Showing results by narrator "Alan Weyman" in All Categories

In the Greek legend, a sculptor, Pygmalion, created a statue of a woman so beautiful that he fell in love with it. Later the goddess Aphrodite responded to his earnest prayers and brought the statue, named Galatea, to life. Shaw's Pygmalion is a fussy unmarried professor of phonetics, Henry Higgins, who claims that he could train an uneducated person off the street to speak so that he or she could pass as a member of the aristocracy. His Galatea is Eliza Doolittle, who sells flowers at Covent Garden and whose father is a dissipated but cunning vagrant.

The Sepher Yetzirah or Book of Formation is perhaps the oldest rabbinical treatise of Kabbalistic philosophy which is still extant. This thoroughly re-edited and revised version helps bring this text to life.

Duke Vincentino, the ruler of Vienna, fears that under his mild sovereignty, the people may have become lazy and lax. He decides to “go over cover” in the disguise of a monk and appoint his deputy, Angelo, who is a reputed paragon of virtue, as temporary ruler. On assuming power, Angelo inaugurates draconian provisions regarding sexual propriety. One of the first victims of this new regime is young Claudio, who has impregnated his lover Juliet, and is accordingly sentenced to death.

Oedipus the King is the story of a man whose life is destroyed by his own good intentions. When a terrible secret from his past is brought to the light of day, the consequences are chilling - and ineluctable.

Frank Wedekind (1864-1918) was the most controversial dramatist of his age. Most of his work focuses on the ubiquity and inevitably corrupting influence of sexual attraction. His most famous plays are the two that depict the rise, fall, and eventual gruesome death of the vampish Lulu, who, in Wedekind’s presentation, became a ghastly parody of Goethe’s “Eternal Feminine”. The first of the plays is Earth Spirit, in which Lulu marries and survives three husbands, only to face prosecution for the shooting of the third.

The melodramatic romance by Goethe The Sorrows of the Young Werther, the story of a troubled aesthete who kills himself for love, was first published in 1774 and has since become one of the staples of German literature. Such extravagant productions lend themselves readily to parody and naturally attracted the attention of skilled satirists like Thomas Love Peacock.

Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling. Kipling's delightful collection of imaginative tales about natural history has captivated children and adults alike since its publication in 1902. Here stories are presented in dramatic format by members of The Online Stage. Stories include:"How the Whale Got His Throat", "How the Camel Got His Hump", "How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin", "How the Leopard Got His Spots", "The Elephant's Child", "The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo", and more.

The Ring and the Book is a verse novel of sex, lies, and murder, authored by Robert Browning, and it is widely considered to be one of the greatest literary works of the 19th century. It’s a “true crime” story based on the proceedings of a Roman murder trial held in 1698. Each of the 12 books consists of a dramatic monologue in the voice of a different character involved in the tale.

Rosmersholm is a play surrounding the deep and intense political and cultural change in Norway in the middle of the 1880s, a period during which the traditional ruling class were forced to relinquish their right to impose their ideals on the rest of society. We follow Johannes Rosmer, a pastor who has resigned from his position; Rebecca West, a woman who sees Rosmer's potential and believes she can help him to realize his dream of creating a world of "happy, noble people"; and Headmaster Kroll, Rosmer's former best friend.

After the death of their father, Oedipus, Antigone and Ismene return to Thebes. The ruler is their unyielding uncle by marriage, Creon, who assumed command after the death of the sons of Oedipus, Eteocles, and Polynices in a fratricidal struggle to take control of the city. Creon has the body of one brother buried with full civic honors but forbids the burial of the body of the other, whom he regards as a traitor. Antigone's challenge to Creon's decree, which she considers unjust, results in the extinction of the family line of Oedipus.

Antonio, a wealthy and popular merchant, is in financial difficulty. He approaches a Jewish money lender, Shylock, who agrees to provide 3000 ducats, with a very curious bond – a pound of the merchant’s flesh, to be levied if Antonio fails to make a timely repayment. Feeling confident that his argosies will arrive in time to cover the debt, Antonio agrees to this bizarre transaction.

Ebenezer Mac Crotchet, Esq., who has a mixed Scottish and Jewish parentage, has inherited some sterling qualities but is determined to destroy, as much as possible, all vestiges of his extraction. His villa has become a resort for literary and scientific men, with the result that the author easily provides himself with enough characters to introduce his favourite remarks on a wide range of topics, including Ancient Greek, transcendentalism, contagion, education, political economy, and meteorology.

The Corpus Hermeticum is a series of short philosophical and religious treatises dating from the beginning of the Common Era. Most of the texts take the form of a dialogue between Hermes Trismegistos and one or more of his disciples. The texts are loosely related but clearly separate tracts seemingly written by many different authors who use the character of Hermes Trismegistos as a prop to express their unique philosophies.

These three tales were written for the popular literary gift annual The Keepsake in 1828, 1829, and 1831. Their "sensational" themes include exotic locations, dire misfortune, long-lost kin, stolen identity, evil redeemed, plots resolved by strange coincidences, and in one case at least, an encounter with a supernatural being. Gothic fare.

R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) is a science-fiction drama that was first presented in Czech in 1921. It introduced the term "robot", which is derived from a Czech word meaning "worker," to international vocabulary. The action opens in a factory that has successfully produced thousands of robots, who are essentially mindless drones. An idealistic humanitarian activist launches a plan to imbue some of the robots with human traits. The robots which have been humanized then assume leadership over the other robots and seek to organize them in a revolution to take over the world.

These enigmatic treatises caused a seismic shift in European culture, and massive speculation as to their origin and purpose. Even to this day, these unique esoteric tracts are essential listens for any student of the mysteries of life and spirit. Editor Jason Augustus Newcomb has thoroughly rendered the book more comprehendible for modern listeners, as well as added additional notes and commentary.

This collection of 35 short poems was first published in 1927, and is a sequel to When We Were Very Young, which was the first anthology of verse dealing with the domestic adventures of Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh.

The Swedish playwright August Strindberg was one of the founding fathers of naturalistic theater. A feature of many of his plays is the minute dissection of attitude and motivation by individuals within tightly bound groups. As in the present drama, such relentless inspection of behavior often has drastic consequences. Thekla, married to the needy Adolf, has a surprise encounter with her former husband, the lordly Gustav. Or is it really a surprise?

Euripides (c. 480-406 B.C.E.) is the author of eighteen extant plays and many more only surviving in fragments. He is the youngest of the three great Athenian tragedians with Aeschylus and Sophocles. Hippolytus, bastard son of Theseus and the Amazon Hippolyta, has sworn chaste allegiance to the goddess Artemis, thus severely offending the goddess Aphrodite by failing to revere her. Aphrodite swears revenge and promises that he will die before the day is done, taking with him Queen Phaedra, wife of Theseus.

Franz Kafka was one of the first and greatest masters of dystopian literature. In his bleak world view, man is presented as helpless and ineffectual, his destiny determined by distant, obscure and essentially unfriendly agencies. In none of his works is this savage and unreasoning enslavement presented more vividly than in Metamorphosis, a novella in which Gregor Samsa, a respectable employee and dutiful son, wakes to find himself transformed into a gigantic insect.