Filter By Subjects
British literature History 16th century British literature History 17th century Drama 16th century Drama 17th century Irish literature History 16th century Irish literature History 17th century Shakespeare, William 1564-1616 Drama Shakespeare, William 1564-1616 Literary style Theater History 16th century Theater History 17th centuryFilter By Subjects
British literature History 16th century British literature History 17th century Drama 16th century Drama 17th century Irish literature History 16th century Irish literature History 17th century Shakespeare, William 1564-1616 Drama Shakespeare, William 1564-1616 Literary style Theater History 16th century Theater History 17th centurySummary: This program pays lyrical homage to the enigmatic relationship between the poet/dramatist Goethe and the Baroness Charlotte von Stein and explores its influence on his work. Excerpts from a selection of the more than 2,000 letters exchanged by Goethe, Charlotte, and their friends bear testimony to the intensity and intimacy of the relationship-one which most experts believe was platonic,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Richard Brinsley Sheridan's witty comedy of manners The Rivals is one of only a small handful of 18th-century plays that continues to be produced-and studied-to this day. This classic BBC film adaptation from 1986 launches Captain Absolute, Lydia Languish, Mrs. Malaprop, Sir Lucius O'Trigger, and the rest of the audacious cast into action once again as they pursue their conflicting agendas...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: America’s magnificent storyteller Mark Twain has crafted an intriguing and classic tale of mistaken identity, deceit, and murder. At the center of it all is a slave woman who cradle-switches her master’s son with her own light-skinned baby…a child, though raised as white, who never fulfills her hopes and dreams for him as he becomes an arrogant and cruel man. Acclaimed actor Ken Howard...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1983
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program is a definitive treatment of the life of Jonathan Swift, the foremost prose satirist in the English language. Passages from Swift's correspondence and astute commentary by Swift biographers Joseph McMinn and Robert Mahony and other experts provide keen insights into Swift's phenomenal successes and embittering humiliations-plus his enduring works, such as Gulliver's Travels-while...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: An ambitious stepmother, a pragmatic father, impassioned sweethearts, and starry-eyed suitors are all sent spinning in Oliver Goldsmith's classic comedy of manners-and errors. Directed by Max Stafford-Clark and recorded at The Theatre Royal in Bath, this production of She Stoops to Conquer played to rave reviews. Staged with authentic costumes and sets, the commonly anthologized play makes an...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Ignored during his lifetime, the artist and poet William Blake is now a literary institution. How did this reversal come about? How did a republican, dissident printer, who was considered insane by his contemporaries, become transformed into an icon? The author Peter Ackroyd, Blake's latest biographer, is the guide as this program explores late-Georgian London: a world of political ferment and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Opening by introducing William Wordsworth's boyhood home in the Lake District of England, this film from the Famous Authors series offers an overview of the writer's work and biography. The Lake District greatly inspired Wordsworth and resulted in his apparent fascination with nature. The film contextualizes the poet's life at Cambridge and then in France, the ongoing conditions of the French...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Frankenstein: the doctor who created life! Was the famed character invented in the mind of novelist Mary Shelley, or was Dr. Frankenstein based in reality, as some argue? This episode of Ancient Mysteries explores Shelley’s possible influences. Had she learned of the 18th century German doctor who experimented on dead as well as live bodies; or was her inspiration the Britisher Andrew Crosse,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1997
View online at AVOD
Summary: In this program from the Famous Authors series, viewers are introduced to the biography and work of the French writer Voltaire. The video discusses conditions and politics of 18th century France, and reviews important tenents of the Enlightenment, both critical to understanding the writer's work. Voltaire was often in trouble, and sometimes imprisoned, for voicing his controversial views and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: World-renowned author and professor Bryan Magee and contemporary philosopher Geoffrey Warnock discuss the philosophy of anti-empiricist Immanuel Kant, and his view that activities and powers within the mind are the key to knowledge, and that all knowledge is appearance. Knowledge, for Kant, is a complex affair, in which knowing is acquired not just through the senses, but through pure concepts...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: The life, personality, and thought of the 18th-century political philosopher and essayist are examined in this outstanding program. Emphasis is on Rousseau's critique of the inequities and shallowness of French society, and the new values system he developed which promoted individual rights and a return to nature. Rousseau's masterwork, The Social Contract, defined this philosophy and served as...