-
Falstaff
- Give Me Life
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 3 hrs and 55 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $11.17
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
Falstaff is both a comic and tragic central protagonist in Shakespeare's three Henry plays: Henry IV; Henry IV, Part One and Henry IV, Part Two; and Henry V. 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 - some innocent, some cruel. Falstaff can be lewd, funny, careless of others, a bad creditor, an unreliable friend, and in the end, devastatingly reckless in his presumption of loyalty from the new king.
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. Just as we encounter one type of Anna Karenina or Jay Gatsby when we are young adults and another when we are middle-aged, Bloom examines his own shifting understanding of Falstaff over the course of his lifetime. Ultimately we come away with a deeper appreciation of this profoundly complex character, and this "poignant work" (Publishers Weekly, starred review) as a whole becomes an extraordinarily moving argument for literature as a path to and a measure of our humanity.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Lear
- The Great Image of Authority
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Bloom being Bloom
- By C. Yuen on 10-05-23
By: Harold Bloom
-
Iago
- The Strategies of Evil
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 3 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In all of literature, few antagonists have displayed the ruthless cunning and unscrupulous deceit of Iago, the antagonist to Othello. Often described as Machiavellian, Iago is a fascinating psychological specimen: at once a shrewd expert of the human mind and yet, himself a deeply troubled man.
-
-
A Moor's Not Nice Guy - friend
- By Darwin8u on 02-13-20
By: Harold Bloom
-
Cleopatra: I Am Fire and Air
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 3 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cleopatra is one of the most famous women in history - and thanks to Shakespeare, one of the most intriguing personalities in literature. Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom delivers exhilarating clarity and invites us to look at this character as a flawed human who might be living in our world. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character: Just as we encounter one Anna Karenina or Jay Gatsby when we are in high school and college and another when we are adults, Bloom explains his shifting understanding of Cleopatra over the course of his own lifetime.
By: Harold Bloom
-
Macbeth: A Dagger of the Mind
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 2 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Macbeth is one of William Shakespeare's more brilliantly populated plays and remains among the most widely read. Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom investigates Macbeth's interiority and unthinkable actions with razor-sharp insight, agility, and compassion. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character. The book also becomes an extraordinarily moving argument for literature as a path to and a measure of our humanity.
-
-
Narrative choices at odds with text
- By Bill Bleuel on 04-23-24
By: Harold Bloom
-
The Bright Book of Life
- Novels to Read and Reread
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Stephen Mendel
- Length: 22 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this valedictory volume, Yale professor Harold Bloom — who for more than half a century was regarded as America's most daringly original and controversial literary critic — gives us his only book devoted entirely to the art of the novel. With his hallmark percipience, remarkable scholarship, and extraordinary devotion to sublimity, Bloom offers meditations on 48 essential works spanning the Western canon.
-
-
Classic Bloom, but a curious reading of him
- By J. J. Kuzma on 09-10-21
By: Harold Bloom
-
How To Read and Why
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: John McDonough
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"Information is endlessly available to us; where shall wisdom be found?" is the crucial question with which renowned literary critic Harold Bloom begins this impassioned book on the pleasures and benefits of reading well. For more than forty years, Bloom has transformed college students into lifelong readers with his unrivaled love for literature. Now, at a time when faster and easier electronic media threatens to eclipse the practice of reading, Bloom draws on his experience as critic, teacher, and prolific reader to plumb the great books for their sustaining wisdom.
-
-
Like a review of my graduate English degree
- By Barbara on 10-01-12
By: Harold Bloom
-
Lear
- The Great Image of Authority
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Bloom being Bloom
- By C. Yuen on 10-05-23
By: Harold Bloom
-
Iago
- The Strategies of Evil
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 3 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In all of literature, few antagonists have displayed the ruthless cunning and unscrupulous deceit of Iago, the antagonist to Othello. Often described as Machiavellian, Iago is a fascinating psychological specimen: at once a shrewd expert of the human mind and yet, himself a deeply troubled man.
-
-
A Moor's Not Nice Guy - friend
- By Darwin8u on 02-13-20
By: Harold Bloom
-
Cleopatra: I Am Fire and Air
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 3 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cleopatra is one of the most famous women in history - and thanks to Shakespeare, one of the most intriguing personalities in literature. Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom delivers exhilarating clarity and invites us to look at this character as a flawed human who might be living in our world. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character: Just as we encounter one Anna Karenina or Jay Gatsby when we are in high school and college and another when we are adults, Bloom explains his shifting understanding of Cleopatra over the course of his own lifetime.
