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Lear
- The Great Image of Authority
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
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Lear
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In all of literature, few antagonists have displayed the ruthless cunning and unscrupulous deceit of Iago, the antagonist to Othello. Often described as Machiavellian, Iago is a fascinating psychological specimen: at once a shrewd expert of the human mind and yet, himself a deeply troubled man.
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Falstaff is both a comic and tragic central protagonist in Shakespeare's three Henry plays. He is companion to Prince Hal (the future Henry V), who loves him, goads him, teases him, indulges his vast appetites, and commits all sorts of mischief with him. Award-winning author and esteemed professor Harold Bloom examines Falstaff with the deepest compassion and sympathy and also with unerring wisdom. He uses the relationship between Falstaff and Hal to explore the devastation of severed bonds and the heartbreak of betrayal.
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Cleopatra is one of the most famous women in history - and thanks to Shakespeare, one of the most intriguing personalities in literature. Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom delivers exhilarating clarity and invites us to look at this character as a flawed human who might be living in our world. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character: Just as we encounter one Anna Karenina or Jay Gatsby when we are in high school and college and another when we are adults, Bloom explains his shifting understanding of Cleopatra over the course of his own lifetime.
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Macbeth is one of William Shakespeare's more brilliantly populated plays and remains among the most widely read. Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom investigates Macbeth's interiority and unthinkable actions with razor-sharp insight, agility, and compassion. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character. The book also becomes an extraordinarily moving argument for literature as a path to and a measure of our humanity.
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Harold Bloom explores our Western literary tradition by concentrating on the works of twenty-six authors central to the Canon. He argues against ideology in literary criticism; he laments the loss of intellectual and aesthetic standards; he deplores multiculturalism, Marxism, feminism, neoconservatism, Afrocentrism, and the New Historicism. Insisting instead upon "the autonomy of aesthetic," Bloom places Shakespeare at the center of the Western Canon.....
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How To Read and Why
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Harold Bloom is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University, Berg Professor of English at New York University, and a former Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard. He has written more than 20 books of literary criticism. From a lifetime of writing and teaching about literature, this great scholar exhorts readers to consider the pleasures and benefits of reading well.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Like a review of my graduate English degree
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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In all of literature, few antagonists have displayed the ruthless cunning and unscrupulous deceit of Iago, the antagonist to Othello. Often described as Machiavellian, Iago is a fascinating psychological specimen: at once a shrewd expert of the human mind and yet, himself a deeply troubled man.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A Moor's Not Nice Guy - friend
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 33
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4 out of 5 stars
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Falstaff brooks no rebuttal.
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 18
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Cleopatra is one of the most famous women in history - and thanks to Shakespeare, one of the most intriguing personalities in literature. Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom delivers exhilarating clarity and invites us to look at this character as a flawed human who might be living in our world. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character: Just as we encounter one Anna Karenina or Jay Gatsby when we are in high school and college and another when we are adults, Bloom explains his shifting understanding of Cleopatra over the course of his own lifetime.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Harold Bloom is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University, Berg Professor of English at New York University, and a former Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard. He has written more than 20 books of literary criticism. From a lifetime of writing and teaching about literature, this great scholar exhorts readers to consider the pleasures and benefits of reading well.
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Like a review of my graduate English degree
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In this valedictory volume, Yale professor Harold Bloom — who for more than half a century was regarded as America's most daringly original and controversial literary critic — gives us his only book devoted entirely to the art of the novel. With his hallmark percipience, remarkable scholarship, and extraordinary devotion to sublimity, Bloom offers meditations on 48 essential works spanning the Western canon.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 23
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 20
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Harold Bloom surveys with majestic view the literature of the West from the Old Testament to Samuel Beckett. He provocatively rereads the Yahwist (or "J") writer, Jeremiah, Job, Jonah, the Illiad, the Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, the Henry IV plays, Paradise Lost, Blake's Milton, Wordsworth's Prelude, and works by Freud, Kafka, and Beckett.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Not one of Bloom's best
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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In arguably his most personal and lasting work, America's most daringly original and controversial critic gives us brief, luminous readings of more than 80 texts by canonical authors - texts he has had by heart since childhood.
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5 out of 5 stars
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What an endowment!
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The last book written by the most famous literary critic of his generation, on the sustaining power of poetry.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Culmination of Bloom’s Wisdom
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Shakespeare's seven great tragedies contain unmistakable elements that set them apart from any other plays ever written. In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare embodied in the character of Juliet the world's most impressive representation ever of a woman in love. With Julius Caesar, the great playwright produced a drama of astonishing and perpetual relevance.
