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Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare
- Narrated by: Anne Hancock
- Length: 4 hrs and 26 mins
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Publisher's summary
Famed author E. Nesbit (The Railway Children) brings 20 of Shakespeare's plays to life in language that children can understand. They are entertaining narratives that describe the Bard's main characters and often intricate plots. Each story provides a concise overview for anyone about to experience a Shakespeare play for the first time. Includes:
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- The Tempest
- As You Like It
- The Winter's Tale
- King Lear
- Twelfth Night
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Romeo and Juliet
- Pericles
- Hamlet
- Cymbeline
- Macbeth
- The Comedy of Errors
- The Merchant of Venice
- Timon of Athens
- Othello
- The Taming of the Shrew
- Measure for Measure
- Two Gentlemen of Verona
- All's Well That Ends Well
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Related to this topic
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Quixotic is a word that the dictionary defines as "extravagantly chivalrous or romantic; visionary...." and that is a fitting definition, indeed, for this charming retelling of Don Quixote, the 17t- century Spanish classic by Miguel de Cervantes, now updated for the modern listener. The gallant and fragile Quixote will touch listeners, as will his faithful squire Sancho Panza and the tragically beautiful heroine of the gentle Don’s chivalries, the fair Dulcinea.
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Great way in
- By pxriver on 07-12-18
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A Woman of No Importance
- By: Oscar Wilde
- Narrated by: Miriam Margolyes, Samantha Mathis, Rosalind Ayres, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 34 mins
- Original Recording
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Devilishly attractive Lord Illingworth is notorious for his skill as a seducer. But he is still invited to all the "best" houses, while his female conquests must hide their shame in seclusion. In this devastating drawing-room comedy, Oscar Wilde uses his celebrated wit to expose English society's narrow view of everything from sexual mores to Americans.
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Pitch Perfect Performance
- By Cheryl on 08-26-12
By: Oscar Wilde
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The Arabian Nights Entertainments
- By: Louis Rhead
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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The central core of the stories concerns a Persian king and his new bride. The king has a brother who is a vizier in faraway Samarcand, and he invites him to come to the palace for a visit. Just before his departure, the vizier is shocked to discover his wife's infidelity. Enraged, he kills her. Full of pain and grief, the vizier continues on to the court of his brother, the king. But, once arrived at his brother's palace, the vizier soon discovers the king's wife is also involved in an even more flagrant infidelity.
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A PLEASURE NOT TO BE HURRIED
- By Marvin Brown on 09-21-16
By: Louis Rhead
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Lear
- The Great Image of Authority
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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King Lear is perhaps the most poignant character in literature. The aged, abused monarch is at once the consummate figure of authority and the classic example of the fall from majesty. He is widely agreed to be William Shakespeare's most moving, tragic hero. Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom writes about Lear with wisdom, joy, exuberance, and compassion. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character.
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Bloom being Bloom
- By C. Yuen on 10-05-23
By: Harold Bloom
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Don Quixote
- By: Miguel de Cervantes, Gerald J. Davis - translator
- Narrated by: John Hanks
- Length: 20 hrs
- Unabridged
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Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, follows the adventures of Alonso Quijano, a hidalgo who reads so many chivalric novels that he decides to set out to revive chivalry, under the name Don Quixote. This is the story that a Nobel Prize Committee survey of one hundred of the world's best writers named "the greatest book of all time."
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A wonderful, magical listen
- By K on 12-01-13
By: Miguel de Cervantes, and others
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Falstaff
- Give Me Life
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 3 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Falstaff brooks no rebuttal.
- By Darwin8u on 02-06-20
By: Harold Bloom
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Figures of Earth
- A Comedy of Appearances
- By: James Branch Cabell
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Figures of Earth, subtitled "A Comedy of Appearances", follows the vicissitudes of Dom Manuel the Redeemer from his lowly swineherd origins through his unlikely elevation to the Count of Poictesme, and beyond. Published in 1921, it was the second volume of “The Biography of Manuel”, Cabell’s great work about an imaginary land that also managed to skewer the world of his upbringing as a Southern Gentleman of Virginia, and nearly everything else, besides!
What listeners say about Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Emmy
- 06-10-18
Shakespeare for Elementary Ears
E Nesbit was a wonderfully talented author for youth. Her interpretation of almost two dozen Shakespeare books are flawlessly written (and delivered!) for youth to understand, cultivating their minds until they are older to read the works as they were written.
Each ‘book’ is divided into its own chapter. At least on my Audible app.
I’m looking forward to sharing this lovely audiobook, performed by Anne Hancock, with my granddaughters one day (they’re still in diapers, so this is not quite whimsical enough for them!)
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2 people found this helpful
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- Christine Newton
- 05-23-18
Good audio summaries of Shakespeare plays BUT....
These are good, short summaries of many Shakespeare plays. There's not enough detail here to prepare a book report on any of the plays but there is enough to understand who the characters are and what happened in each story.
I often play trivia-style games containing questions such as 'Who is Rosalind's lover in such-and-such play by Shakespeare?". Shakespeare also pops up occasionally on Jeopardy (and there's nothing worse than seeing an entire Jeopardy category that you know almost nothing about, right?). This audiobook will enable you to answer those types of questions. Of course, it's also targeted to younger readers who are brand new to Shakespeare, who are studying Shakespeare in school and want a plain-English summary of what a particular play is about, or who would like to read Shakespeare on their own and can't decide which ones might be interesting to them.
Each summary reads like a short story, so we're not getting info-dumped. It's a short audiobook (20 plays summarized in 4 1/2 hours). It doesn't include his complete works, but it will be helpful for people who might recognize Shakespeare titles but don't know what the story is about.
The narration is good and clear...BUT!.... all of the stories are recorded as a SINGLE TRACK. No track/chapter breaks separating the stories. Oh my goodness, that's a HORRIBLE way to produce an audiobook like this. Good luck to you if you want to go back to the start of a specific story and listen to it again -- 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' is the only one you'll be able to find easily (since it's the very first story). I don't know who to blame, but I can easily see how that would frustrate the heck out of a lot of listeners who purchase this in audiobook format.
"I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review."
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2 people found this helpful
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- Luke
- 08-12-18
Shakespeare retold
Nesbit adapts many of Shakespeare's most famous stories into a summarized version of each play, with nearly all the original dialogue cut out and replaced with simpler language, with the added bonus of not forcing the narrator to create different voices.
Hancock does well with the narration, and while it's not a true replacement for the original plays, I enjoyed this adaptation.
**I was provided with a promotional copy, at my request, and have voluntarily left a fair and honest review**
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1 person found this helpful
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- Ad n' Audie
- 12-26-18
Surprisingly good
I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this audio book. It’s really very soothing and as such is great to fall asleep to. But more than that, this book hits on every major Shakespeare story and tells each one in a highly approachable manner. I guess you could describe the style here as reminiscent of Cliff Notes, but with an end goal of enjoyment/better understanding of each story (vs. an exam for which the original concept of Cliff Notes was created). Narrator did a great job here and despite the fact that I was very familiar with at least half of these stories I still felt like I got a lot out of reading this book. Would highly recommend to anyone interested increasing their familiarity with Shakespeare’s body of work. I was given this free review copy audio book at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
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