Every line of Shakespeare has been commented upon, revised, or deleted and reinstated many times over. His greatest contemporary, Ben Jonson, remarked that Shakespeare should have “blotted a thousand” lines himself; his greatest editor, Samuel Johnson, surveying the inability of previous editors to refrain from improving what they could not understand, attempted to restore Shakespeare’s works “to their integrity.”

Maximianno Cobra's Selection

(...) 'Look, when a painter would surpass the life,
In limning out a well-proportion'd steed,
His art with nature's workmanship at strife,
As if the dead the living should exceed;
So did this horse excel a common one
In shape, in courage, colour, pace and bone. (...)

EDUCATIONAL PODCASTS -  [ Historical Series ] - Richard Burton  

The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus - Richard Burton - Christopher Marlowe - AUDIO VERSION (1966) - HD Restored - Remastered



Directed By – Denis Comper

CAST
[Dr. Faustus] – Richard Burton
[1st Scholar] – Richard Heffer
[2nd Scholar] – Hugh Williams
[3rd Scholar] – Gwydion Thomas
[Chorus] – Robert Scott
[Cornelius] – Richard Carwardine
[Covetousness] – Phillip Hodson
[Envy] – Antony Braime
[Gluttony] – Alan Moses
[Lechery] – Jenny Moss
[Lucifer] – David McIntosh
[Mephistophilis] – Andreas Teuber
[Pride] – Nicholas Gray
[Sloth] – Patrick Barwise
[Wagner] – David Wood
[Wrath] – Michael Meneaugh


Richard Burton and members of the Oxford University Dramatic Society.
A recording based on the celebrated Oxford production of 1966.
Recorded in England.

AUDIO / IMAGE HD Restoration - Sources and/or Archive copies quality used for this restoration: poor/medium.

This recording is for educational purposes only and is covered under Fair Use doctrine - Copyright - All rights reserved to their respective owners.

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Astrid Bellamy
Role: Phrynia

What was your first exposure to Shakespeare?

I grew up in Cambridge, and when I was a child my family took me to see an open-air production of "Romeo and Juliet", put on by the Cambridge Shakespeare Festival. It was set in one of the college gardens on a summer’s evening against the backdrop of the university buildings, and I remember it had a very magical atmosphere – even if as a child, the Shakespearean language was hard to understand!

Do you have a favourite Shakespeare play, and if so, why?

HAMLET AT ELSINORE - Christopher Plummer - Michael Caine - Donald Sutherland - Robert Shaw (1964)



CAST
Christopher Plummer as Hamlet
Robert Shaw as Claudius, King of Denmark
Alec Clunes as Polonius
Michael Caine as Horatio
June Tobin as Gertrude, Queen of Denmark
Jo Maxwell Muller as Ophelia
Dyson Lovell as Laertes
Donald Sutherland as Fortinbras
Roy Kinnear as the Gravedigger


Hamlet at Elsinore is a 1964 television version of the play by William Shakespeare. Produced by the BBC in association with Danish Radio, it was shown in the U.S. on NET. Winning wide acclaim both for its performances and for being shot entirely at Helsingør (Elsinore in English), in the castle in which the play is set, it is the only version (with sound) of the play to have actually been shot at Elsinore Castle. This programme was recorded and edited on video tape (2" quadruplex) and not 'filmed'. The director was Philip Saville. It was the longest version of the play telecast in one evening up to that time, running nearly three hours. A 1947 telecast of the play had split it up into two ninety-minute halves over two weeks.

The Canadian actor Christopher Plummer took the lead role as Hamlet and earned an Emmy Award nomination for his performance. In supporting roles were Robert Shaw as Claudius, Donald Sutherland as Fortinbras, Roy Kinnear as the Gravedigger and Michael Caine, in his only Shakespearean performance, as Horatio. Sutherland, Caine and Shaw were, at the time, almost completely unknown to American audiences, and just before the presentation's first U.S. telecast, Plummer began to gain popularity in the U.S. because of his appearance in the 1965 musical film The Sound of Music.

AUDIO / IMAGE HD Restoration - Sources and/or Archive copies quality used for this restoration: damaged/medium.

This recording is for educational purposes only and is covered under Fair Use doctrine - Copyright - All rights reserved to their respective owners.

Read the unabridged Play online: [ LINK ]

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HAMLET - Grigori Kozintsev - 1964 - HD Restored - 4K



Hamlet (Russian: Гамлет, tr. Gamlet) is a 1964 Soviet drama film directed and adapted by Grigori Kozintsev, based on William Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Dmitri Shostakovich composed the Film score.

HISTORICAL SERIES - 1964 - HD Restored - 4K - audio and video
Subtitles : English - Français - Deutsch - Español - Italiano - Ελληνικά
(Synchronization adjustments in progress - thank you for your patience)

Cast
Hamlet — Innokenty Smoktunovsky
Claudius — Mikhail Nazvanov
Gertrude — Elza Radziņa
Polonius — Yuri Tolubeyev
Laertes — Stepan Oleksenko
Ophelia — Anastasiya Vertinskaya
Horatio — Vladimir Erenberg
Rosencrantz — Igor Dmitriev
Guildenstern — Vadim Medvedev
Fortinbras — Aadu Krevald

Grigori Kozintsev’s five-decades-long filmmaking career in Russia stretched from the Eisenstein-Pukovkin era fertility of the 1920s to his final film in 1970. Hamlet (Gamlet, 1964) and King Lear (Король Лир, 1970), which are now considered to be the one of the greatest renderings of Shakespeare on film.

AUDIO / IMAGE HD Restoration - Sources and/or Archive copies quality used for this restoration: good.

This recording is for educational purposes only and is covered under Fair Use doctrine - Copyright - All rights reserved to their respective owners.

Read the unabridged Play online: [ LINK ]

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