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Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are unquestionably two of the greatest epic masterpieces in Western literature. Though more than 2,700 years old, their stories of brave heroics, capricious gods, and towering human emotions are vividly timeless. The Iliad can justly be called the world’s greatest war epic. The terrible and long-drawn-out siege of Troy remains one of the classic campaigns. The Odyssey chronicles the many trials and adventures Odysseus must pass through on his long journey home from the Trojan wars to his beloved wife.
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Durant lucidly describes the philosophical systems of such world-famous “monarchs of the mind” as Plato, Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Spinoza, Kant, Voltaire, and Nietzsche. Along with their ideas, he offers their flesh-and-blood biographies, placing their thoughts within their own time and place and elucidating their influence on our modern intellectual heritage. This book is packed with wisdom and wit.
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5 out of 5 stars
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At the beginning of his career, Joseph Campbell developed a lasting fascination with the cultures of the Far East, and explorations of Buddhist and Hindu philosophy later became recurring motifs in his vast body of work. However, Campbell had to wait until middle age to visit the lands that inspired him so deeply. In 1954, he took a sabbatical from his teaching position and embarked on a year-long voyage through India, Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and finally Japan.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 72
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Sometime religious outsider and social disaster, sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling, John Donne was incapable of being just one thing. In his myriad lives he was a scholar of law, a sea adventurer, a priest, an MP—and perhaps the greatest love poet in the history of the English language. Along the way he converted from Catholicism to Protestantism, was imprisoned for marrying a sixteen-year old girl without her father’s consent, struggled to feed a family of ten children, and was often ill and in pain.
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Oh but the narration…
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The author of such acclaimed books as The Hero With a Thousand Faces and The Power of Myth discusses the primitive roots of mythology, examining them in light of the most recent discoveries in archaeology, anthropology, and psychology.
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Publisher's summary
King Lear is perhaps the most poignant character in literature. The aged, abused monarch is at once the consummate figure of authority and the classic example of the fall from majesty. He is widely agreed to be William Shakespeare's most moving, tragic hero.
Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom writes about Lear with wisdom, joy, exuberance, and compassion. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character: Just as we encounter one Emma Bovary or Hamlet when we are 17 and another when we are 40, Bloom writes about his shifting understanding - over the course of his own lifetime - of Lear, so that this audiobook also explores an extraordinarily moving argument for literature as a path to and a measure of our humanity.
Bloom is mesmerizing in the classroom, wrestling with the often tragic choices Shakespeare's characters make. He delivers that kind of exhilarating intimacy, pathos, and clarity in Lear.
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 47
Sophocles was born at Colonus, near Athens in about 496 BC and is considered to be one of the premier playwrights of Greek tragedy. His stories may have been filled with strife, but Sophocles himself was prosperous and came from a good family. It is said that he was handsome, wealthy, and a highly respected citizen of Athens. During his life, he wrote over 120 plays and was instrumental in how plays would eventually be performed, including the addition of stage props.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Bad Dialogue
- By Zoe Olvera on 08-12-18
By: Sophocles
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Oedipus the King
- By: Sophocles
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 1 hr and 46 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 352
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 298
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 295
In Sophocles' tragedy, Oedipus discovers that he has been caught in his terrible destiny, unknowingly murdering his father and marrying his mother.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Superb
- By Mark on 11-24-09
By: Sophocles
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Faust
- By: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Narrated by: David McCallion
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 54
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 48
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 45
Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, is a poem, translated by Bayard Taylor, which tells the beautiful and emotional story of a man who has seen and done it all. However, despite all of his learning and education, his life still feels empty and unaccomplished. He believes wholeheartedly that there is something else out there. Faust, having exhausted all other fields of study, turns to magic for fulfillment. He summons the devil and makes a pact - that if the devil can show him something rewarding and fulfilling, he will give the devil his soul.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Misleading
- By Grant Pajak on 03-29-17
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Tales from Shakespeare
- By: Charles Lamb, Mary Lamb
- Narrated by: David McCallion
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 40
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 28
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 28
Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb is a retelling of 20 of Shakespeare’s most beloved stories. Within the pages of this book, the 19th-century authors bring to life the Shakespearean plots and characters of another age in an easy-to-understand prose of a newer generation.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A classic
- By Jacque Eddy on 10-07-19
By: Charles Lamb, and others
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Waverley
- By: Sir Walter Scott
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 17 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 137
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 118
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 117
Waverley by Sir Walter Scott is an enthralling tale of love, war and divided loyalties. Taking place during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, the novel tells the story of proud English officer Edward Waverley. After being posted to Dundee, Edward eventually befriends chieftain of the Highland Clan Mac-Ivor and falls in love with his beautiful sister Flora. He then renounces his former loyalties in order actively to support Scotland in open rebellion against the Union with England. The book depicts stunning, romantic panoramas of the Highlands.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Loved it
- By Tad Davis on 04-12-18
By: Sir Walter Scott
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The Canterbury Tales: A Retelling
- By: Peter Ackroyd
- Narrated by: Keith Moore, Toby Leonard Moore, Colin McPhillamy, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 73
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 63
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 63
Author Peter Ackroyd has won the Somerset Maugham Award, the Whitbread Novel of the Year, and the Guardian Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Based on Geoffrey Chaucer’s immortal work, this retelling of The Canterbury Tales follows a party of travelers as they tell stories amongst themselves about love and chivalry, saints and legends, travel and adventure. Through allegory, satire, and humor, the tales help pass the time during their journey.
