Showing results by author "William Shakespeare" in All Categories

Macbeth, one of Shakespeare's most popular plays, is among the most powerful and influential tragedies in the English language. Promised a golden future as ruler of Scotland by three sinister witches, Macbeth murders the king in order to succeed to the throne. Tortured by his conscience and fearful of discovery, he becomes fatally enmeshed in a web of treachery and deceit.

A tragedy, a comedy, and a history all rolled into one, the story of the tyrannical Richard III ranks among Shakespeare's most popular plays. Opening with the famous "Now is the winter of our discontent" soliloquy, this masterful work follows its antihero as he plots to steal the throne of England, causing murder and mayhem all along the way. A full cast, including Robert Stephens and Dame Peggy Ashcroft, brings this devilishly entertaining work to life.

Rebellion still simmers in England and King Henry's health is failing. Prince Hal has proved his courage but the king still fears that his son's pleasure-loving nature will bring the realm to ruin. Meanwhile, Falstaff and his ribald companions waste the nights in revelry, anticipating the moment when Hal will ascend the throne. Falstaff is in Gloucestershire when news arrives that the king has died. Has the dissolute old knight's hour come at last?

Rediscover the greatest love poetry ever written. Shakespeare’s sonnets are some of the nation’s favourite lines of verse, but the Elizabethan language can make it difficult to really understand them. Many guides offer to clarify the meaning, but lose the magic of the words by explaining them away. James Anthony has done something boldly different.

In this story of evil cunning perverting a once noble mind, radio captures Iago's sly hints and boasts to the audience with shocking clarity. The listener is led along an emotional path that grips with fascinating horror until the play's tragic conclusion. Staring Ray Fearon as Othello, James Frain as Iago and and Anastasia Hille as Desdemona.

Many of Shakespeare's greatest and best-loved speeches are brought together in this superb collection, performed by outstanding artists who bring to vivid life words which are an integral part of our language, our culture and our everyday lives.

Lovers lives are complicated by city law, feuding faerie royalty, and, yes, love. Sir Ian McKellen, Prunella Scales, Frank Duncan, and Joan Hart perform Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The noble Titus returns victorious to Rome bringing Tamora, Queen of the Goths as his captive. When one of Tamora's sons is condemned to die, she vows revenge, and, aided by the villainous Aaron, she exacts a terrible retribution, inaugurating a grim cycle of rape, murder, and cannibalism. This macabre, often brilliant tragedy comes from the earliest stage of Shakespeare's dramatic career.

The all-conquering King Henry V is dead, and the throne is occupied by his infant son, Henry VI. The good Duke Humphrey of Gloucester has been appointed protector, but a struggle for power soon develops between the young king's Lancastrian relatives and the powerful house of York under Richard Plantagenet. Meanwhile the French, led by Joan of Arc, the maid of Orleans, threaten to win back the territories lost to Henry V.

Coriolanus is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1605 and 1608. The play is based on the life of the legendary Roman leader, Gaius Marcius Coriolanus. Performed and recorded by the wonderful Richard Burton and a full cast.

Pericles, Prince of Tyre, undergoes a tyrant's fury, storm, and shipwreck. He wins love and suffers loss, but what is lost may also be found. With the ancient poet Gower acting as narrator, we follow the adventures of Pericles from young manhood to maturity. This strange and powerful tale of loss and recovery is the first in the group of romance comedies created by Shakespeare at the end of his dramatic career.

An excellent recording of one of Shakespeare's best loved tragedies. Many consider Cleopatra to be Shakespeare's most complex female role. The play follows Cleopatra's relationship with Mark Antony from the Sicilian Revolt to Cleopatra's suicide in the Final War of the Roman Republic.

Love triumphs in As You Like It, Shakespeare's joyous comic adventure! Rosalind, arguably Shakespeare's greatest female character, is banished from court and follows her exiled father into the untamed Forest of Arden. Disguised as a man for safety, Rosalind's great wit and good nature show through her male trappings as she engages with fools and philosophers adrift in the woods, and ultimately falls in love.

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.

Palamon and Arcite, cousins and bosom friends, are taken prisoner by Duke Theseus of Athens. While in captivity, they spy the beautiful Emilia. Both fall instantly in love with her, and their attachment to each other turns to hate. This dark-edged tragicomedy is now widely regarded as having been written by Shakespeare in collaboration with John Fletcher. Composed sometime in 1613-14, The Two Noble Kinsmen is the final play in Shakespeare's dramatic career.

Star of stage, film, and television Alan Cumming delivers a virtuoso performance playing every role in the National Theatre of Scotland's bold presentation of Shakespeare's chilling tale of desire, ambition, and the supernatural. This radical reimagining of one of Shakespeare's most deeply psychological plays is set in a psychiatric unit in which Cumming is the lone patient. Channeling the story of Macbeth, he is inhabited in turn by each of the characters of the drama, including some of Shakespeare's most complex and troubled creations.

In this BBC full-cast production of Romeo and Juliet, the two star-crossed lovers fight for each other until their dying breath. Can their two feuding families reconcile? With the intimacy of radio, the full beauty and meaning of some of the most lyrical lines ever written can be truly heard: tenderness and passion, betrayal and bigotry are brilliantly evoked as the tale comes to its tragic conclusion. Douglas Henshall stars as Romeo, with Sophie Dahl as Juliet and Susannah York as Lady Capulet in Shakespeare's passionate story of doomed love.

Mark Antony, one of the three rulers of the Roman world, has become the thrall of the fascinating Cleopatra. Affairs of state call him to Rome, but the attractions of the queen of Egypt prove impossible to resist. From one of history's greatest love stories Shakespeare builds this magnificent tragedy of the clash between love and duty.

Christmas brings out the best and the worst in us, as can been seen in this evocative anthology. Among what Thomas Love Peacock calls the "many poetical charms in the heraldings of Christmas," there are eulogies by saints and diatribes from curmudgeons. Here, Christmas is expounded by divines, sung by rustics, deplored by philosophers, made mystical in stories and summed up in a line by the poet Elizabeth Jennings: "The hush, the star, the baby, people being kind again."

This production of Hamlet, directed by Sir John Gielgud and starring Richard Burton, was recorded in the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, and with the actors performing just as they would if you went to see a production tonight. "The particular intensity and nerves of this is probably the same kind of thing that excites an audience in live theater," says Richard Burton.