By: Harold Bloom
-
Macbeth: A Dagger of the Mind
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 2 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Macbeth is one of William Shakespeare's more brilliantly populated plays and remains among the most widely read. Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom investigates Macbeth's interiority and unthinkable actions with razor-sharp insight, agility, and compassion. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character. The book also becomes an extraordinarily moving argument for literature as a path to and a measure of our humanity.
-
-
Narrative choices at odds with text
- By Bill Bleuel on 04-23-24
By: Harold Bloom
-
The Bright Book of Life
- Novels to Read and Reread
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Stephen Mendel
- Length: 22 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this valedictory volume, Yale professor Harold Bloom — who for more than half a century was regarded as America's most daringly original and controversial literary critic — gives us his only book devoted entirely to the art of the novel. With his hallmark percipience, remarkable scholarship, and extraordinary devotion to sublimity, Bloom offers meditations on 48 essential works spanning the Western canon.
-
-
Classic Bloom, but a curious reading of him
- By J. J. Kuzma on 09-10-21
By: Harold Bloom
-
How To Read and Why
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: John McDonough
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"Information is endlessly available to us; where shall wisdom be found?" is the crucial question with which renowned literary critic Harold Bloom begins this impassioned book on the pleasures and benefits of reading well. For more than forty years, Bloom has transformed college students into lifelong readers with his unrivaled love for literature. Now, at a time when faster and easier electronic media threatens to eclipse the practice of reading, Bloom draws on his experience as critic, teacher, and prolific reader to plumb the great books for their sustaining wisdom.
-
-
Like a review of my graduate English degree
- By Barbara on 10-01-12
By: Harold Bloom
-
Possessed by Memory
- The Inward Light of Criticism
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Stephen Mendel
- Length: 16 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In arguably his most personal and lasting work, America's most daringly original and controversial critic gives us brief, luminous readings of more than 80 texts by canonical authors - texts he has had by heart since childhood.
-
-
What an endowment!
- By Norman on 04-03-21
By: Harold Bloom
-
Ruin the Sacred Truths
- Poetry and Belief from the Bible to the Present
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Mort Crim
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Harold Bloom surveys with majestic view the literature of the West from the Old Testament to Samuel Beckett. He provocatively rereads the Yahwist (or "J") writer, Jeremiah, Job, Jonah, the Illiad, the Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, the Henry IV plays, Paradise Lost, Blake's Milton, Wordsworth's Prelude, and works by Freud, Kafka, and Beckett.
-
-
Not one of Bloom's best
- By Benjamin Myers on 03-31-17
By: Harold Bloom
-
The Western Canon
- The Books and School of the Ages
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: James Armstrong
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Harold Bloom explores our Western literary tradition by concentrating on the works of twenty-six authors central to the Canon. He argues against ideology in literary criticism; he laments the loss of intellectual and aesthetic standards; he deplores multiculturalism, Marxism, feminism, neoconservatism, Afrocentrism, and the New Historicism. Insisting instead upon "the autonomy of aesthetic," Bloom places Shakespeare at the center of the Western Canon.....
-
-
A personal and opinionated book on the Canon
- By Steffen on 07-23-12
By: Harold Bloom
-
Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles
- The Power of a Reader's Mind over a Universe of Death
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 20 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The last book written by the most famous literary critic of his generation, on the sustaining power of poetry.
-
-
Culmination of Bloom’s Wisdom
- By Jesse on 12-24-20
By: Harold Bloom
-
The Modern Scholar
- Shakespeare: The Seven Major Tragedies
- By: Professor Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Professor Harold Bloom
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Shakespeare's seven great tragedies contain unmistakable elements that set them apart from any other plays ever written. In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare embodied in the character of Juliet the world's most impressive representation ever of a woman in love. With Julius Caesar, the great playwright produced a drama of astonishing and perpetual relevance.
-
-
Lowest WPM Ever
- By Ronald on 11-16-11
-
The Iliad & The Odyssey
- By: Homer
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 28 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Little is known about the Ancient Greek oral poet Homer, the supposed 8th century BC author of the world-read Iliad and his later masterpiece, The Odyssey. These classic epics provided the basis for Greek education and culture throughout the classical age and formed the backbone of humane education through the birth of the Roman Empire and the spread of Christianity.