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5 out of 5 stars
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WOW
- By Mitchell Drimmer on 02-25-15
By: Peter Ackroyd
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Don Quixote (Adapted for Modern Listeners)
- By: Miguel de Cervantes
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 4 hrs and 39 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 197
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 156
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 156
Quixotic is a word that the dictionary defines as "extravagantly chivalrous or romantic; visionary...." and that is a fitting definition, indeed, for this charming retelling of Don Quixote, the 17t- century Spanish classic by Miguel de Cervantes, now updated for the modern listener. The gallant and fragile Quixote will touch listeners, as will his faithful squire Sancho Panza and the tragically beautiful heroine of the gentle Don’s chivalries, the fair Dulcinea.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great way in
- By pxriver on 07-12-18
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Don Quixote
- By: John Ormsby - translator, Miguel de Cervantes
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 36 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,065
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 912
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 907
The most influential work of the entire Spanish literary canon and a founding work of modern Western literature, Don Quixote is also one of the greatest works ever written. Hugely entertaining but also moving at times, this episodic novel is built on the fantasy life of one Alonso Quixano, who lives with his niece and housekeeper in La Mancha. Quixano, obsessed by tales of knight errantry, renames himself ‘Don Quixote’ and with his faithful servant Sancho Panza, goes on a series of quests.
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4 out of 5 stars
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More than funny
- By Colin on 08-21-11
By: John Ormsby - translator, and others
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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- By: J. R. R. Tolkien
- Narrated by: Terry Jones
- Length: 4 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 714
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 602
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 600
A collection of three medieval English poems, translated by Tolkien for the modern-day reader and containing romance, tragedy, love, sex and honour.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An absolute delight!
- By Shannon Slee on 07-15-18
By: J. R. R. Tolkien
![The Scarlet Plague [Classic Tales Edition] Audiobook By Jack London cover art](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61FhtSpkE8L._SL320_.jpg)
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The Scarlet Plague [Classic Tales Edition]
- By: Jack London
- Narrated by: B.J. Harrison
- Length: 2 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 690
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 598
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 595
Twelve billionaires rule the United States, while those called freemen are forced to serve the rich. But that was 60 years ago, before the Scarlet Plague. In this post-apocalyptic novella, a ragged and tattered old man tells his progeny of what life was like before The Scarlet Plague appeared - and wiped out civilization as they knew it.
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5 out of 5 stars
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wonderful listen very relevant today!
- By Johnny on 12-02-17
By: Jack London
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Paradise Lost & Paradise Regained
- By: John Milton
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 16 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 865
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 728
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 732
Paradise Lost, along with its companion piece, Paradise Regained, remain the most successful attempts at Greco-Roman style epic poetry in the English language. Remarkably enough, they were written near the end of John Milton's amazing life, a bold testimonial to his mental powers in old age. And, since he had gone completely blind in 1652, 15 years prior to Paradise Lost, he dictated it and all his other works to his daughter.
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5 out of 5 stars
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SELL YOUR SHIRT FOR THIS AUDIO BOOK!
- By thomas on 04-23-11
By: John Milton
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The Talisman
- By: Sir Walter Scott
- Narrated by: David McCallion
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 39
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 36
The Talisman revolves around the Third Crusader's camp in the Holy Land whereby there exists a truce between the Christians and the Muslims. The camp, which is led by King Richard I of England (the Lion-heart) who is grievously ill, is being torn apart by tensions between rival leaders.
