King Lear, William Shakespeare
King Lear, William Shakespeare
List: $16.99 | Sale: $11.89
Club: $8.49

King Lear

Author: William Shakespeare, William Devlin, Ian Lang, John Tracy-Phillips, William Squire, Prunella Scales, full cast

Narrator: William Devlin, Ian Lang, John Tracy-Phillips, William Squire, Prunella Scales, full cast

Unabridged: 3 hr 4 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/26/2020


Synopsis

William Collins Books and Decca Records are proud to present ARGO Classics, a historic catalogue of classic prose and verse read by some of the world’s most renowned voices. Originally released as vinyl records, these expertly remastered stories are now available to download for the first time. ‘When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.’ Depicting a once-great ruler's descent into madness, is one of the most powerful tragedies ever staged. King Lear divides his kingdom among the two daughters who flatter him and banishes the third one who loves him. His eldest daughters both then reject him at their homes, so Lear goes mad and wanders through a storm. His banished daughter returns with an army, but they lose the battle and Lear, all his daughters and more, die. All of the Shakespeare plays within the ARGO Classics catalogue are performed by the Marlowe Dramatic Society and Professional Players. The Marlowe was founded in 1907 with a mission to focus on effective delivery of verse, respect the integrity of texts, and rescue neglected plays by Shakespeare’s contemporaries and the less performed plays of Shakespeare himself. The Marlowe has performed annually at Cambridge Arts Theatre since its opening in 1936 and continues to produce some of the finest actors of their generations. Thurston Dart, Professor of Music at London University and a Fellow of Jesus College Cambridge, directed the music for this production. The full cast includes: William Devlin; Ian Lang; John Tracy-Phillips; Patrick Creean; Gary Watson; William Squire; Donald Beves; Frank Duncan; Peter Orr; Michael Burrell; Peter Foster; Terrence Hardiman; Roger Hammond; Michael Bakewell; Jill Balcon; Prunella Scales; Margaret Rawlings.

About William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was born in April 1564 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, on England’s Avon River. When he was eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway. The couple had three children—an older daughter Susanna and twins, Judith and Hamnet. Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, died in childhood. The bulk of Shakespeare’s working life was spent in the theater world of London, where he established himself professionally by the early 1590s. He enjoyed success not only as a playwright and poet, but also as an actor and shareholder in an acting company. Although some think that sometime between 1610 and 1613 Shakespeare retired from the theater and returned home to Stratford, where he died in 1616, others believe that he may have continued to work in London until close to his death.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Bill on February 11, 2020

I've read Lear many times, and, although I didn't learn much about the play this reading, I did learn a little about myself. I have always loved the play, but in the past I found its injustice and evil nigh overpowering, its victims pathetically guiltless, its perspective verging on the nihilistic.......more

Goodreads review by s.penkevich on July 01, 2024

Hot Shakespeare Summer continues with this tale of a King that should have internalized the phrase “flattery gets you nowhere.” Flattery gets you a pile of dead bodies and a collapsed kingdom now, Pops, but hey I guess thats why they call these “tragedies.” Brush the bodies aside for a moment becaus......more

Goodreads review by Amit on July 09, 2019

King Lear can be read in various ways - as a theological drama, as a philosophical one, as a supreme example of Shakespeare's intuitive egalitarianism or even as a melodrama lifted towards tragedy only by its superb poetry. It is the most titanic of Shakespeare's tragedy.......more

Goodreads review by Henry on August 20, 2024

"How sharper than a serpent's ( snake's ) tooth it is to have a thankless child"...Good King Lear, feared in his younger days, has two, in pagan Britain, the inhabitants worship the numerous gods, there, hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, the ancient ruler, in his eighties, can no longer......more