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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: Diana Rigg is the manipulative Hedda, who will not or cannot conform to what society considers "normal" for a woman. The arrival of an ex-lover on the scene gives her the opportunity to determine someone else's fate-but of course that is not what Ibsen was writing about. With Denis Lill and Philip Bond, in the adaptation by John Osborne.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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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
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Summary: In 1925 Luigi Pirandello brought his troupe to England as part of a worldwide tour. This program re-creates one day in London as "The Einstein of the Theater" watches his plays and, away from the footlights, confronts the paradoxical nature of his life. Portions of Six Characters in Search of an Author; Henry IV; Right You Are, If You Think You Are; and The Rules of the Game are meticulously...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: For biographer Michael Holroyd, playwright George Bernard Shaw is practically an alter ego. Using archival footage and Holroyd's painstaking detective work, this intriguing program questions the extent to which Shaw's life and art fed upon each other, addressing issues including the effects of the triangle between his father, his mother, and Vandeleur Lee on his plays, as seen in Misalliance...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: This program, narrated by Ibsen biographer Michael Meyer, charts the development of Henrik Ibsen's style over four periods: his early years of failure; his epic dramas; his sociological plays, such as A Doll's House, Ghosts, and Rosmersholm; and his final plays, including Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder, and Little Eyolf, in which he dealt with the dark interior of the human soul. Televised...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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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: Henrik Ibsen scrutinized and interpreted human hearts and minds in such a manner as to prompt Sigmund Freud to create a typology based on the dramatist's principal characters. Yet the evidence of Ibsen's life argues that he himself lived with a dual nature that went largely unreconciled. This program seeks to understand the man known as "The Sphinx" by tracing his travels, examining excerpts...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Second only to Shakespeare, Henrik Ibsen is the most-performed playwright in the world. This program, as much a tribute to the art of theater as to the immortal Ibsen, reveals a perennial fascination with Norway's master playwright. Excerpts from A Doll's House, Peer Gynt, and other productions captured on film in the United States, Canada, Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Serbia, Iran,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: An intimate look inside a living time capsule, this program explores the planning and reconstruction of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, presenting a day in the working life of the unique artistic institution. The video guides viewers through the facility, painstakingly designed and built to resemble the original Elizabethan playhouse, and offers commentary from the actors, artisans, and educators...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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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
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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: Men playing the stage roles of women is as old as the history of theater; in the tradition of Kabuki, the portrayal of female characters has become a tradition of its own. This program looks at the history of Kabuki and the role of women, and looks particularly at the dynastic development of the onnagata-the female impersonator-and the intricate techniques and details by which a thoroughly...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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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
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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
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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
View online at AVOD
Summary: Winner of five Academy Awards, the International Grand Prix of Venice, the New York Film Critic's Award, and the Parents Magazine Award for Extraordinary Merit, Olivier's Hamlet is no doubt the premier teaching tool for Shakespeare classes-Olivier's breadth of view of both the protagonist and the entire play will be enjoyed again and again by the teacher, while making the text comprehensible...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: A brilliant video release and a particularly effective version for study of the play, with Laurence Harvey as Romeo and Susan Shentall as Juliet, with an unforgettable Flora Robson as the Nurse.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: This program tells the story of Shakespeare and his works. Featuring delightful dramatized extracts from some of Shakespeare's best-known plays, the program also includes memorable depictions of life in Elizabethan times. The program also features expert commentary and critical analysis by Stanley Wells, Director of the Shakespeare Institute, and Robert Smallwood, Deputy Director of the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: While King Lear has again and again been described as Shakespeare's greatest work-the tragedy in which he exhibits most fully his multitude of literary powers-it is the least read, and for many, the most difficult to analyze. In this program, key scenes are dramatized. Noted Shakespearean experts, Professors Robert Smallwood and Stanley Wells, take on the task of examining Lear's enigmatic...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: This program artfully brings together a treasury of visual resources to retrace Shakespeare's life and work. Included are the landmarks of Elizabethan London associated with his plays; depictions of the structure and operations of the Globe Theatre (including scenes from Laurence Olivier's Henry V); historical sources of the plays in art and architecture surviving today; theatrical traditions...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Long considered the world’s greatest writer, Shakespeare the man all but eludes biographers, leading some scholars to doubt they are one and the same. Filmed at salient locations around England, this program explores the four main theories of the Bard’s true identity. Professor Stanley Wells of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust defends Shakespeare’s authorship. Francis Carr and Mark Rylance,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: In this program Trevor Nunn probes the underlying dynamics of the play. He examines the psychological dynamics of Hamlet, the oedipal conflict and Hamlet's madness, feigned or real. Nunn also explores the political questions that are raised in the play. The viewer learns that Hamlet is the most coveted of all performances in the classical repertoire, because, as Nunn says, "To act Hamlet...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: Shakespeare's troubled character comes to life in this program in the capable hands of leading scholars, as they discuss the major themes of the play, its plot, and the actions of its main characters. Analyzing key scenes, scholars Russell Jackson and Stanley Wells of Stratford-upon-Avon offer insights into the underlying meaning of Hamlet's eloquent soliloquies, as well as the play's eight...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Called "the greatest Hamlet of his generation" by Guardian reviewer Robert McCrum, Scottish actor David Tennant headlines this edgy film version of the acclaimed 2008 Royal Shakespeare Company stage production. Tennant is supported by a host of gifted players-including the impeccable Patrick Stewart as Claudius and Oliver Ford Davies in an astonishing performance as a doddering yet strangely...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010