Showing results for "Shakespeare" in World Literature

William Collins Books and Decca Records are proud to present ARGO Classics, a historic catalogue of classic prose and verse read by some of the world’s most renowned voices. Originally released as vinyl records, these expertly remastered stories are now available to download for the first time...

Romeo y Julieta es un cuento sencillo y dramático acerca del amor imposible entre una pareja de jóvenes descendientes de dos familias enemigas. Captura el entusiasmo juvenil y la pasión poética que caracterizan todo de los primos trabajos de William Shakespeare que hace Romeo y Julieta en la creación más sublime y romántica en la Literatura Universal.

William Collins Books and Decca Records are proud to present ARGO Classics, a historic catalogue of classic prose and verse read by some of the world’s most renowned voices. Originally released as vinyl records, these expertly remastered stories are now available to download for the first time...

In Shakespeare's most controversial play, the opposing values of justice and mercy must be resolved. Antonio promises money to help his friend Bassanio woo Portia. He borrows the sum needed from the cruel Shylock, but there will be a dreadful penalty if the loan is not repaid. The golden world of Portia's Belmont calls forth some of Shakespeare's most lyrical love poetry. But the dark shadow of Shylock is never far from the heart of this brilliant comedy as it moves toward its courtroom climax.

In this BBC full-cast production, the ghost of Hamlet's father orders him to kill the man who took his life, his throne and his wife: Claudius. In a tale of caution, tragedy and revenge, Hamlet is driven to madness by his mission and his father's legacy. Michael Sheen stars as Hamlet, with...

Shakespeare's Sonnets, one of the most remarkable collections of poetry, was first published in 1609, 400 years ago by Mr Thomas Thorpe. Naxos AudioBooks marks the occasion with a selection of 80 of the finest, read by leading actors. The selection includes famous ones such as 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day' as well as lesser well-known sonnets though of equally fine stature.

Cleopatra is one of the most famous women in history - and thanks to Shakespeare, one of the most intriguing personalities in literature. Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom delivers exhilarating clarity and invites us to look at this character as a flawed human who might be living in our world. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character: Just as we encounter one Anna Karenina or Jay Gatsby when we are in high school and college and another when we are adults, Bloom explains his shifting understanding of Cleopatra over the course of his own lifetime.

How can we look afresh at Shakespeare as a writer of sonnets? What new light might they shed on his career, personality, and sexuality? Shakespeare wrote sonnets for at least 30 years, not only for himself, for professional reasons, and for those he loved, but also in his plays, as prologues, as epilogues, and as part of their poetic texture.

Here, in all 154 of Shakespeare's immortal sonnets, addressed to a friend about the woman he loves and to his muse. We discover the promise of youth, the ecstasy of love, and the devastation of loss.

Here is Shakespeare's 1599 tragedy, performed by The Marlowe Society. Julius Caesar portrays the conspiracy against the Roman dictator, his assassination, and its aftermath.

This classic Shakespearean comedy is presented here in a colorful full-cast dramatization, drawn from the complete text and starring Warren Mitchell, Michael Maloney, and Sarah Woodward.

‘Enlightening, moving’ SIR IAN MCKELLEN From the acclaimed and bestselling biographer Jonathan Bate, a luminous new exploration of Shakespeare and how his themes can untangle comedy and tragedy, learning and loving in our modern lives. ‘The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and...

Othello is a tragedy play by William Shakespeare, written in the middle of his career in 1603. The story follows Othello, a general in the Venetian army, and Iago, a treacherous soldier who conspires against him to make him believe that his wife is unfaithful.

A master of Russian realism, Anton Chekhov is renowned for his meticulously observed plays and short stories exploring the human condition, in all its joys and sorrows. Included here are six of his best-known dramas, as well as Michael Frayn's adaptation of Wild Honey, drawn from an early, untitled Chekhov play; and one documentary exploring Chekhov's life and work.

Adopting the methodology of the music charts, The Classic Hundred Poems presents the "top 100" poems of all time. The selections are illuminated by the informative notes of editor William Harmon and read by an ensemble of contemporary poets including Alfred Corn and Rita Dove.

In this BBC full-cast production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius and Helena run to the woods and stumble into a life separate from time itself. Fairy magic wreaks havoc and midsummer madness takes over as lovers tread the delicate line between fantasy and reality...

An all-star cast including John Gielgud, Edith Evans, Anthony Quayle, and Peggy Ashcroft come together to read all 154 Sonnets.

Sir Ian McKellen, fresh from his performance as Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, is Prospero, and heads a strong cast in Shakespeare’s last great play. The wronged duke raises a tempest to shipwreck his old opponents on his island so that he can ensure justice is done. With Emilia Fox as Miranda, Scott Handy in the pivotal role of the sprite Ariel, and Ben Owukwe as Caliban.

By the time Shakespeare came to write Macbeth - almost certainly in 1605/1606 - he had already completed three of the great tragedies with which modern audiences are so familiar: Hamlet (1601), Othello (1603), and King Lear (1605). Each of those plays gives us an eponymous hero who is in some significant way flawed, but for whom we also inevitably feel deep sympathy, whatever his errors or crimes. But in MacBeth, Shakespeare has chosen for his tragic hero a man guilty of the most terrible crime imaginable to a Jacobean audience, that of regicide - the murder of a king.

The sonnets are a collection numbering 154 poems dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty, and mortality. They were probably written over a long period of Shakespeare's life up until 1609, when they were first printed. The first 17 poems, traditionally referred to as the "procreation sonnets", are addressed to a young man urging him to marry and have children in order to immortalize his beauty by passing it on to his descendants.