gets nothing, because she will not flatter him as her sisters had done. When he feels disrespected by the two daughters who now have his wealth and power, he becomes furious to the point of madness. He eventually becomes tenderly reconciled to his third daughter, just before tragedy strikes her and then the king.

Shakespeare, Our Contemporary is a provocative, original study of the major plays of Shakespeare. More than that, it is one of the few critical works to have strongly influenced theatrical productions.

This widely studied play is one of the "best sellers" of the Shakespeare canon. This production is the sixth Shakespeare play in the series undertaken by Naxos AudioBooks in conjunction with Cambridge University Press.

Othello, a Moor and the Commander of the Venetian army, elopes with Desdemona. The evil Iago plants the seed of jealousy in Othello's mind, resulting in tragic consequences.