Classic Plays

This compact edition of Florence Scovel Shinn's classic The Game of Life and How to Play It reveals the true you. Your words and thought images are a metaphysical power that, combined with your natural intuitive insights, can bring you prosperity, love, health, and every good thing in life.

Aesop, an ancient Greek poet who was sold into slavery in the early sixth century B.C, relied on animal stories to convey his key points to his masters in court. Aesop's Fables are now classic, memorable morality plays in which amusing animal characters drive home thought-provoking morals to generations of listeners and modern day readers. They illustrate what was fundamental to Greek culture yet their appeal lies in logic we still understand.

In The Tempest, long considered one of Shakespeare’s most lyrical plays, Prospero, a sorcerer, and his daughter, Miranda, have been stranded on an enchanted island for 12 years. When a shipwreck—caused by the eponymous tempest—brings enemies to the island, the stage is set for comedy, romance, and reconciliation.

Now, for the first time in audio, Blackstone presents seven great plays in one volume: Euripides' Medea, Shakespeare's The Tempest, Moliere's The Imaginary Invalid, Dumas' Camille, Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, Shaw's Arms and the Man, and Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. These productions illustrate the development of European drama from ancient times to the threshold of the modern theater.

From the sumptuous private drawing rooms of 18th-century Paris to the decadent estates and chateaus of the French countryside, La Marquise de Merteuil and Le Vicomte de Valmont hatch a long-distance plan of vengeance and seduction. Valmont is determined to conquer the famously pious Madame de Tourvel, whose husband is abroad on business. However, Merteuil has other plans.

Newly widowed Phyllida returns from India to visit her absent-minded father, Professor Woodbridge, only to find the house locked up and deserted. Phyllida learns that he left town four months ago having dismissed the staff, telling them he was leaving for a prolonged holiday. After some further investigation, it appears that her father has vanished. As Phyllida investigates the disappearance of her missing father, she is faced with secrets and revelations she could never have been prepared for.

Hedda and George have just returned from their honeymoon, but when her former lover Eilert appears with a brilliant new manuscript, George’s hopes for a professorship are dimmed. Hedda’s desperate dissatisfaction with her life leads to dangerous choices in this startling portrait of a woman hell-bent on destruction.

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.

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Joan Didion's Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the listener. Set in a place beyond good and evil—literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul—it remains more than three decades after its original publication a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis.

King Lear is ready to turn his realm over to his three daughters. His plan is simple: Give the biggest piece to the daughter who loves him most. But honeyed words and hubris blind Lear to the true motives of those around him, plunging king and kingdom into a hell of treachery, madness, and unspeakable acts - with consequences that reveal the worst and best in human nature.

Before Twilight and True Blood, only one vampire commanded “the children of the night". In this bloodthirsty tale of unholy terror, Count Dracula slips into Victorian London with a cargo of his native Transylvanian soil - so he can rest between victims. The city seems helpless against his frightful power, and only one man, Dr. Van Helsing, can stop the carnage. But to do this, he must uncover the vampire’s lair and pierce his heart with a wooden stake.

A collection of BBC Radio 3's iconic Shakespeare productions: six tragedies with all star casts including Michael Sheen, Juliet Stevenson, Kenneth Cranham, Corin Redgrave, Ken Stott, Geraldine James, Bill Wallis, Siân Phillips and Sophie Dahl.

In the hands of Sophocles, the master dramatist, the anguished tale of a man fated to kill his father and marry his mother retains its power to shock and move beyond any Freudian reference.

In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare creates a tragic world in which two young people fall in love. It is not simply that their families disapprove; the Montagues and the Capulets are engaged in a blood feud. This play, set in an extraordinary world, has become the quintessential story of young love. This new full-cast recording - based on the most respected edition of Shakespeare's classic - expertly produced by the Folger Theatre, is perfect for students, teachers, and the everyday listener.

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.

The Game of Life and How to Play It, published in 1925, teaches the philosophies of its author, Florence Scovel Shinn. The book holds that ignorance of, or carelessness, with the application of various 'Laws of Metaphysics' can bring about undesirable life events.

Adopting the methodology of the music charts, The Classic Hundred Poems presents the "top 100" poems of all time. The selections are illuminated by the informative notes of editor William Harmon and read by an ensemble of contemporary poets including Alfred Corn and Rita Dove.

There is now no doubt that not only is Waiting for Godot the outstanding play of the 20th century, but it is also Samuel Beckett's masterpiece. Yet it is both a popular text to be studied at school and an enigma. The scene is a country road. There is a solitary tree. It is evening. Two tramp-like figures, Vladimir and Estragon, exchange words. Pull off boots. Munch a root vegetable. Two other curious characters enter. And a boy. Time passes. It is all strange yet familiar.

By the time Shakespeare came to write Macbeth - almost certainly in 1605/1606 - he had already completed three of the great tragedies with which modern audiences are so familiar: Hamlet (1601), Othello (1603), and King Lear (1605). Each of those plays gives us an eponymous hero who is in some significant way flawed, but for whom we also inevitably feel deep sympathy, whatever his errors or crimes. But in MacBeth, Shakespeare has chosen for his tragic hero a man guilty of the most terrible crime imaginable to a Jacobean audience, that of regicide - the murder of a king.

Pavel Vassilyevitch finds himself meeting with an unwanted visitor one day after lunch, an odd woman beseeching him to give him just a half hour of his time. Madam Murashkin wants Pavel to critique a play that she has written before she sets off on a voyage, and insists it will take only a half hour of his time. Unable to deny her relentless pitiful pleas, Pavel gives in and Madam Murashkin launches into her play - which turns out to take much longer than half an hour to get through.