Hamlet

william shakespeare simon russell beale imogen stubbs jane lapotaire arkangel cast

Distressed by his father’s death and his mother’s hasty remarriage, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, is haunted by a ghostly courier bearing a grim message of murder and revenge. The young prince is driven to the edge of madness as he struggles 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. Shakespeare’s most famous play remains one of the greatest stories in Western literature. Performed by Simon Russell Beale, Imogen Stubbs, Jane Lapotaire, and the Arkangel cast.

The Complete Arkangel Shakespeare marks the first time in audio publishing history that all of Shakespeare’s plays have been produced by a single creative team. Based word-for-word on The Complete Pelican Shakespeare, each play is presented uncut.

Genres playsfictionschoolliteratureread for schoolpoetryhigh schooltragedyhistorical fictionclassic literature

0 pages, Audio CD

First published January 1,1601

Literary awards

grammy award,

Places

denmark,

This edition

Format: 0 pages, Audio CD
Published: March 2, 2005 by BBC Audiobooks America
ISBN: 9781932219081
ASIN: 1932219080
Language: English

Characters More characters

Horatio

Horatio is a character in William Shakespeares tragedy Hamlet.He was present on the field when King Hamlet (the father of the main character, Prince Hamlet) defeated Fortinbras (the king of Norway), and he has travelled to court from the University ...
Polonius

Polonius is a character in William Shakespeares play Hamlet. He is chief counsellor of the plays ultimate villain, Claudius, and the father of Laertes and Ophelia. Generally regarded as wrong in every judgment he makes over the course of the p...
Laertes

Laertes is a character in William Shakespeares play Hamlet. Laertes is the son of Polonius and the brother of Ophelia. In the final scene, he mortally stabs Hamlet with a poison-tipped sword to avenge the deaths of his father and sister, for which h...
Gertrude

In William Shakespeares play Hamlet, Gertrude is Hamlets mother and Queen of Denmark. Her relationship with Hamlet is somewhat turbulent, since he resents her marrying her husbands brother Claudius after he murdered the king (young Hamle...
Marcellus

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Rosencrantz And Guildenstern

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About the author

william shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI and I of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and even certain fringe theories as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminge and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".