This haunting drama of vengeance and forgiveness crowns the group of tragicomic romances that Shakespeare composed at the end of his career. Sometimes read as his farewell to the stage, the play contains some of Shakespeare's most lyrical verse. Prospero, wise Duke of Milan, has been deposed by Antonio, his wicked brother, and exiled with his daughter Miranda to a mysterious island. But Prospero possesses supernatural powers. Aided by the spirit Ariel, Prospero uses his magical art to bring his enemies under his control.

Young Claudio has fallen for the lovely heiress Hero, who also loves him. Their path to the altar looks smooth, until the evil Don John intervenes. All ends happily, thanks to his incompetent assassins and the lucky discoveries of the bungling constable Dogberry. Central to the play, one of Shakespeare's best-loved comedies, are Beatrice and Benedick, masters of wit and sworn foes to marriage - until a plot is hatched to bring them together.

Distressed by his father's death and his mother's over-hasty remarriage, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, is faced by a specter from beyond the grave bearing a grim message of murder and revenge. The young prince is driven to the edge of madness by his struggle to understand the situation he finds himself in and to do his duty. Many others, including Hamlet's beloved, the innocent Ophelia, are swept up in his tragedy.

Henry V is a study of kingship, patriotism, and heroic determination tempered by tender comedy as Henry courts Katherine, princess of France. Henry, the noble and courageous young king of England, decides to invade France, believing he has a rightful claim to the throne. At Agincourt he leads his army into battle against the powerful French forces and, against all the odds, wins a famous victory.

Shakespeare's most sophisticated comedy is a riotous tale of hopelessly unrequited passions and mistaken identity. Duke Orsino is in love with the noblewoman Olivia. She, however, has fallen for his servant Cesario, who is actually Viola, a woman disguised as a man, who loves Orsino: Confusion is rife. Meanwhile, Olivia's arrogant steward Malvolio is cruelly tricked by her uncle Sir Toby Belch, his friend Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and the maidservant Maria into believing his mistress loves him.

Othello, a Moorish general in the service of Venice, has married Desdemona, beautiful daughter of a Venetian senator. But Iago, Othello's malignant ensign, is determined to destroy their happiness. Cunningly bending Othello to his own purposes, Iago persuades the Moor that Desdemona is unfaithful to him. Tormented in a hell of jealousy, Othello moves inexorably toward the destruction of his innocent wife and himself.

King Leontes of Sicilia is seized by sudden and terrible jealousy of his wife Hermione, whom he accuses of adultery. He believes the child Hermione is bearing was fathered by his friend Polixenes, and when the baby girl is born he orders her to be taken to some wild place and left to die. Though Hermione's child escapes death, Leontes' cruelty has terrible consequences. Loss paves the way for reunion, and life and hope are born out of desolation and despair.

In the world's most celebrated and lyrical love story, the sublime devotion of two young lovers transcends their earthly fate. The noble Veronese houses of Montague and Capulet are locked in a bitter feud. When Romeo (a Montague) and Juliet (a Capulet) fall in love, they are swept up in a series of violent events and cruel twists of fortune. Despite the passion and innocence of their love, they fall victim to the enmity between their families, and their story ends in tragedy.

Sir Ian McKellen, fresh from his performance as Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, is Prospero, and heads a strong cast in Shakespeare’s last great play. The wronged duke raises a tempest to shipwreck his old opponents on his island so that he can ensure justice is done. With Emilia Fox as Miranda, Scott Handy in the pivotal role of the sprite Ariel, and Ben Owukwe as Caliban.

Rosalind, daughter of the deposed Duke Senior, is exiled from the court by her wicked uncle. Disguising herself as a young man and accompanied by her cousin Celia, she takes refuge in the Forest of Arden. In the forest Rosalind meets Orlando with whom she is in love, but her male disguise complicates matters, especially when Rosalind finds she has unwittingly attracted the shepherdess Phebe. But out of the confusion comes reconciliation and forgiveness, and all ends happily.

At the heart of this tragic history is one of Shakespeare's most noble characters, the statesman Brutus, who is caught in a devastating conflict between private affection and public duty.