-
-
Worth the price, worth the time
- By Sam on 12-31-04
By: Homer
-
Our Oriental Heritage
- The Story of Civilization, Volume 1
- By: Will Durant
- Narrated by: Robin Field
- Length: 50 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The first volume of Will Durant's Pulitzer Prize-winning series, Our Oriental Heritage: The Story of Civilization, Volume I chronicles the early history of Egypt, the Middle East, and Asia.
-
-
Wonderful
- By Michael on 11-30-13
By: Will Durant
-
This Is Shakespeare
- By: Emma Smith
- Narrated by: Emma Smith
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A genius and prophet whose timeless works encapsulate the human condition like no other. A writer who surpassed his contemporaries in vision, originality, and literary mastery. A man who wrote like an angel, putting it all so much better than anyone else. Is this Shakespeare? Well, sort of. But it doesn't tell us the whole truth. So much of what we say about Shakespeare is either not true, or just not relevant.
-
-
Excellent and accessible listen
- By Amanda L. Hughes on 01-05-21
By: Emma Smith
-
Shakespeare
- The World as Stage
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Bill Bryson
- Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of wild supposition arranged around scant facts. With a steady hand and his trademark wit, Bill Bryson sorts through this colorful muddle to reveal the man himself.
-
-
Too Little, Too Short
- By Charles L. Burkins on 11-30-07
By: Bill Bryson
-
A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare
- 1599
- By: James Shapiro
- Narrated by: James Shapiro
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1599 was an epochal year for Shakespeare and England. During that year, Shakespeare wrote four of his most famous plays: Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and, most remarkably, Hamlet; Elizabethans sent off an army to crush an Irish rebellion, weathered an Armada threat from Spain, gambled on a fledgling East India Company, and waited to see who would succeed their aging and childless queen.
-
-
Note!--Abridged version
- By Scott on 01-05-16
By: James Shapiro
-
The Life and Writings of C. S. Lewis
- By: Louis Markos, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Louis Markos
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What can we still learn from C.S. Lewis? Find out in these 12 insightful lectures that cover the author's spiritual autobiography, novels, and his scholarly writings that reflect on pain and grief, love and friendship, prophecy and miracles, and education and mythology.
-
-
Basically a collection of sermons
- By Richard on 11-20-13
By: Louis Markos, and others
-
A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Arkangel Shakespeare
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: Amanda Root, David Harewood, Roy Hudd
- Length: 2 hrs and 18 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Oberon, King of the Fairies, uses his magic upon four runaway lovers in a midsummer wood outside Athens, chaos ensues. Who really loves whom? Meanwhile, a band of well-meaning but bungling local actors have their rehearsal sabotaged by the mischievous Puck, who bewitches their leader, Bottom, and Titania, the Fairy Queen. The result is a lively and anarchic comedy that can only be resolved by an elaborate disentangling of spells.
-
-
Shakespeare is rolling in his grave.
- By Zombie Gil 007 on 02-14-15
Related to this topic
-
Lear
- The Great Image of Authority
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Bloom being Bloom
- By C. Yuen on 10-05-23
By: Harold Bloom
-
King Lear
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: Paul Scofield, Alec McCowen, Kenneth Branagh
- Length: 3 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The tragedy of King Lear receives an outstanding performance in an all-star cast led by Britain’s senior classical actor, Paul Scofield. He is joined by Alec McCowen as Gloucester, Kenneth Branagh as The Fool, Harriet Walter as Gonerill, Sara Kestelman as Regan and Emilia Fox as Cordelia. This is the ninth recording of Shakespeare plays undertaken by Naxos AudioBooks in conjunction with Cambridge University Press, and is directed by John Tydeman. It was released to mark the 80th birthday of Paul Scofield in January 2002.
-
-
This cold night will turn us all to fools & madmen
- By Darwin8u on 11-01-17
-
King Lear
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: Paul Scofield, Rachel Roberts, Cyryl Cusak, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 5 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
I am a man more sinned against than sinning.
