Shakespeare: The Comedies: Featuring All 13 of William Shakespeare’s Comedic Plays

Featuring All 13 of William Shakespeare’s Comedic Plays

By: William Shakespeare

Narrated by: Derek Jacobi, Ian McKellen, Roy Dotrice, Prunella Scales, Patrick Wymark, full cast

Length: 37 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

All 17 of Shakespeare’s timeless comedies, performed by the celebrated Marlowe Dramatic Society and Professional Players.

Young love, bawdiness and exuberance are played out in these comedies that continue to make us laugh and cheer. Performed by an incredible array of the 20th century’s greatest actors, Marlowe alumni including Ian McKellen, Diana Rigg, Derek Jacobi and Prunella Scales can be heard in these recordings.

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.

This collection includes 17 comedies:

• All’s Well That Ends Well
• As You Like It
• Comedy of Errors
• Cymbeline
• Love’s Labour’s Lost
• Measure for Measure
• The Merry Wives of Windsor
• The Merchant of Venice
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• Much Ado About Nothing
• Pericles, Prince of Tyre
• The Taming of the Shrew
• The Tempest
• Troilus and Cressida
• Twelfth Night
• The Two Gentlemen of Verona
• The Winter’s Tale

The full casts for each production in this collection can be found in the description of the individual play’s product page.

Public Domain (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Very great value

Minor issues: Missing The Two Noble Kinsmen (may never have been recorded), though it's listed on the cover. Some of the concluding remarks are on the wrong tracks (comedy of errors vs cymbeline; the last 15 seconds), though everything is properly labled. Also, some of these plays are considered under the genre of Problem Plays or late Romances: they are sold separately again in a collection of that name. The title is listed as 13 of Shakespeare's comedies, but there are 17 plays. There's an echo from the recording that might make it difficult for those with hearing trouble.

All that being said, this is a steal and the plays are well done, with some of the best talent of Britain at the time. I would not hesitate to purchase this. There is also a complete collection of all the recorded works, plays and poetry, from this publisher.

Excellent, but...

The performances were excellent for the most part, however there were issues with the feed. Some parts were either cut off or omitted, leaving gaps in the stories.

Don’t purchase!

Performance is great. But SCENES ARE ALL OUT OF ORDER for plays, and there is no way to manually select acts & scenes in order to override and listen in correct sequence.

Only buy this if you don’t mind listening to these plays non-sequentially, with scenes all jumbled up!