Author: William Shakespeare
Date: 1623
Genre: Play, Romance, Comedy
Country: UK
King Leontes falsely accuses his wife, Hermione, of infidelity, leading to the death of their son, the abandonment of their daughter, Perdita, and the apparent death of Hermione, before a miraculous reunion 16 years later.
Author: Niccolò Machiavelli
Date: 1532
Genre: Philosophy
Country: Italy
A 16th-century political treatise written by the Italian diplomat, philosopher, and political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli in the form of a realistic instruction guide for new princes. Many commentators have viewed that one of the main themes of The Prince is that immoral acts are sometimes necessary to achieve political glory.
Author: Thomas Malory
Date: 1485
Genre: Chivalric Romance, Historical Fiction
Country: UK
Le Morte D’Arthur is Sir Thomas Malory’s richly evocative and enthralling version of the Arthurian legend. Recounting Arthur’s birth, his ascendancy to the throne after claiming Excalibur, his ill-fated marriage to Guenever, the treachery of Morgan le Fay and the exploits of the Knights of the Round Table, it magically weaves together adventure, battle, love and enchantment. Le Morte D’Arthur looks back to an idealized Medieval world and is full of wistful, elegiac regret for a vanished age of chivalry. Edited and published by William Caxton in 1485, Malory’s prose romance drew on French and English verse sources to give an epic unity to the Arthur myth, and remains the most magnificent re-telling of the story in English.
Author: Rabelais
Date: c. 1532 – c. 1564
Genre: Satire
Country: France
The dazzling and exuberant moral stories of Rabelais (c. 1471-1553) expose human follies with their mischievous and often obscene humour, while intertwining the realistic with carnivalesque fantasy to make us look afresh at the world. Gargantua depicts a young giant, reduced to laughable insanity by an education at the hands of paternal ignorance, old crones and syphilitic professors, who is rescued and turned into a cultured Christian knight. And in Pantagruel and its three sequels, Rabelais parodied tall tales of chivalry and satirized the law, theology and academia to portray the bookish son of Gargantua who becomes a Renaissance Socrates, divinely guided in his wisdom, and his idiotic, self-loving companion Panurge.
Author: William Shakespeare
Date: 1599
Genre: Play, Historical Tragedy
Country: UK
Fearful that Caesar will become a tyrant, his friends plot to assassinate him in order to save Rome. But the conspirators’ high principles clash with personal malice and ambition, and as they vie to manipulate the mob, the nation is plunged into bloody civil war. A taut, profound drama exploring power and betrayal, Julius Caesar exposes the chasm between public appearance, political rhetoric and bitter reality.
Author: William Shakespeare
Date: 1623
Genre: Play, Comedy
Country: UK
A young man is condemned to death for breaking a law forbidding sex outside marriage. When his sister pleads with the Lord Angelo to save him, he offers her a bargain – her brother’s life in exchange for her virginity. One of Shakespeare’s most enigmatic plays, Measure for Measure is a morally complex drama of intricate moves and countermoves that explores falsehood, justice and humanity’s best and basest instincts.
Author: William Shakespeare
Date: c. 1606
Genre: Play, Tragedy
Country: UK
Shakespeare’s bleak and brutal tragedy begins when an ageing king, seeking a successor, rejects the young daughter who loves him and misplaces his trust in her malevolent sisters. In return they strip him of his power and condemn him to a wretched wasteland of horror and insanity. Set in a pitiless universe, King Lear is a towering, elemental masterpiece of fierce poetry and vast imaginative scope.
Author: William Shakespeare
Date: 1623
Genre: Play, Romance
Country: UK
A poor doctor’s daughter cures the King of France and, in return, is promised marriage to any nobleman she wishes. But the proud young count she chooses refuses to consummate the marriage and flees to Florence – after setting her a seemingly impossible task. Depicting the triumph of trickery over youthful arrogance, All’s Well That Ends Well is among Shakespeare’s darkest romantic comedies, yet it remains a powerful tribute to the strength of love.
Author: William Shakespeare
Date: 1623
Genre: Comedy, Play
Country: UK
A vivacious woman and a high-spirited man both claim that they are determined never to marry. But when their friends trick them into believing that each harbours secret feelings for the other, they begin to question whether their witty banter and sharp-tongued repartee conceals something deeper. Schemes abound, misunderstandings proliferate and matches are eventually made in this sparkling and irresistible comedy.
Author: William Shakespeare
Date: c. 1610–1611
Genre: Comedy
Country: UK
A storm rages. Prospero and his daughter watch from their desert island as a ship carrying the royal family is wrecked. Miraculously, all on board survive. Plotting, mistaken identities, bewitching love and enchantment follow as the travellers explore this mysterious place of spirits and monsters, and discover that all is not as it seems. Shakespeare’s late, great play is a work filled with marvels, music and strangeness, fully exploiting the power of language and the magic of theatre.
Author: William Shakespeare
Date: c. 1592–1594
Genre: Play, History
Country: UK
Shakespeare’s final drama of the Wars of the Roses cycle begins as the dust settles on England after bloody civil war, and the bitter hunchback Richard, brother of the king, secretly plots to seize the throne. Charming and duplicitous, powerfully eloquent and viciously cruel, he is prepared to go to any lengths to achieve his goal. Richard III shows a man who, in his skilful manipulation of events and people, is a chilling incarnation of the temptations of power in a land shocked by war.
Author: William Shakespeare
Date: 1623
Genre: Play, Tragedy
Country: UK
A battle-hardened soldier, Antony is one of the three leaders of the Roman world. But he is also a man in the grip of an all-consuming passion for the tempestuous and alluring queen of Egypt, Cleopatra. And when their life of pleasure together is threatened by encroaching politics, the conflict between love and duty has devastating consequences. A tragic drama of love and loss, sex and power, told in language of poetic sublimity, Antony and Cleopatra is one of Shakespeare’s supreme imaginative achievements.