-
-
A true classic
- By Stanley Hauer on 07-09-08
-
Don Quixote (Adapted for Modern Listeners)
- By: Miguel de Cervantes
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 4 hrs and 39 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Great way in
- By pxriver on 07-12-18
-
Don Quixote
- By: John Ormsby - translator, Miguel de Cervantes
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 36 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The most influential work of the entire Spanish literary canon and a founding work of modern Western literature, Don Quixote is also one of the greatest works ever written. Hugely entertaining but also moving at times, this episodic novel is built on the fantasy life of one Alonso Quixano, who lives with his niece and housekeeper in La Mancha. Quixano, obsessed by tales of knight errantry, renames himself ‘Don Quixote’ and with his faithful servant Sancho Panza, goes on a series of quests.
-
-
More than funny
- By Colin on 08-21-11
By: John Ormsby - translator, and others
-
The Canterbury Tales: A Retelling
- By: Peter Ackroyd
- Narrated by: Keith Moore, Toby Leonard Moore, Colin McPhillamy, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Author Peter Ackroyd has won the Somerset Maugham Award, the Whitbread Novel of the Year, and the Guardian Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Based on Geoffrey Chaucer’s immortal work, this retelling of The Canterbury Tales follows a party of travelers as they tell stories amongst themselves about love and chivalry, saints and legends, travel and adventure. Through allegory, satire, and humor, the tales help pass the time during their journey.
-
-
WOW
- By Mitchell Drimmer on 02-25-15
By: Peter Ackroyd
-
Lear
- The Great Image of Authority
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Bloom being Bloom
- By C. Yuen on 10-05-23
By: Harold Bloom
-
King Lear
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: Paul Scofield, Alec McCowen, Kenneth Branagh
- Length: 3 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The tragedy of King Lear receives an outstanding performance in an all-star cast led by Britain’s senior classical actor, Paul Scofield. He is joined by Alec McCowen as Gloucester, Kenneth Branagh as The Fool, Harriet Walter as Gonerill, Sara Kestelman as Regan and Emilia Fox as Cordelia. This is the ninth recording of Shakespeare plays undertaken by Naxos AudioBooks in conjunction with Cambridge University Press, and is directed by John Tydeman. It was released to mark the 80th birthday of Paul Scofield in January 2002.
-
-
This cold night will turn us all to fools & madmen
- By Darwin8u on 11-01-17
-
King Lear
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: Paul Scofield, Rachel Roberts, Cyryl Cusak, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 5 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
I am a man more sinned against than sinning.
-
-
A true classic
- By Stanley Hauer on 07-09-08
-
Don Quixote (Adapted for Modern Listeners)
- By: Miguel de Cervantes
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 4 hrs and 39 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Great way in
- By pxriver on 07-12-18
-
Don Quixote
- By: John Ormsby - translator, Miguel de Cervantes
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 36 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The most influential work of the entire Spanish literary canon and a founding work of modern Western literature, Don Quixote is also one of the greatest works ever written. Hugely entertaining but also moving at times, this episodic novel is built on the fantasy life of one Alonso Quixano, who lives with his niece and housekeeper in La Mancha. Quixano, obsessed by tales of knight errantry, renames himself ‘Don Quixote’ and with his faithful servant Sancho Panza, goes on a series of quests.
-
-
More than funny
- By Colin on 08-21-11
By: John Ormsby - translator, and others
-
The Canterbury Tales: A Retelling
- By: Peter Ackroyd
- Narrated by: Keith Moore, Toby Leonard Moore, Colin McPhillamy, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Author Peter Ackroyd has won the Somerset Maugham Award, the Whitbread Novel of the Year, and the Guardian Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Based on Geoffrey Chaucer’s immortal work, this retelling of The Canterbury Tales follows a party of travelers as they tell stories amongst themselves about love and chivalry, saints and legends, travel and adventure. Through allegory, satire, and humor, the tales help pass the time during their journey.
-
-
WOW
- By Mitchell Drimmer on 02-25-15
By: Peter Ackroyd
-
Samson Agonistes
- By: John Milton
- Narrated by: David de Keyser, Philip Madoc, Matthew Morgan, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 51 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Samson Agonistes, the 'dramatic poem' by John Milton, was published in 1671, three years before the poet's death. Written in the form of a Greek tragedy, with the Chorus commenting on the action, it follows the biblical story of the blind Samson as he wreaks his revenge on the Philistines who have imprisoned him. A powerful subject, with a personal resonance for the blind Milton, it is a perfect work for the medium of audiobook where poetry and drama can be balanced equally.
