Brilliantly manipulative and entirely amoral, the hero-villain Richard is one of Shakespeare's greatest roles.The Yorkists have emerged victorious from the civil wars and Edward IV wears the English crown. But Edward's misshapen brother Richard harbors kingly ambitions and will stop at nothing to achieve the throne. In a fatal battle on Bosworth Field, Richard meets the ghosts of all whom he has murdered and the Earl of Richmond, the future King Henry VII.Richard III is pla...

The renowned masterpiece from one of the most influential writers in history, MachiavelliThe Prince, written during the Italian Renaissance by author Niccolò Machiavelli, is an internationally renowned masterpiece about power, greed and strategy in government. Regarded by some as a manual for would-be tyrants on how they should seize and maintain power and by others as a simple reflection of political reality, listen now to this full-cast dramatisa...

Hedda Gabler, a deceased General’s daughter, marries dull George Tesman and foresees a life of middleclass tedium stretching ahead when they return from a honeymoon they could not afford to a house they cannot afford. Increasingly, she is drawn into the clutches of her admirer, Judge Brack, who seeks to establish a menage a trois. Then a former flame arrives in the brilliant but dissolute Eilert Lovborg to rival her husband for an academic post. After a drunken orgy, the manuscript of Lovb...

Kenneth Branagh heads an outstanding cast in playing one of Shakespeare’s strongest characters. The eighth production in the widely admired series of Shakespeare plays presented by Naxos AudioBooks in association with Cambridge University Press.

A play replete with puns and double-entendres, this is one of Shakespeare’s earliest and most lighthearted.The young king of Navarre and three of his courtiers have vowed to lock themselves away for three years of study and fasting, and to forswear the company of women for this period. No sooner is their vow made than it is tested, however, as the princess of France and three of her ladies arrive in Navarre on a diplomatic mission. The young men fall instantly and hopelessly in lov...

The bard's sonnets read by a leading actor of stage and screen Simon Callow.Savor the most celebrated love poems in the English language. Written almost 400 years ago, the sonnets of William Shakespeare are passionate and exalted, rich in imagery and alliteration, and full of mystery and intrigue.This selection presents all 154 sonnets composed from 1593-1601. In words and rhyme, he reveals his infatuation with the "Dark Lady," his relationship with a rival poet, and his pr...

Macbeth, Shakespeare’s last great tragedy, has remained one of the most popular plays since it’s first performance in 1606 probably in front of King James. This exciting new audiobook production is directed with fresh imagination by Fiona Shaw who breaks the conventional strait jacket that has hampered the development of Shakespeare on audio. We are as much in the twenty-first century as in medieval Scotland the tensions, the politics, the struggle for power and dark ambition is part of ou...

Chaucer’s greatest work, written towards the end of the fourteenth century, paints a brilliant picture of medieval life, society, and values. The stories range from the romantic, courtly idealism of The Knight’s Tale to the joyous bawdy of the Miller’s; all are told with a freshness and vigour in this modern verse translation that make them a delight to hear.

Long regarded as the most accurate rendering of Plato’s Republic that has yet been published, this widely acclaimed work is the first strictly literal translation of a timeless classic. This second edition includes a new introduction by Professor Bloom, whose careful translation and interpretation of The Republic was first published in 1968. In addition to the corrected text itself there is also a rich and valuable essay—as well as indexes—which will better enable the reader to approach th...

'A literary rite of passage.' The Times'Plath changed our world.' GuardianEsther is supposed to be having the time of her life. Her internship at a fashion magazine is a whirl of cocktail parties and dinner dates in the shimmering city. But why doesn't she feel anything? Back home in the suburbs, she is trapped inside a suffocating bell jar . She can't write her novel; her boyfriend is a hypocrite; ...

Now an animated film adaptation produced and directed by Andy SerkisGeorge Orwell’s classic satire of the Russian Revolution has become an intimate part of our contemporary culture, with its treatment of democratic, fascist, and socialist ideals through an animal fable.The animals of Mr. Jones’s Manor Farm are overworked, mistreated, and desperately seeking a reprieve. In their quest to create an idyllic society where justice and equality reign, th...

A young woman with a rare ability finds refuge with the Shadowhunters of Victorian England in this “compulsively readable” (Booklist) first book in the #1 New York Times bestselling Infernal Devices trilogy, the prequel series to the internationally bestselling Mortal Instruments! Clockwork Angel is a Shadowhunters novel.When Tessa Gray crosses the ocean to find her brother in Victorian England, she has no idea something terrifying is wai...