Audio book

 

All The World's A Stage: Shakespeare's Speeches

Author : William Shakespeare

Performed By : Various

Publisher : BBC Audiobooks Ltd

Runtime : 20 minutes

Categories : Shakespeare
Classic Literature

Our Price : $9.75

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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.

speeches

Victor R. Naive Jr. from cagayan de Oro City 9000 - 24 Jul 2007

Great Model

Agnes P. Ladia, ed.D. from Tarlac City, Tarlac - 09 Sep 2007

I find the material very authentic especially for second language learners who wish to capture the "speech" of the native speakers.

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Hamlet

Author : William Shakespeare

Performed By : Full Cast Production

Publisher : Select Music & Distribution

Runtime : 4 hours

Categories : Shakespeare

Our Price : $18.75

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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. '"