-
-
Unbelievable
- By Anonymous User on 11-06-20
By: John Milton
-
Waverley
- By: Sir Walter Scott
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 17 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Waverley by Sir Walter Scott is an enthralling tale of love, war and divided loyalties. Taking place during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, the novel tells the story of proud English officer Edward Waverley. After being posted to Dundee, Edward eventually befriends chieftain of the Highland Clan Mac-Ivor and falls in love with his beautiful sister Flora. He then renounces his former loyalties in order actively to support Scotland in open rebellion against the Union with England. The book depicts stunning, romantic panoramas of the Highlands.
-
-
Loved it
- By Tad Davis on 04-12-18
By: Sir Walter Scott
-
Medea
- By: Euripides
- Narrated by: Jonathan Waters
- Length: 1 hr and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Medea is an ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and Medea and first produced in 431 BC. The plot centers on the actions of Medea, a former princess of the "barbarian" kingdom of Colchis, and the wife of Jason; she finds her position in the Greek world threatened as Jason leaves her for a Greek princess of Corinth. Medea takes vengeance on Jason by murdering Jason's new wife as well as her own children, after which she escapes to Athens to start a new life.
-
-
Great Narrator makes this story work
- By cosmitron on 08-02-18
By: Euripides
-
Gargantua and Pantagruel
- By: François Rabelais
- Narrated by: Bill Homewood
- Length: 34 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here is a grotesque and carnivalesque collection of exuberant, fantastical stories that takes us from the ancient world through to the European Renaissance. At the heart of these tall tales are the giant Gargantua and his equally seismic son, Pantagruel. Containing magical adventures, maniacal punning, slapstick humor, erudite allusions, and just about any bodily function one can think of, here is quite possibly the zaniest, most risqué book ever written.
-
-
The king of all the narrators
- By amazon on 02-13-20
-
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- By: J. R. R. Tolkien
- Narrated by: Terry Jones
- Length: 4 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A collection of three medieval English poems, translated by Tolkien for the modern-day reader and containing romance, tragedy, love, sex and honour.
-
-
An absolute delight!
- By Shannon Slee on 07-15-18
By: J. R. R. Tolkien
-
Candide (AudioGO Edition)
- By: Voltaire
- Narrated by: Jack Davenport
- Length: 3 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When first published in 1759, Candide became an instant best seller and is now regarded as one of the key texts of the Enlightenment. Voltaire’s preoccupations with evil and with various kinds of human folly and intolerance found a perfect vehicle in this philosophical tale. A master storyteller, he combined often wildly entertaining action with profoundly serious sense, parodying the traditional chivalric and oriental tales with which his public was more familiar.
-
-
Guaranteed to keep you smiling if not LOL
- By Robert on 08-09-12
By: Voltaire
-
Don Quixote
- By: Tobias Smollett - translator, Miguel de Cervantes
- Narrated by: Robert Whitfield
- Length: 36 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Don Quixote, the world's first novel and by far the best-known book in Spanish literature, was originally intended by Cervantes as a satire on traditional popular ballads, yet he also parodied the romances of chivalry. By happy coincidence he produced one of the most entertaining adventure stories of all time and, in Don Quixote and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, two of the greatest characters in fiction.
-
-
A MUST READ CLASSIC
- By Randall on 04-25-09
By: Tobias Smollett - translator, and others
-
Tales from Shakespeare
- By: Charles Lamb, Mary Lamb
- Narrated by: David McCallion
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb is a retelling of 20 of Shakespeare’s most beloved stories. Within the pages of this book, the 19th-century authors bring to life the Shakespearean plots and characters of another age in an easy-to-understand prose of a newer generation.
-
-
A classic
- By Jacque Eddy on 10-07-19
By: Charles Lamb, and others
-
The Decameron
- By: Giovanni Boccaccio
- Narrated by: Simon Russell Beale, Gunnar Cauthery, Alison Pettitt, and others
- Length: 28 hrs and 5 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Decameron is one of the greatest literary works of the Middle Ages. Ten young people have fled the terrible effects of the Black Death in Florence and, in an idyllic setting, tell a series of brilliant stories, by turns humorous, bawdy, tragic and provocative. This celebration of physical and sexual vitality is Boccaccio's answer to the sublime other-worldliness of Dante's Divine Comedy.
