Showing results by author "Michela Bertazzo" in All Categories

Written around the middle of his career, Much Ado About Nothing is one of Shakespeare's great festive comedies. The men are back from the war, and everyone is ready for romance. The dashing young Claudio falls for Hero, the daughter of Leonato, governor of Messina, and his friend Don Pedro helps him secure her affection. These youthful lovers are contrasted with the more experienced (and more cynical) Benedick and Beatrice, who have to be tricked into falling in love. Don Pedro's bastard brother, Don John, provides the intrigue, and the dimwitted constable Dogberry provides the laughs. (...

Few plays have been seen as a more fitting conclusion to a playwright's career than Shakespeare's The Tempest. Focusing on the aging sorcerer and rightful Duke of Milan, Prospero, we are transported to a remote island where magic and strange music fill the air, and the monstrous slave Caliban roams in bitterness. Seeing an opportunity to restore his slandered name, Prospero conjures a mighty storm to bring down a ship containing his wicked brother and the King of Naples, both of whom had driven him out of Milan twelve years before. By stranding them on a remote end of the island, and with the ...

Cymbeline is one of the last plays Shakespeare wrote, classified by scholars as a late romance or comedy. It's famous for featuring a highly convoluted plot that oftentimes feels like a grab bag of elements from Shakespeare's greatest hits: we have virtuous lovers, a temperamental monarch, a conniving stepmother, an untrustworthy Italian, an arrogant clod, kidnapped siblings, cross-dressing, battles, a devious murder plot, and (of course) some shocking plot twists.And to perform it all? Three men (Tony Addison, Craig Franklin, and Tomas Peter) and one woman (Sonia), determined to give you a ...

The Life and Death of King John, a history play by William Shakespeare, dramatises the reign of John, King of England (ruled 1199–1216), son of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine and father of Henry III of England. It is believed to have been written in the mid-1590s but was not published until it appeared in the First Folio in 1623.John (24 December 1166 – 19 October 1216), also known as John Lackland or Softsword, was King of England from 6 April 1199 until his death. His reign saw the loss of the duchy of Normandy to the French king Philip II in 1204, resulting in the collapse...

Twelfth Night, or What You Wil is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written around 1601–02 as a Twelfth Night's entertainment for the close of the Christmas season. The play centres on the twins Viola and Sebastian, who are separated in a shipwreck. Viola (who is disguised as a boy) falls in love with Duke Orsino, who in turn is in love with the Countess Olivia. Upon meeting Viola, Countess Olivia falls in love with her thinking she is a man. The play expanded on the musical interludes and riotous disorder expected of the occasion, with plot elements drawn from the short...

La tragedia de Hamlet, príncipe de Dinamarca (título original en inglés: The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark), o simplemente Hamlet, es una tragedia del dramaturgo inglés William Shakespeare.​ Su autor probablemente basó Hamlet en dos fuentes: la leyenda de Amleth y una perdida obra isabelina conocida hoy como Ur-Hamlet o Hamlet original (hecho que se deduce de otros textos). El año concreto en que fue escrita sigue aún en disputa, cuestión que se complica porque se han conservado a la época actual tres versiones tempranas de la obra, conocidas como First Quarto (Q1), ...

Le Morte d'Arthur (spelled Le Morte Darthur in the first printing and also in some modern editions, Middle French for la mort d'Arthur, "the death of Arthur") is Sir Thomas Malory's compilation of some French and English Arthurian romances. The book contains some of Malory's own original material (the Gareth story) and retells the older stories in light of Malory's own views and interpretations. First published in 1485 by William Caxton, Le Morte d'Arthur is perhaps the best-known work of English-language Arthurian literature today. Many modern Arthurian writers have used Malory as their ...

A Holy Day in 1495. Join the crowd streaming towards a temporary outdoor stage and be entertained (and maybe even instructed) by a performance of Everyman by the Guild of LibriVox Readers. Cast:(in order of appearance)Narrator - AnniseMessenger - ElliGod - Neeru IyerDeath - Denny SayersEveryman - Bob ShearmanFellowship - Tricia GCousin - Chris CaronKindred - David LawrenceGoods - Elizabeth KlettGood-Deeds - Marian MartinStrength - David ColeDiscretion - Laurie Anne WaldenFive-Wits - Barry EadsBeauty - Lucy PerryKnowledge - Arielle LipshawConfession - Ruth GoldingAngel - KalyndaDoctor - Cori ...

Sir Thomas More is a collaborative Elizabethan play by Anthony Munday and others depicting the life and death of Thomas More. It survives only in a single manuscript, now owned by the British Library. The manuscript is notable because three pages of it are considered to be in the hand of William Shakespeare and for the light it sheds on the collaborative nature of Elizabethan drama and the theatrical censorship of the era. The play dramatizes events in More's life, both real and legendary, in an episodic manner in 17 scenes, unified only by the rise and fall of More's fortunes. (Summary by ...