Julius Caesar has become the most powerful man in the Rome. Does his power now threaten the very existence of the Republic itself? A conspiracy is hatched, one that will have fatal consequences not only for Caesar and the conspirators but for the future history of the ancient world.

A bold-spirited dog named Buck is stripped from his comfortable life on a California estate and thrust into the rugged terrain of the Klondike. There he is made a sled dog and battles to become his team's leader and the devoted servant of John Thornton, a man who shows him kindness amid the savage lawlessness of man and beast.

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn’s startling book led, almost 30 years later, to Glasnost, Perestroika, and the "Fall of the Wall". One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich brilliantly portrays a single day, any day, in the life of a single Russian soldier who was captured by the Germans in 1945 and who managed to escape a few days later. Along with millions of others, this soldier was charged with some sort of political crime, and since it was easier to confess than deny it and die, Ivan Denisovich "confessed" to "high treason" and received a sentence of 10 years in a Siberian labor camp.

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.

The most iconic love story of all time, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is an epic-scale tragedy of desire and revenge. Despite the bitter rivalry that exists between their families, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet have fallen madly in love. But when the long-running rivalry boils over into murder, the young couple must embark on a dangerous and deadly mission to preserve their love at any cost. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Calista Flockhart as Juliet.

In Othello, Shakespeare creates powerful drama from a marriage between the exotic Moor Othello and the Venetian lady Desdemona. Shakespeare builds many differences into his hero and heroine, including race, age, and cultural background. Yet most audiences believe the couple’s strong love would overcome these differences were it not for Iago, who sets out to destroy Othello.

Hamlet, which dates from 1600-1601, is the first in Shakespeare's great series of four tragedies. In writing this extraordinary play, Shakespeare effectively re-invented tragedy after an interval of roughly 2,000 years - you would have to go back to the Greek dramatists of fifth century Athens to find anything of comparable depth and maturity. This production features the voice of Anton Lesser as Hamlet along with a full cast.

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.

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.  

Beware the gossips! Lady Sneerwell and her hireling, Snake, are certainly up to no good in this timeless send-up of hypocritical manners. Thanks to their scandal-mongering, the comely Lady Teazle must fend off the slanderous barbs that have caught the ear of her elderly husband - as well as every other gossip in London! What follows is a torrent of mistaken identities and sex-crazed scheming in which the upper classes have never looked so low class.

Edith Hamilton shows us Rome through the eyes of the Romans. Plautus and Terence, Cicero and Caesar, Catullus, Horace, Virgil, and Augustus come to life in their ambitions, their work, their loves and hates. In them we see reflected a picture of Roman life very different from that fixed in our minds through schoolroom days, and far livelier.

It was an outlawed book, a text so dangerous "it could only be countered by the most vicious burnings, of books and men and women." But what book could incite such violence and bloodshed? The year is 1526. It is the age of Henry VIII and his tragic Anne Boleyn, of Martin Luther and Thomas More. The times are treacherous. The Catholic Church controls almost every aspect of English life, including access to the very Word of God. And the church will do anything to keep it that way.

Actor William Shaksper of Stratford had little education, never left England, and apparently owned no books. How could he have written the great plays and poetry attributed to him? Journalist Mark Anderson's biography offers tantalizing proof that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, courtier, spendthrift, scholar, traveler, soldier, scoundrel, and writer, was the real "Shakespeare".

'The Praise of Folly', written in Latin in 1509 and spoken by the goddess Folly (who champions a lively enjoyment of life), was a bold satire on (in the cautious contemporary environment) not only Western classical traditions but also the Catholic Church. Dedicated to More himself, Erasmus wittily challenged entrenched views in so forthright (and humanist) a style that it could have brought him in direct conflict with the papacy. Fortunately the pope, Leo X, enjoyed the humour and the challenge!

Here is a diverse and fascinating story of the Theatre, from the first tragedies and comedies of Ancient Greece to the high-tech mega-musicals of the late 20th century. It is an absorbing listen, encompassing ancient tales, medieval theatre, Commedia dell'Arte, the great dramas of the Elizabethan age, and more.