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
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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
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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
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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
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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: 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