Author: Thomas More
Date: 1516
Genre: Satire, Political Philosophy
Country: Netherlands
In his most famous and controversial book, Utopia, Thomas More imagines a perfect island nation where thousands live in peace and harmony, men and women are both educated, and all property is communal. Through dialogue and correspondence between the protagonist Raphael Hythloday and his friends and contemporaries, More explores the theories behind war, political disagreements, social quarrels, and wealth distribution and imagines the day-to-day lives of those citizens enjoying freedom from fear, oppression, violence, and suffering. Originally written in Latin, this vision of an ideal world is also a scathing satire of Europe in the sixteenth century and has been hugely influential since publication, shaping utopian fiction even today.
Author: John Milton
Date: 1667
Genre: Epic Poetry
Country: UK
It tells the story of the Fall of Man, a tale of immense drama and excitement, of rebellion and treachery, of innocence pitted against corruption, in which God and Satan fight a bitter battle for control of mankind’s destiny. The struggle rages across three worlds – heaven, hell, and earth – as Satan and his band of rebel angels plot their revenge against God. At the center of the conflict are Adam and Eve, who are motivated by all too human temptations but whose ultimate downfall is unyielding love.
Author: William Shakespeare
Date: c. 1606
Genre: Play, Tragedy
Country: UK
One night on the heath, the brave and respected general Macbeth encounters three witches who foretell that he will become king of Scotland. At first skeptical, he’s urged on by the ruthless, single-minded ambitions of Lady Macbeth, who suffers none of her husband’s doubt. But seeing the prophecy through to the bloody end leads them both spiraling into paranoia, tyranny, madness, and murder.
Author: William Shakespeare
Date: c. 1603
Genre: Play, Tragedy
Country: UK
In Othello, Shakespeare creates a powerful drama of a marriage that begins with fascination (between the exotic Moor Othello and the Venetian lady Desdemona), with elopement, and with intense mutual devotion and that ends precipitately with jealous rage and violent deaths. He sets this story in the romantic world of the Mediterranean, moving the action from Venice to the island of Cyprus and giving it an even more exotic coloring with stories of Othello’s African past. Shakespeare builds so many differences into his hero and heroine—differences of race, of age, of cultural background—that one should not, perhaps, be surprised that the marriage ends disastrously. But most people who see or read the play feel that the love that the play presents between Othello and Desdemona is so strong that it would have overcome all these differences were it not for the words and actions of Othello’s standard-bearer, Iago, who hates Othello and sets out to destroy him by destroying his love for Desdemona. As Othello succumbs to Iago’s insinuations that Desdemona is unfaithful, fascination—which dominates the early acts of the play—turns to horror, especially for the audience. We are confronted by spectacles of a generous and trusting Othello in the grip of Iago’s schemes; of an innocent Desdemona, who has given herself up entirely to her love for Othello only to be subjected to his horrifying verbal and physical assaults, the outcome of Othello’s mistaken convictions about her faithlessness.
Author: Molière
Date: 1664
Genre: Play, Comedy
Country: France
Condemned and banned for five years in Molière’s day, Tartuffe is a satire on religious hypocrisy. Tartuffe worms his way into Orgon’s household, blinding the master of the house with his religious “devotion,” and almost succeeds in his attempts to seduce his wife and disinherit his children before the final unmasking.
Author: William Shakespeare
Date: c. 1599 – 1601
Genre: Play, Tragedy
Country: UK
Among Shakespeare’s plays, “Hamlet” is considered by many his masterpiece. Among actors, the role of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, is considered the jewel in the crown of a triumphant theatrical career. Now Kenneth Branagh plays the leading role and co-directs a brillant ensemble performance. Three generations of legendary leading actors, many of whom first assembled for the Oscar-winning film “Henry V”, gather here to perform the rarely heard complete version of the play. This clear, subtly nuanced, stunning dramatization, presented by The Renaissance Theatre Company in association with “Bbc” Broadcasting, features such luminaries as Sir John Gielgud, Derek Jacobi, Emma Thompson and Christopher Ravenscroft. It combines a full cast with stirring music and sound effects to bring this magnificent Shakespearen classic vividly to life. Revealing new riches with each listening, this production of “Hamlet” is an invaluable aid for students, teachers and all true lovers of Shakespeare – a recording to be treasured for decades to come.
Author: Giovanni Boccaccio
Date: 1620
Genre: Frame Story, Short Stories
Country: Italy
“Decameron” is a collection of 100 stories told by a group of seven young women and three young men sheltering in a secluded villa just outside Florence to escape the Black Death, which was afflicting the city. The tales, which range from the erotic to the tragic, the hilarious to the instructional, are embedded in a rich framework narrative that provides a detailed portrait of the society of the Italian Renaissance.
Author: Dante Alighieri
Date: c. 1321
Genre: Narrative Poem
Country: Italy
In this epic poem, the protagonist embarks on an extraordinary journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso). Guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil and his beloved Beatrice, he encounters various historical and mythological figures in each realm, witnessing the eternal consequences of earthly sins and virtues. The journey serves as an allegory for the soul’s progression towards God, offering profound insights into the nature of good and evil, free will, and divine justice.
Author: William Shakespeare
Date: 1597
Genre: Play, Tragedy
Country: UK
In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare creates a violent world, in which two young people fall in love. It is not simply that their families disapprove; the Montagues and the Capulets are engaged in a blood feud.