December 6, 2007
Hamlet – Audio Book
Hamlet is a part of All The World’s A Stage — Shakespeare’s Speeches Audiobook.
Romeo & Juliet – Act I, Scene III
“O Romeo, Romeo – wherefore art thou Romeo”. This impassioned speech is beautifully spoken by Fay Compton in this BBC Sound archives recording.
Hamlet – Act III, Scene I
‘To be or not to be – that is the question….’ In this BBC Sound Archive recording, Michael Redgrave stars as Shakespeare’s troubled Prince of Denmark.
Henry V – Act IV, Scene III
‘This day is called the feast of Crispian….’ In one of the most famous and inspirational of Shakespeare’s speeches, Richard Burton’s rich and resonant voice delivers Henry V’s address to his army on the eve of Agincourt!
King Lear – Act II, Scene IV
‘I prithee, daughter, do not make me mad…’ Alec Guinness’s performance as King Lear stirs the listener in this recording from the BBC Sound Archives.
Macbeth – Act I, Scene VII
‘If it were done when ’tis done…’ From the BBC Sound Archives, one of Shakespeare’s most famous and memorable speeches, with Paul Scofield and Peggy Ashcroft as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, bringing these ominous words vividly to life.
Macbeth – Act II, Scene II
‘Is this a dagger which I see before me…..’ With Denis Quilley as Macbeth, this recording from the BBC Sound Archives brings Shakespeare’s memorable words to life..
Richard III – Act I, Scene I
‘Now is the winter of our discontent….’ Ian Holm delivers King Richard IIIs soliloquy, bringing Shakespeare’s wonderful lines, full of pyschological insight, vividly to life.
The Merchant Of Venice – Act IV, Scene I
‘The quality of mercy is not strained….’ In this recording from the BBC Sound Archives, Hannah Gordon is Shakespeare’s wise Portia.
June 15, 2007
William Shakespeare 1599 Audio Book
A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare 1599 is an audiobook by James Shapiro.
An intimate history of Shakespeare, following him through a single year that changed not only his fortunes but the course of literature.
How did Shakespeare go from being a talented poet and playwright to become one of the greatest writers who ever lived? In this one exhilarating year we follow what he reads and writes, what he sees, and who he works with as he invests in the new Globe Theatre and creates four of his most famous plays—Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and, most remarkably, Hamlet.
James Shapiro illuminates both Shakespeare’s staggering achievement and what Elizabethans experienced in the course of 1599: sending off an army to crush an Irish rebellion, weathering an Armada threat from Spain, gambling on a fledgling East India Company, and waiting to see who will succeed their aging and childless Queen.
This book brings the news and intrigue of the times together with a wonderful evocation of how Shakespeare worked as an actor, businessman, and playwright. The result is an exceptionally immediate and gripping account of an inspiring moment in history.
This audio includes a selection of scenes from Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and Hamlet featuring performances by Vanessa Redgrave, Paul Scofield, Ian Holm, and many more.
James Sharpiro, a professor at Columbia University in New York, is the author of Rival Playwrights, Shakespeare and the Jews, and Oherammergau: The Troubling Story of the World’s Most Famous Passion Play.
February 28, 2007
Hamlet – Audio Book BBC
Hamlet – Audio Book is a BBC production.
Michael Sheen, Kenneth Cranham and Juliet Stevenson star in the best-known and most powerful tragedy of modern times.
BBC radio has a unique heritage when it comes to Shakespeare. Since I 923, when the newly formed company broadcast its first full-length play, generations of actors and producers have honed and perfected the craft of making Shakespeare to be heard.
Those decades of experience come to fruition in this production.The intimacy of radio gives full rein to the power of Shakespeare’s language, taking the listener into the very center of Hamlet’s emotional and moral turmoil.
The play is introduced by Richard Eyre, former Director of the Royal National Theater, and the accompanying booklet includes a scene-by-scene synopsis, full character analysis, brief biographies of the leading actors and of Shakespeare himself, as well as an essay from the producer on their interpretation of the play.
Revitalized, original and comprehensive – this is Shakespeare for the new millennium.
February 20, 2007
Much Ado About Nothing
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare.
BBC radio has a unique heritage when it comes to Shakespeare. Since 1923. when the newly formed company broadcast its first full-length play, generations of actors and producers have honed and perfected the craft of making Shakespeare to be heard.
In Much Ado, the clarity of radio allows the wonderful verbal sparring between Beatrice and Benedick to sparkle, as high comedy and melodrama mix magically in a combination of prose and verse.
The play is introduced by Richard Eyre, former Director of the Royal National Theatre, and the accompanying booklet includes a scene-by-scene synopsis, full character analysis, brief biographies of the leading actors and of Shakespeare himself, as well as an essay from the producer on their interpretation of the play.
Revitalised, original and comprehensive, this is Shakespeare for the new millennium.
February 8, 2007
Hamlet – Audio Book
Hamlet audio book by William Shakespeare is a Full Cast Production.
Hamlet, which dates from 1600-1601, is the first in Shakespeare’s great series of four tragedies, the others being Othello (1603), King Lear (1605) and Macbeth (1606). In writing this extraordinary play Shakespeare effectively re-invented tragedy after an interval of roughly two thousand years – we have to go back to the Greek dramatists of 5th century Athens to find anything of comparable depth and maturity.
Certainly Shakespeare had already dealt with tragic themes and situations in plays such as Romeo and Juliet, Richard II and Julius Caesar, but in Hamlet he found himself able to fuse with complete artistic success the conflicting concerns of the private individual and the public state of which he is a member, or for which he may indeed be responsible – Hamlet is, after all. Prince of Denmark. This is a quin-tessentially Renaissance theme: it is no longer enough to appeal to an accepted moral or religious system, but instead each man must find out for himself a moral path through the ‘unweeded garden’ of life.
The first known version of the Hamlet story is found in the twelfth century Historia Danica by Saxo Grammaticus. Most of the main ingredients of the story are already present, albeit in primitive form, and some of the names, too -‘Amlethus’ for Hamlet. In 1576 Francois de Belleforest retold the story in his Histoires Tragiques, translated into English in 1608 and hence too late for Shakespeare to have read – but someone, perhaps Thomas Kyd, came across the story in the 1580’s and turned it into a play which must have been Shakespeare’s immediate source, however radically different Shakespeare’s version turned out to be. We know, incidentally, that the idea of a ghost seeking revenge comes from this lost play: Thomas Lodge in 1596 writes of the ‘ghost which cried so miserably at The Theater, like an oyster wife, “Hamlet, revenge. ‘”
Audio Books 