This production is part of a famous series produced by BBC of all of William Shakespeare's plays. The resulting films, renowned for their loyalty to the text, utilized the best theatrical and television directors and brought highly praised performances from leading contemporary actors. THE TEMPEST is a dramatic romance, weaving fancy and realism into a plot that speaks to audiences today. This timeless stage is set on an enchanted island, where an...

It is perhaps the greatest story never told: the truth behind the most-enduring works of literature in the English language, perhaps in any language. Who was the man behind Hamlet? What passion inspired the sonnets, whose words were so powerful that "not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme?" In Shakespeare's Lost Kingdom, critically acclaimed historian Charles Beauclerk pulls off an astounding feat, humanizing...

Brutus, best friend of the Roman ruler Caesar, reluctantly joins a successful plot to murder Caesar and subsequently destroys himself. Includes notes and an introduction.

Loyalty and Heredity-- King Henry VIII covers the period of Henry's reign from shortly after he becomes king to the birth of Elizabeth, who would one day become queen and for whom the play was written. The firing of a cannon during the very first performance of this play caused a fire that burnt the Globe theater to the ground. Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot That it do singe yourself. We may outrun By violent swiftness that which we run at,...

As he lies on his deathbed, William Shakespeare struggles to come to terms with the events of his past, from his witness of the Tyburn executions and danger-ridden construction of the Globe theater to the death of his young son.

With the untimely death of England's great soldier-king, Henry V, the crown passes to his young and inexperienced son. While the nobles quarrel among themselves and compete for influence over the new monarch, the French seize the opportunity to reclaim their former territories from English possession. The success of the French armies rests upon an unlikely leader: the peasant girl Joan La Pucelle, known to history as Joan of Arc. The first of three...