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  Two Gentlemen Of Verona The...

  William Shakespeare

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  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. 
  ‘At first I did adore a twinkling star 
  But now I worship a celestial sun.’ 
  The Two Gentlemen of Verona is one of Shakespeare's earliest plays and also one of the most rarely performed. It's about betrayal, love and disguise. 
  Valentine sets off from Verona for Milan to see the world. Proteus stays at home because of his love for Julia. She is in love with him, but neither knows of the other's love until Lucetta shows Julia a love letter from Proteus. He is reading her reply when his father, Antonio, sends him to the Duke's court to join Valentine. The lovers take their leave and swear eternal constancy. 
  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: John Barton; David Gibson; Richard Marquand; Terrence Hardiman; George Rylands; Toby Robertson; Roderick Cook; Donald Beves; Clive Swift; David Buck; John Tracy-Phillips; Chris Renard; Olive Gregg; Janette Richer; Penelope Balchin. 
  This top performing theatre piece, a European classic, is a testament to the best of Shakespeare's early works. The short, yet profound narrative, is a captivating exploration of love, betrayal, and disguise. 
  For fans of Richard Parsons (GCSE English Shakespeare Text Guide), and Arthur Miller (Incident at Vichy).

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  Hedda Gabler (NHB Classic Plays)

  Henrik Ibsen

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  A wife, a muse, a coward, a heretic. Hedda Gabler is something to everyone, yet has no idea who she is to herself. Trapped by convention and by her own irreconcilable nature, will she have the courage to shape her own destiny?
  Mark O'Rowe's fluid yet faithful adaptation of Ibsen's masterpiece premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in April.

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  The Restoration Poets

  John Milton, John Bunyan, John...

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  In the years between 1660 and 1700 much upheaval took place in English politics.  To mirror this rising on the artistic scene were the Restoration Poets – Dryden, Milton, Bunyan, Marvell, D’Avennat, Cowley …. are but a select few from this momentous movement in our Poetical History.  Poets of courage, ambition and vigour.  With the strength of words and vision to record for history  this tumultuous phase.

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  The Tragedy of Timon of Athens

  William Shakespeare

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  The Tragedy of Timon of Athens (The Life of Tymon of Athens) is a play by William Shakespeare, probably written in collaboration with Thomas Middleton in about 1605–1606, which was published in the First Folio in 1623. It is about the fortunes of an Athenian named Timon. The central character is a beloved citizen of Athens who through tremendous generosity spends his entire fortune on corrupt hangers-on only interested in getting the next payout.
  The earliest-known production of the play was in 1674, when Thomas Shadwell wrote an adaptation under the title The History of Timon of Athens, The Man-hater. Multiple other adaptations followed over the next century, by writers such as Thomas Hull, James Love and Richard Cumberland. The straight Shakespearean text was performed at Smock Alley in Dublin in 1761, but adaptations continued to dominate the stage until well into the 20th century.
  ... Flavius arrives. He wants the money as well, but he also wants Timon to come back into society. Timon acknowledges that he has had one true friend in Flavius, a shining example of an otherwise diseased and impure race, but laments that this man is a mere servant. He invites the last envoys from Athens, who hoped Timon might placate Alcibiades, to go hang themselves, and then dies in the wilderness. Alcibiades, marching on Athens, then throws down his glove, and ends the play reading the bitter epitaph Timon wrote for himself, part of which was composed by Callimachus:
  "Here lies a wretched corpse of wretched soul bereft:
  Seek not my name: a plague consume you wicked caitiffs left!"
  Here lie I, Timon, who alive, all living men did hate,
  Pass by, and curse thy fill, but pass and stay not here thy gait...
  Among the most significant works William Shakespeare: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Orpheus, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Troilus and Cressida, The Tempest, Venus and Adonis, Antony and Cleopatra, Measure for Measure, The Winter's Tale and many more.

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  Heavy Weather (NHB Platform Plays)

  Lizzie Nunnery

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  'The sky. The water. The air. It won't keep snapping back. You can't keep refreshing the screen. A lie is not a white lie, or a half-lie or a false truth or fake news… It's a lie and we call it a lie, or everything's cracking underneath us.'
  Mona is a young woman on the edge. All she sees is the Earth falling apart, but no one really seems to care. Amidst the chaos of competing and contradictory voices, she sets off on a kaleidoscopic journey to find solutions for the planet – and the truth about her family – in the hope that everything might start to make sense again.
  Lizzie Nunnery's Heavy Weather is a powerful, timely play about one girl taking control of her destiny in a world teetering on the brink. It is part of Platform, an initiative from Tonic Theatre in partnership with Nick Hern Books. Aimed at achieving greater gender equality in theatre, Platform comprises big-cast plays with predominantly, or all, female casts, written specifically for performance by young actors.

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  Elizabeth Barrett Browning:...

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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  Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett was born on 6 March 1806, in Coxhoe Hall, County Durham, the eldest of twelve children.  Family wealth was derived from sugar plantations manned by  slaves in Jamaica and enabling them to also purchase a 500 acre estate in Herefordshire.  This wealth allowed her to publish poems from an early age.  However by age 20 the family’s fortunes were to decline, but never below comfortable, after losing a lawsuit over their plantations .  Shortly thereafter Elizabeth became afflicted with an unknown disease and became addicted to morphine. Despite this she continued to write and became increasingly popular both in England and in the United States.  Her poems against slavery chronicled her abhorrence of the basis of the family wealth. In 1844 she was introduced to the younger Robert Browning who was a great admirer of her work and began a secret courtship and thence to marriage.  To him she wrote and dedicated one of her greatest works; Sonnets from the Portuguese and they went to live in Italy in 1846.   Although by now an invalid she seemed insecure of the love of the vigorous Robert  but continued to write and publish poetry as diverse as love sonnets and political pieces before succumbing to death in 1861. Our reader is Ghizela Rowe.

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