-
-
Not Up to the Usual Naxos Standard
- By John on 11-15-17
-
Don Quixote
- By: Miguel de Cervantes, Gerald J. Davis - translator
- Narrated by: John Hanks
- Length: 20 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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."
-
-
A wonderful, magical listen
- By K on 12-01-13
By: Miguel de Cervantes, and others
-
The Talisman
- By: Sir Walter Scott
- Narrated by: David McCallion
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Talisman revolves around the Third Crusader's camp in the Holy Land whereby there exists a truce between the Christians and the Muslims. The camp, which is led by King Richard I of England (the Lion-heart) who is grievously ill, is being torn apart by tensions between rival leaders.
-
-
a simple story but a joy to listen to
- By Adele Lemmon on 08-23-19
By: Sir Walter Scott
-
The Plays of Sophocles
- Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone
- By: Sophocles
- Narrated by: David McCallion
- Length: 5 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sophocles was born at Colonus, near Athens in about 496 BC and is considered to be one of the premier playwrights of Greek tragedy. His stories may have been filled with strife, but Sophocles himself was prosperous and came from a good family. It is said that he was handsome, wealthy, and a highly respected citizen of Athens. During his life, he wrote over 120 plays and was instrumental in how plays would eventually be performed, including the addition of stage props.
-
-
Bad Dialogue
- By Zoe Olvera on 08-12-18
By: Sophocles
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Lear
- The Great Image of Authority
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Bloom being Bloom
- By C. Yuen on 10-05-23
By: Harold Bloom
-
How To Read and Why
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: John McDonough
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"Information is endlessly available to us; where shall wisdom be found?" is the crucial question with which renowned literary critic Harold Bloom begins this impassioned book on the pleasures and benefits of reading well. For more than forty years, Bloom has transformed college students into lifelong readers with his unrivaled love for literature. Now, at a time when faster and easier electronic media threatens to eclipse the practice of reading, Bloom draws on his experience as critic, teacher, and prolific reader to plumb the great books for their sustaining wisdom.
-
-
Like a review of my graduate English degree
- By Barbara on 10-01-12
By: Harold Bloom
-
Macbeth: A Dagger of the Mind
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 2 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Macbeth is one of William Shakespeare's more brilliantly populated plays and remains among the most widely read. Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom investigates Macbeth's interiority and unthinkable actions with razor-sharp insight, agility, and compassion. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character. The book also becomes an extraordinarily moving argument for literature as a path to and a measure of our humanity.
-
-
Narrative choices at odds with text
- By Bill Bleuel on 04-23-24
By: Harold Bloom
-
Cleopatra: I Am Fire and Air
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 3 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cleopatra is one of the most famous women in history - and thanks to Shakespeare, one of the most intriguing personalities in literature. Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom delivers exhilarating clarity and invites us to look at this character as a flawed human who might be living in our world. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character: Just as we encounter one Anna Karenina or Jay Gatsby when we are in high school and college and another when we are adults, Bloom explains his shifting understanding of Cleopatra over the course of his own lifetime.
By: Harold Bloom
-
Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles
- The Power of a Reader's Mind over a Universe of Death
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 20 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The last book written by the most famous literary critic of his generation, on the sustaining power of poetry.
-
-
Culmination of Bloom’s Wisdom
- By Jesse on 12-24-20
By: Harold Bloom
-
The Modern Scholar
- Shakespeare: The Seven Major Tragedies
- By: Professor Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Professor Harold Bloom
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Shakespeare's seven great tragedies contain unmistakable elements that set them apart from any other plays ever written. In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare embodied in the character of Juliet the world's most impressive representation ever of a woman in love. With Julius Caesar, the great playwright produced a drama of astonishing and perpetual relevance.
-
-
Lowest WPM Ever
- By Ronald on 11-16-11
-
Lear
- The Great Image of Authority
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Bloom being Bloom
- By C. Yuen on 10-05-23
By: Harold Bloom
-
How To Read and Why
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: John McDonough
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"Information is endlessly available to us; where shall wisdom be found?" is the crucial question with which renowned literary critic Harold Bloom begins this impassioned book on the pleasures and benefits of reading well. For more than forty years, Bloom has transformed college students into lifelong readers with his unrivaled love for literature. Now, at a time when faster and easier electronic media threatens to eclipse the practice of reading, Bloom draws on his experience as critic, teacher, and prolific reader to plumb the great books for their sustaining wisdom.