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5 out of 5 stars
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a simple story but a joy to listen to
- By Adele Lemmon on 08-23-19
By: Sir Walter Scott
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Tales from Shakespeare
- The Lambs' Tales (Puffin Classics)
- By: Charles Lamb, Mary Lamb, William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: Alan Cumming, Nigel Davenport, Andrew Sachs, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 61
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 50
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 49
A perfect introduction for all ages to the breadth and beauty of Shakespeare's work, Tales from Shakespearehas become a classic work in its own right. The tales bring vividly alive the power of Hamlet and Macbeth, the fun of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the drama of The Tempest. Blending detailed narrative with original dialogue and poetic language, they fully convey the wit, wisdom, and imagination of Shakespeare's magnificent plays.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Not all of the stories
- By GPH on 08-22-18
By: Charles Lamb, and others
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Macbeth is one of William Shakespeare's more brilliantly populated plays and remains among the most widely read. Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom investigates Macbeth's interiority and unthinkable actions with razor-sharp insight, agility, and compassion. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character. The book also becomes an extraordinarily moving argument for literature as a path to and a measure of our humanity.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Cleopatra: I Am Fire and Air
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 18
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Cleopatra is one of the most famous women in history - and thanks to Shakespeare, one of the most intriguing personalities in literature. Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom delivers exhilarating clarity and invites us to look at this character as a flawed human who might be living in our world. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character: Just as we encounter one Anna Karenina or Jay Gatsby when we are in high school and college and another when we are adults, Bloom explains his shifting understanding of Cleopatra over the course of his own lifetime.
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The Modern Scholar
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Shakespeare's seven great tragedies contain unmistakable elements that set them apart from any other plays ever written. In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare embodied in the character of Juliet the world's most impressive representation ever of a woman in love. With Julius Caesar, the great playwright produced a drama of astonishing and perpetual relevance.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Lowest WPM Ever
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The Modern Scholar
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 33
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Professor Raphael Shargel channels his passion for teaching and expertise as a Shakespearean scholar into this illuminative study of the Immortal Bard's 10 great comedies. Shakespeare's genius is as readily apparent in these comedies as in his timeless tragedies. Often marked by internal and external conflicts, young lovers struggling for union, mistaken identities, and intertwining plots, Shakespeare's comedies to this day reveal the master's unparalleled insight into the human condition.
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In all of literature, few antagonists have displayed the ruthless cunning and unscrupulous deceit of Iago, the antagonist to Othello. Often described as Machiavellian, Iago is a fascinating psychological specimen: at once a shrewd expert of the human mind and yet, himself a deeply troubled man.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Falstaff
- Give Me Life
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 33
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Falstaff is both a comic and tragic central protagonist in Shakespeare's three Henry plays. He is companion to Prince Hal (the future Henry V), who loves him, goads him, teases him, indulges his vast appetites, and commits all sorts of mischief with him. Award-winning author and esteemed professor Harold Bloom examines Falstaff with the deepest compassion and sympathy and also with unerring wisdom. He uses the relationship between Falstaff and Hal to explore the devastation of severed bonds and the heartbreak of betrayal.
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4 out of 5 stars
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1 out of 5 stars
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Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles
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The last book written by the most famous literary critic of his generation, on the sustaining power of poetry.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Culmination of Bloom’s Wisdom
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Tyrant
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As an aging, tenacious Elizabeth I clung to power, a talented playwright probed the social causes, the psychological roots, and the twisted consequences of tyranny. In exploring the psyche (and psychoses) of the likes of Richard III, Macbeth, Lear, Coriolanus, and the societies they rule over, Stephen Greenblatt illuminates the ways in which William Shakespeare delved into the lust for absolute power and the catastrophic consequences of its execution.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Too Close for Comfort
- By C. Gross on 05-10-18
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How To Read and Why
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Harold Bloom is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University, Berg Professor of English at New York University, and a former Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard. He has written more than 20 books of literary criticism. From a lifetime of writing and teaching about literature, this great scholar exhorts readers to consider the pleasures and benefits of reading well.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Like a review of my graduate English degree
- By Barbara on 10-01-12
By: Harold Bloom
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The Western Canon
- The Books and School of the Ages
- By: Harold Bloom
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 230
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 133
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 135
Harold Bloom explores our Western literary tradition by concentrating on the works of twenty-six authors central to the Canon. He argues against ideology in literary criticism; he laments the loss of intellectual and aesthetic standards; he deplores multiculturalism, Marxism, feminism, neoconservatism, Afrocentrism, and the New Historicism. Insisting instead upon "the autonomy of aesthetic," Bloom places Shakespeare at the center of the Western Canon.....
