Showing results for "William Shakespeare" in Literary History & Criticism

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.

This short biography of William Shakespeare by world famous writer Bill Bryson brims with the author’s inimitable wit and intelligence. Includes an exclusive Q&A session with the author. Shakespeare’s life, despite the scrutiny of generations of biographers and scholars, is still a thicket...

Shakespeare’s extraordinarily ordinary life condenses into a charming but brief biography in this arresting tale of love, loss and return. Beginning with the early departure to the final homecoming, Paul Menzer considers the wonder of Shakespeare’s story with the little facts we have about...

‘A lively picture of multiple operators scrambling to steal a march on the competition . . . Lavishly detailed’ FINANCIAL TIMES ‘This is Shakespearean scholarship at its best, brilliantly researched yet compulsively readable. It's a book for our times, enduringly fascinating and appealing...

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.

Considered to be William Shakespeare’s greatest masterwork and one of the most influential, quotable and enduring works in all of literature, Hamlet has left audiences and critics alike spellbound for over four centuries, captivating stages, classrooms, movie screens and imaginations all over the world with its gripping and timeless story of murder, betrayal, justice, madness, mortality, corruption and familial loyalty.The young Prince Hamlet, mourning the recent death of his father, is shocked and angered to see his mother Gertrude hastily remarry his uncle Claudius, who has now taken ...

Nel 2016 ricorrono i quattrocento anni dalla morte di William Shakespeare. In realtà, nel 1616 morì un attore semianalfabeta di Stratford che si era impossessato del nome d'arte e delle opere di due italiani, Michelangelo e Giovanni Florio, padre e figlio emigrati in Inghilterra perché ricercati dall'Inquisizione. Negli ultimi quattro secoli sono stati occultati e forse distrutti documenti e scritti che conducevano a una verità diversa da quella che oggi conosciamo. Ma un delitto, si dice, non è mai perfetto. Non s'immaginava, infatti, che nelle opere di Shakespeare esistessero messaggi in codice, frasi apparentemente banali e prive di senso contenenti informazioni indirizzate ai pochi in grado di decifrarle.

Everyone knows something of Shakespeare's sonnets, even if only in memorable fragments like "the darling buds of May," or "remembrance of things past," or "the marriage of true minds." For centuries these wonderfully crafted, intense lyrics have stood for something valued about youth, love, and the emotional complexities belonging to that time of life. This new recording presents all 154 of Shakespeare's sonnets, using the New Cambridge Shakespeare texts.

Eight of the bard’s funniest plays, from A Midsummer’s Night Dream to The Winter’s Tale, abridged and novelised for young listeners. Hours of audio fun to keep children entertained while on the move! Introduce your children to the wonderful world of Shakespearean comedies with these...

‘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...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of This Is Shakespeare, written and read by Emma Smith. A genius and prophet whose timeless works encapsulate the human condition like no others. A writer who surpassed his contemporaries in vision, originality and literary mastery. Who wrote like an angel...

Seventeen of the bard’s most notable plays, from A Midsummer’s Night Dream to Romeo and Juliet, abridged and novelised for young listeners. This collection also includes the biography The Life and Times of William Shakespeare. Hours of audio fun to keep children entertained while on the move!...

Sir Derek Jacobi and cast perform another Shakespeare classic which has been released for the first time as a digital download. The play opens with the King of Navarre and three noble companions, Berowne, Dumaine, and Longaville, taking an oath to devote themselves to three years of study...

Shakespeare’s sonnets comprise a collection of 154 poems in sonnet form that deal with such themes as love, beauty, politics, and mortality. (Summary from wikipedia.org)

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.

When Julius Caesar returns to Rome from conquering the Gauls, Cassius and his friends are worried that he will try to seize power and make himself emperor. Cassius must act fast. He gathers Brutus, Cinna, and others to stop Julius Caesar and save the Roman Republic! This play was recorded in two weeks as part of Librivox's celebration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death. Summary by Esther ben Simonides Cast List:Narrator: Peter Why Flavius, Casca, Volumnius: Maria KasperMarullus, Cinna the Poet, Poet, Dardanius: Ray KasperFirst Commoner, Decius Brutus, Fourth Citizen, First Soldier...

'Fluent and witty . . . confident . . . highly readable' Kathryn Hughes, GUARDIAN 'Brilliant - so vivid and so sharp, fantastically clever and consistently fascinating' KATHERINE RUNDELL, author of Super-Infinite Was Shakespeare gay? The answer is both simpler and more complex than you might...

The Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy by William Shakespeare, first published in 1602, though believed to have been written prior to 1597. The Merry Wives of Windsor features the fat knight Sir John Falstaff, and is Shakespeare's only play to deal exclusively with contemporary Elizabethan era...

A provocative, moving, kinky, and often absurdly funny memoir about Shakespeare, love, obsession, and spanking When it came to understanding love, a teenage Jillian Keenan had nothing to guide her—until a production of The Tempest sent Shakespeare’s language flowing through her blood for the...

SparkNotes Audio presents … No Fear Shakespeare audio recordings! Listen to full cast performances of Shakespeare's plays in all their brilliance—and understand what every word means! Don’t be intimidated by Shakespeare. These audiobook editions make the Bard’s plays accessible and...