-
-
Like a review of my graduate English degree
- By Barbara on 10-01-12
By: Harold Bloom
-
Macbeth: A Dagger of the Mind
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 2 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Macbeth is one of William Shakespeare's more brilliantly populated plays and remains among the most widely read. Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom investigates Macbeth's interiority and unthinkable actions with razor-sharp insight, agility, and compassion. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character. The book also becomes an extraordinarily moving argument for literature as a path to and a measure of our humanity.
-
-
Narrative choices at odds with text
- By Bill Bleuel on 04-23-24
By: Harold Bloom
-
Cleopatra: I Am Fire and Air
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 3 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cleopatra is one of the most famous women in history - and thanks to Shakespeare, one of the most intriguing personalities in literature. Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom delivers exhilarating clarity and invites us to look at this character as a flawed human who might be living in our world. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character: Just as we encounter one Anna Karenina or Jay Gatsby when we are in high school and college and another when we are adults, Bloom explains his shifting understanding of Cleopatra over the course of his own lifetime.
By: Harold Bloom
-
Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles
- The Power of a Reader's Mind over a Universe of Death
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 20 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The last book written by the most famous literary critic of his generation, on the sustaining power of poetry.
-
-
Culmination of Bloom’s Wisdom
- By Jesse on 12-24-20
By: Harold Bloom
-
The Modern Scholar
- Shakespeare: The Seven Major Tragedies
- By: Professor Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Professor Harold Bloom
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Shakespeare's seven great tragedies contain unmistakable elements that set them apart from any other plays ever written. In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare embodied in the character of Juliet the world's most impressive representation ever of a woman in love. With Julius Caesar, the great playwright produced a drama of astonishing and perpetual relevance.
-
-
Lowest WPM Ever
- By Ronald on 11-16-11
-
The Bright Book of Life
- Novels to Read and Reread
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Stephen Mendel
- Length: 22 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this valedictory volume, Yale professor Harold Bloom — who for more than half a century was regarded as America's most daringly original and controversial literary critic — gives us his only book devoted entirely to the art of the novel. With his hallmark percipience, remarkable scholarship, and extraordinary devotion to sublimity, Bloom offers meditations on 48 essential works spanning the Western canon.
-
-
Classic Bloom, but a curious reading of him
- By J. J. Kuzma on 09-10-21
By: Harold Bloom
-
The Modern Scholar
- Shakespeare: Ten Great Comedies
- By: Prof. Raphael Shargel
- Narrated by: Prof. Raphael Shargel
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Professor Raphael Shargel channels his passion for teaching and expertise as a Shakespearean scholar into this illuminative study of the Immortal Bard's 10 great comedies. Shakespeare's genius is as readily apparent in these comedies as in his timeless tragedies. Often marked by internal and external conflicts, young lovers struggling for union, mistaken identities, and intertwining plots, Shakespeare's comedies to this day reveal the master's unparalleled insight into the human condition.
-
Iago
- The Strategies of Evil
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 3 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In all of literature, few antagonists have displayed the ruthless cunning and unscrupulous deceit of Iago, the antagonist to Othello. Often described as Machiavellian, Iago is a fascinating psychological specimen: at once a shrewd expert of the human mind and yet, himself a deeply troubled man.
-
-
A Moor's Not Nice Guy - friend
- By Darwin8u on 02-13-20
By: Harold Bloom
-
Macbeth
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: James Marsters, Joanne Whalley, Josh Cooke, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 59 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Might want to Read Along
- By Syd Young on 02-03-14
-
Poetry
- A Very Short Introduction
- By: Bernard O'Donoghue
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
- Length: 5 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this Very Short Introduction, Bernard O'Donoghue provides a fascinating look at the many different forms of writing which have been called "poetry" - from the Greeks to the present day. As well as questioning what poetry is, he asks what poetry is for, and considers contemporary debates on its value. Is there a universality to poetry? And does it have a duty of public utility and responsibility?
-
-
Great Primer for Poetry Students
- By Drone Boy on 09-03-22
-
Hamlet
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: Frank Muller
- Length: 4 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Not sure that a modernized movie-version of Hamlet is your goblet of tea? Hear Frank Muller, the preeminent narrator of the audiobook world, play every part in arguably the best audio version of Hamlet available.