Christopher Marlowe's Elizabethan tragedy focuses on the downfall of King Edward II, whose love for his favorite courtier, Piers Gaveston, leads to rebellion. (Summary by Elizabeth Klett)CastGaveston: Chuck WilliamsonKing Edward II: Martin GeesonLancaster/Berkeley: ToddMortimer Senior/Monks/Matrevis: Ric FMortimer Junior: mbEarl of Kent: Arielle LipshawEarl of Warwick/Sir John of Hainault/Lightborn: Alan MapstoneBishops of Coventry, Winchester, and Canterbury/Spencer Senior: Algy PugQueen Isabella/Narrator: Elizabeth KlettPembroke/Mower/Gurney: Thomas CardwellPrince Edward: Charlotte ...

Troilus and Criseyde is a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer which re-tells in Middle English the tragic story of the lovers Troilus and Criseyde set against a backdrop of war in the Siege of Troy. It was composed using rime royale and probably completed during the mid 1380s. Many Chaucer scholars regard it as the poet's finest work. As a finished long poem it is certainly more self-contained than the better known but ultimately uncompleted Canterbury Tales. Criseyde, the daughter of the seer Calchas, lives alone in Troy after her father abandons the Trojans to help the Greeks. Eventually she catches ...

The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century (two of them in prose, the rest in verse). The tales, some of which are originals and others not, are contained inside a frame tale and told by a group of pilgrims on their way from Southwark to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral.The themes of the tales vary, and include topics such as courtly love, treachery, and avarice. The genres also vary, and include romance, Breton lai, sermon, beast fable, and fabliau. The characters, introduced in...

Troy, Athens, Rome... each has its founding legend. So too does the Lincolnshire town of Grimsby, once the largest fishing port in the world.Havelok the Dane probably derives from a folk-tale, orally passed down before assuming written form - first in Anglo-Norman French, later in Middle English verse (c. 1280-1300). It tells of the rescue of the Danish prince from a wicked regent, who has tried to procure Havelok's murder. Grim the fisher, the appointed hit-man, thwarts the plan by spiriting the lad to England, where Grim settles with his family on the coast, adopting Havelok as his ...

King Arthur lies at Camelot upon a Christmas-tide and will not eat until he hears tell of a marvel of knightly feats. In among them rides the Green Knight and challenges any knight of the Table Round to the beheading game; one of them, he suggests, can strike off his head and, at the end of a year, if he survives, he will then strike off his beheader's. Gawain accepts the challenge and strikes off his head; the Green Knight gathers up his head and charges him to meet him at the year's end at the Knight's Green Chapel to receive the fatal blow. What betides him on his journey, how he falls into...

More medieval romance than history, Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae represents the oldest versions we have of many legends of Britain, populated by such characters as the Leir, Cymbeline, Uther and Arthur Pendragon and Cadwallader. This is Giles' 1848 revision of Thompson's 1718 edition. - Summary by SkyRider

Dido, Queen of Carthage is the earliest of Christopher Marlowe's known plays, possibly written while he was still a student at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge whose college library held a copy of Virgil's Aeneid, the principal source of the story. The play was co-authored by a fellow Cambridge undergraduate Thomas Nashe, although Nashe's contribution is now thought to have been a minor one. It was acted by the "Children of Her Maiestie's Chappell " around 1587.The play tells of the tragic love affair between Dido, Queen of Carthage, and Aeneas, a survivor from the destruction of Troy who ...

Pearl is a structurally complex mediaeval poem that combines narrative, allegory, dream vision, elegy, affirmation of Christian faith and meditation on grief. This recording is of Jessie Laidlay Weston’s translation from the Middle English.

William Langland’s Vision of Piers the Plowman is one of the Early English poems that may well appeal to many other readers than the professed student of literature. It will ever be attractive to those who care for a vivid account of certain phases of life in England at one of the important periods of her social history ; but, beyond this, Langland's work touches some of the keenest interests of our own day. In its picture of the life of the labourer, and its protest against the oppression of the poor by the rich and powerful, it connects itself with that impelling desire for social reform ...

The Forest is a short collection of Ben Jonson's poetry. This collection of fifteen poems first appeared in the 1616 first folio of his collected works. (Summary by Sheldon Greaves)

This is a short but beautiful book, and the Gummere translation really captures the feel of the Old English. Beowulf tells the story of a mysterious young warrior who saves the Spear-Danes from the terrible monster Grendel and his venomous mother. Long a mainstay of English Literature 101 courses at universities around the world, it is not only one of the oldest, but one of the most exciting English folktales ever invented. (Summary by Caeristhiona)