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Prolific Swedish playwright August Strindberg wrote over 70 plays in his lifetime, most obsessively preoccupied with the "battle of the sexes." In this BBC production, Michael Simpson directs Strindberg's classic tragedy of class and sexual warfare. The neurotic, aristocratic daughter (Janet McTeer) of a count breaks off her engagement to her irresolute fiancé. Despondent and bored, she idly...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This introduction to the life and work of Jonathan Swift from the Famous Authors series explores the political messages and social critiques in Swift's work, including the famous Gulliver's Travels and its public reception. The video begins with Swift's childhood and education in Dublin and England, and reviews the circumstances of the English monarchy, the Whigs and Tories, and other political...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: Philip Cumbus is the King of Navarre and Michelle Terry is the Princess of France in this performance of Love's Labour's Lost at Shakespeare's Globe, London's faithful reconstruction of the open-air playhouse designed in 1599. True to the play's original Renaissance staging and costume, this production is a festive parade of every weapon in the youthful Shakespeare's comic arsenal-excruciating...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: As You Like It runs the glorious gamut of pastoral romance: disguises and love notes, poetry and brilliant conversation, gentle satire and full-on slapstick, and running throughout it all, passion! This staging-performed at Shakespeare's Globe, London's faithful reconstruction of the open-air playhouse designed in 1599-spotlights Naomi Frederick, Jack Laskey, Laura Rogers, Jamie Parker, and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Performed at Shakespeare's Globe, London's faithful reconstruction of the open-air playhouse designed in 1599, Romeo and Juliet is arguably the best-loved of all love stories in Western literature. The play's masterful combination of lyricism, suspense, and dramatic changes of mood is dramatized by an...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: Compelling dramatizations of key scenes from Shakespeare's tragedy are analyzed by two noted Shakespearean experts-Stanley Wells and Russell Jackson of the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon. Themes and topics include the motives of Lago, and whether his evil is as complete as most commentators suggest; Victorian objections to the interracial relationship between Othello and Desdemona;...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: In the first program, each actor comments on the major scenes of the play, and, through excerpts from productions that range from the silent film era to the modern stage, we see various interpretations of those scenes. Trevor Nunn then interviews each actor about the source of his interpretation. The program includes both traditional and avant-garde productions.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1900
View online at AVOD
Summary: This work-the only Shakespeare tragedy considered to have its roots in the classics-is a study in contradiction. Though it is about the character of Brutus, it has Caesar as its dominant figure. This and other complexities and themes of the drama are investigated through the performance of key scenes by noted Shakespearean experts from the Shakespeare Centre and the Shakespeare Institute,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Kenneth Branagh takes on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night with the Renaissance Theatre Company. The exemplary cast includes Richard Briers as Malvolio, Frances Barber as Viola, Caroline Langrishe as Olivia, Christopher Ravenscroft as Orsino, and James Saxon as Sir Toby Belch. The original music for this production is by Paul McCartney and Pat Doyle.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Is there a Shakespeare lover who does not know this superb film? Two entire generations were introduced to Shakespeare by this expansive production, which is as fresh and dramatic and deeply touching today as when first it ushered in the contemporary style of Shakespearean production and taught us to see the vast and rich panoply beyond the lines of Shakespeare's Henry V.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Shakespeare's tragic story of love, family feud, and double suicide is a masterwork woven with conflict, crisis, and counterstroke. In this program, prime scenes are dramatized and Stratford-upon-Avon Shakespearean experts Russell Jackson and Robert Smallwood dissect them and their major topics and themes. Discussed are the play's popular appeal; the importance of the balcony scene as core to...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: In 1609, William Shakespeare published a collection of 154 sonnets, creating what is arguably the greatest lyric sequence in English literature-and at the center of this masterpiece lies a mystery that has endured for centuries. What are the identities of "the young man" and "the dark lady" to whom all but two of the sonnets allude? This moving performance brings to life the gritty reality of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This condensed adaptation of Macbeth, performed by experienced Shakespearean actors of the innovative Big Adventures Theatre Company, uses the Bard's own immortal words to tell the story of Duncan King, head of King Enterprises, and his scheming employee, Macbeth, recently awarded the coveted Cawdor contract. After Macbeth's fateful meeting with three saucy witches-not on the heath, but at the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006