Showing titles in Shakespeare

A shipwreck separates Viola and her twin brother Sebastian. She lands in the magical and melancholy kingdom of Illyria, where nearly everybody dances some step to the music of Love.

Award-winning drama from SmartPass. Unabridged, with guided description to set the scene and fill in visual moments.

From the creators of SmartPass guides, named 2004 & 2005 Best Drama, Best Original audio winners at the Spoken Word Awards.

Much Ado About Nothing is a romantic comedy that revolves around obstacles presented to two young lovers, as well as a "merry war" of the sexes. (A full-cast production.)

Hamlet is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601. The play, set in Denmark, recounts how Prince Hamlet exacts revenge on his uncle Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's father, the King, and then taken the throne and married Gertrude, Hamlet's mother.

Ten years king, Malcolm sits on an uneasy throne. If Malcolm’s mind is haunted by the ghosts of his royal father (“gracious Duncan”) as well as the thane and lady who so bloodily betrayed him, Malcolm’s soul is sickened, as was Macbeth’s, by the witches’ prophecy that from Banquo’s seed would spring a line of Scottish kings. Macbeth, Part II, draws bold the tragedy of a powerful man undone by the terrors he imagines and the truths he fails to see.

Two Gentlemen of Verona is believed to be one of Shakespeare's early comedies and as a result provides us with the first examples of a number of themes and devices that are further explored in many of his plays. These include loyalty, friendship and the nature of love.

Many of the greatest lovers, and the greatest love scenes in Western literature, are to be found in Shakespeare. The fresh but impassioned Romeo and Juliet, the resilient wit of Petruchio and Kate, the ardent exchanges of Lorenzo and Jessica ,and the anguished tragedies of Othello and Desdemona and Antony and Cleopatra - they all show love and courtship in its many forms.

This production is abridged and in plain English. Timon of Athens (The Life of Tymon of Athens) is perhaps Shakespeare's sharpest satire on wealth, greed, and betrayal. Scholars generally classify Timon either as a tragedy or a problem play.

A fickle public is fully supportive of Caesar's would-be assassins - until they actually do assassinate him. Discover wher political back-stabbing really got its start in this timeless tale of murder and revenge.

William Squire, Corin Redgrave, Derek Jacobi, and Trevor Nunn perform Shakespeare's play about the fortunes of an Athenian named Timon. He loves to give parties and presents to friends, but when he cannot pay his creditors, his 'friends' refuse to help him, and he becomes a misanthropic hermit.

One of Shakespeare’s most popular plays is here performed by The Marlowe Society with Anthony Jacobs, Corin Redgrave, Paul Scofield and many other very fine actors. The story itself follows on from that of Shakespeare’s Richard II (also available in this series) and begins with Hotspur's battle at Homildon against the Douglas late in 1402 and ends with the defeat of the rebels at Shrewsbury in the middle of 1403.

Shakespeare's position as England's national poet is established and unquestionable. But as James Shapiro illuminates in this revelatory new history, Shakespeare has long held an essential place in American culture. Why, though, would a proudly independent republic embrace England's greatest writer? Especially when his works enact so many of America's darkest nightmares: interracial marriage, cross-dressing, same-sex love, tyranny, and assassination?

Ever wonder why people doubt that William Shakespeare was the "true" author of the poems, plays and sonnets? Discover three reasons to doubt, and learn why William Shakespeare, a young man from the provinces, a man without wealth, connections or a university education should be hung! His close friend and rival Ben Jonson wrote the words "hang Shakespeare" in 1623. But why?

El rey de Nápoles y sus servidores viajan en un barco cuando tienen que empezar a luchar contra una tempestad de tal magnitud que acaba rompiendo su barco en dos, cayendo todos al mar. Por suerte para ellos hay una isla muy cerca. Próspero que vive con su hija Miranda desde hace muchos años en su isla se queja de la injusticia que tuvo que sufrir cuando su hermano le arrebató el trono de Nápoles.

This play, which bears an alternate title of What You Will, was written in about 1602. Twelfth Night has always been one of Shakespeare's most popular comedies, and many adaptations have been made for film and musical theatre.

A merchant of Syracuse has twin sons and buys twin servants for them. His wife, with one twin and one servant, is soon separated from him by a shipwreck, and comes to live in Ephesus. When grown, the other son and his slave start out to find their brothers, and the father, some years later, starts out in turn to find them. Once in Ephesus, an amusing series of errors begins.

Troilus and Cressida is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1602. It was described by Frederick S. Boas as one of Shakespeare's problem plays. The play ends on a very bleak note with the death of the noble Trojan Hector and destruction of the love between Troilus and Cressida. The work has in recent years "stimulated exceptionally lively critical debate". Throughout the play, the tone lurches wildly between bawdy comedy and tragic gloom, and readers and theatre-goers have frequently found it difficult to understand how one is meant to respond to the characters.

Macbeth and his wife show how bad the evil that can possess human souls is. But evil is not all powerful. On the one hand, Macbeth is the gloomiest of the great Shakespeare's tragedies; on the other hand, it's more encouraging than Hamlet, Othello or King Lear. In no other tragedy as in Macbeth the evil is confronted by so many people, and nowhere else they are so active. Shakespeare is the author of the world famous sonnets and plays: Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth and Othello, as well as comedies Twelfth Night, A Midsummer's Night Dream, Love's Labour's Lost, etc.

These adaptations of Shakespeare's classics Macbeth and Romeo & Juliet are told in plain English as full-cast audio productions. Additional materials and context are included. The set also includes a detailed introduction, adaptation notes, analysis of original Shakespearean speeches and study questions. This offers a fine introduction of perhaps the two most famous Shakespeare works and detailed study materials for those seeking to understand the plays in greater depth.

William Shakespeare is widely considered the greatest writer in the history of the English language, so renowned and respected that the time period in which he lived is often known as the Age of Shakespeare. Indeed, his genius is questioned only by those who doubt the authenticity of his authorship of timeless classics like Romeo and Juliet. As Ben Jonson once put it, "He was not of an age, but for all time."