Young Claudio has fallen for the lovely heiress Hero, who also loves him. Their path to the altar looks smooth, until the evil Don John intervenes.All ends happily, thanks to his incompetent assassins and the lucky discoveries of the bungling constable Dogberry. Central to the play, one of Shakespeare's best-loved comedies, are Beatrice and Benedick, masters of wit and sworn foes to marriage—until a plot is hatched to bring them together.Beatrice is played by Saskia Reeves,...

King Leontes of Sicilia is seized by sudden and terrible jealousy of his wife Hermione, whom he accuses of adultery. He believes the child Hermione is bearing was fathered by his friend Polixenes, and when the baby girl is born he orders her to be taken to some wild place and left to die. Though Hermione's child escapes death, Leontes' cruelty has terrible consequences. Loss paves the way for reunion, and life and hope are born out of desolation and despair.One of the late romances...

Rome is a city divided, nobility and common people locked in mutual suspicion. The patrician Caius Marcius, later called Coriolanus, is Rome’s greatest soldier, but his proud refusal to accommodate himself to the demands of the plebeians leads to banishment and death.A Roman history as well as tragedy, Coriolanus is a complex and subtle exploration of the themes of absolution and compromise, both in the political world and in the life of the individual.Paul Jesson ...

King Henry is married to Catherine of Aragon, but he has been smitten by the charms of the queen's maid of honor, Anne Boleyn, 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 Catherine 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 tim...

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...

“How can men best live together?” Twenty-three centuries after its compilation, Politics still has much to contribute to this central question of political science. Aristotle’s thorough and carefully argued analysis covers a huge range of political issues in the effort to establish which types of constitution are best, both ideally and in particular circumstances, and how they may be maintained.Like his predecessor, Plato, Aristotle believed that the ideal constitution sho...

Shakespeare’s most famous play is one of the greatest stories in the literature of the world.Distressed by his father’s death and his mother’s over-hasty remarriage, Hamlet, prince of Denmark is faced by a specter from beyond the grave bearing a grim message of murder and revenge. The young prince is driven to the edge of madness by his struggle to understand the situation he finds himself in and to do his duty. Many others, including Hamlet’s beloved, the innocent...

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...

Born out of the political turmoil of the English Civil War, Leviathan stands out as one of the most influential political and philosophical texts of the 17th century. It argues for the restoration of the monarchy, in light of the Republic, and calls for a commonwealth ruled by an authoritative, autocratic figure with absolute sovereignty. This would put an end to all controversy, war and fear, and establish peace via social contract. Over the course of the book Hobbes targets Christianity ...

Two couples—Benedick and Beatrice, and Hero and Claudio—must overcome deception, gossip, and, occasionally, their own misplaced pride if their love is to persevere. Aided by military commander Don Pedro and impeded by his brother Don John, the friends go to great lengths in the pursuit of marriage.

""Our revels now are ended... this rough magic I here abjure...""In Shakespeare hinting at the end of his own magnificent career in these and others lines spoken by the great magician, Prospero? The Tempest was the last of Shakespeare's comedies, completed just before he retired to his native Stratford-upon-Avon; perhaps this delightful comedy was intended to signal the playwright's farewell to his beloved theater. The Tempest reflects Shakespeare...

The Time Machine is the fascinating oral diary of the Time Traveler-the first man to journey beyond the conventional limits of time. As the first of H.G. Wells' visionary novels, it created the science fiction genre by giving us a tantalizing glimpse at the future. When the Time Traveler crash-lands in the year 802,701, he is surrounded by lush landscapes and a small, gentle people named Eloi. Amazed by their apparent bliss, he wishes to bring their secrets back to his troubled time. As th...