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5 out of 5 stars
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A personal and opinionated book on the Canon
- By Steffen on 07-23-12
By: Harold Bloom
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Will in the World
- How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 345
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 345
Award-winning author Stephen Greenblatt is one of the most influential literary thinkers in the world. An acclaimed interpreter of Shakespeare's works, his ideas have changed the way countless people approach the classics. Now Greenblatt's uniquely brilliant voice delivers a magnificent biography of the Bard himself.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Politically Motivated
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King Lear
- Arkangel Shakespeare
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This shattering drama of isolation and loss is one of the greatest tragedies in world literature. King Lear of Britain has three daughters: the hard-hearted Goneril and Regan, and the good and gentle Cordelia. He determines to divide his kingdom between them, giving the largest share to she who can say she loves him the best. Lear's tragic lack of judgment and self-knowledge is paralleled by the blindness of the loyal Gloucester who is persuaded to reject his virtuous son, Edgar, in favor of the villainous Edmund.
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5 out of 5 stars
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tragedy par excellence
- By turbopro on 08-10-16
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Possessed by Memory
- The Inward Light of Criticism
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Stephen Mendel
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
In arguably his most personal and lasting work, America's most daringly original and controversial critic gives us brief, luminous readings of more than 80 texts by canonical authors - texts he has had by heart since childhood.
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5 out of 5 stars
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What an endowment!
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By: Harold Bloom
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The Life and Writings of C. S. Lewis
- By: Louis Markos, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Louis Markos
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- Original Recording
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 516
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 453
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What can we still learn from C.S. Lewis? Find out in these 12 insightful lectures that cover the author's spiritual autobiography, novels, and his scholarly writings that reflect on pain and grief, love and friendship, prophecy and miracles, and education and mythology.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Basically a collection of sermons
- By Richard on 11-20-13
By: Louis Markos, and others
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Macbeth
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- Original Recording
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 453
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 407
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 406
Infamously known as the cursed Scottish play, Macbeth is perhaps Shakespeare’s darkest tragedy. When General Macbeth is foretold by three witches that he will one day be King of Scotland, Lady Macbeth convinces him to get rid of anyone who could stand in his way – including committing regicide. As Macbeth ascends to the throne through bloody murder, he becomes a tyrant consumed by fear and paranoia.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Might want to Read Along
- By Syd Young on 02-03-14
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A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: Simon Helberg, Glenne Headly, Hector Elizondo, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 57 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 52
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 45
Shakespeare combined his love of theater with Greek mythology and the supernatural to create what is arguably his most playfully imaginative work. From love potions to bizarre transformations to the unforgettable play-within-a-play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a non-stop delight, and remains one of the milestones of the Bard’s canon.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A very Americanized production
- By Peter Giordano on 08-05-18
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Hamlet
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: Josh Stamberg, Stephen Collins, JoBeth Williams, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 13 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 27
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 22
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Story5 out of 5 stars 22
Shakespeare’s timeless story of revenge, corruption, and murder is considered one of the greatest works in the English language. Prince Hamlet sets out to avenge his beloved father's death at the hand of his uncle Claudius - but Hamlet's spiral into grief and madness will have permanent and immutable consequences for the Kingdom of Denmark. Composed over 400 years ago, Hamlet remains one of the theater’s most studied and performed works, and is presented here in a stunning, sound-rich, full-cast recording.
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5 out of 5 stars
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One of the Best
- By Sandra on 06-08-15
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The Life of Samuel Johnson
- By: James Boswell
- Narrated by: David Timson
- Length: 51 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 136
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 123
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 118
Charming, vibrant, witty and edifying, The Life of Samuel Johnson is a work of great obsession and boundless reverence. The literary critic Samuel Johnson was 54 when he first encountered Boswell; the friendship that developed spawned one of the greatest biographies in the history of world literature. The book is full of humorous anecdote and rich characterization, and paints a vivid picture of 18th-century London, peopled by prominent personalities of the time.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful!
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By: James Boswell
What listeners say about Lear
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- C. Yuen
- 10-05-23
Bloom being Bloom
Strong Insights, but perhaps not best in an Audiobook format. Bloom is too intricate and includes too much quotation to be rolled through as an Audiobook. The Reader really needs to slow and digest at points to gather Bloom’s meaning.
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