-
-
Madness in great ones must not unwatched go
- By Darwin8u on 08-14-17
-
The Western Canon
- The Books and School of the Ages
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: James Armstrong
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Harold Bloom explores our Western literary tradition by concentrating on the works of twenty-six authors central to the Canon. He argues against ideology in literary criticism; he laments the loss of intellectual and aesthetic standards; he deplores multiculturalism, Marxism, feminism, neoconservatism, Afrocentrism, and the New Historicism. Insisting instead upon "the autonomy of aesthetic," Bloom places Shakespeare at the center of the Western Canon.....
-
-
A personal and opinionated book on the Canon
- By Steffen on 07-23-12
By: Harold Bloom
-
Ruin the Sacred Truths
- Poetry and Belief from the Bible to the Present
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Mort Crim
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Harold Bloom surveys with majestic view the literature of the West from the Old Testament to Samuel Beckett. He provocatively rereads the Yahwist (or "J") writer, Jeremiah, Job, Jonah, the Illiad, the Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, the Henry IV plays, Paradise Lost, Blake's Milton, Wordsworth's Prelude, and works by Freud, Kafka, and Beckett.
-
-
Not one of Bloom's best
- By Benjamin Myers on 03-31-17
By: Harold Bloom
-
The Biggest Prison on Earth
- A History of the Occupied Territories
- By: Ilan Pappe
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Published on the 15th anniversary of the Six-Day War that culminated in the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Pappe offers a comprehensive exploration of one of the world's most prolonged and tragic conflicts. Using recently declassified archival material, Pappe analyses the motivations and strategies of the generals and politicians-and the decision-making process itself - that laid the foundation of the occupation. Pappe paints a picture of what is to all intents and purposes the world's largest "open prison".
-
-
Polemic
- By Frank on 01-21-24
By: Ilan Pappe
-
Hamlet
- By: William Shakespeare
- Narrated by: Josh Stamberg, Stephen Collins, JoBeth Williams, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 13 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Shakespeare’s timeless story of revenge, corruption, and murder is considered one of the greatest works in the English language. Prince Hamlet sets out to avenge his beloved father's death at the hand of his uncle Claudius - but Hamlet's spiral into grief and madness will have permanent and immutable consequences for the Kingdom of Denmark. Composed over 400 years ago, Hamlet remains one of the theater’s most studied and performed works, and is presented here in a stunning, sound-rich, full-cast recording.
-
-
One of the Best
- By Sandra on 06-08-15
-
The Modern Scholar
- Way with Words: Writing Rhetoric and the Art of Persuasion
- By: Professor Michael D. C. Drout
- Narrated by: Professor Michael D. C. Drout
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Esteemed professor Michael D. C. Drout brings his expertise in literary studies to the subject of rhetoric. From history-altering political speeches to friendly debates at cocktail parties, rhetoric holds the power to change opinions, spark new thoughts, and ultimately change the world.
-
-
A Very Unique Read...(J/K)
- By Jade on 06-10-09
-
The Life and Writings of C. S. Lewis
- By: Louis Markos, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Louis Markos
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What can we still learn from C.S. Lewis? Find out in these 12 insightful lectures that cover the author's spiritual autobiography, novels, and his scholarly writings that reflect on pain and grief, love and friendship, prophecy and miracles, and education and mythology.
-
-
Basically a collection of sermons
- By Richard on 11-20-13
By: Louis Markos, and others
What listeners say about Falstaff
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Darwin8u
- 02-06-20
Falstaff brooks no rebuttal.
"Falstaff brooks no rebuttal. His cascade of language blooms into a glowing radiance. He is the custodian of Shakespeare's word hoard."
- Harold Bloom, Falstaff
I know there are those that criticize Bloom’s approach to Shakespeare. He inserts himself too much into his text. He approaches Shakespeare as a poet and not necessarily as a scholar. He is no dramatist. He sees things that aren’t there and builds labyrinthine castles about Shakespeare from small, ambiguous clues.
I agree with much of it. But I love Bloom’s love for both Shakespeare and Falstaff. His book may not be perfect, but his love for Sir John is. I also love Bloom’s creativity. He might be just spinning webs and dancing with himself, but it feels like literary Jazz. If it ain’t your tune, well life is imperfect and short, so dance, watch, or drink some sack.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
7 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Bill Bleuel
- 01-20-24
Narrative choices at odds with text
I felt that the narrative choices made didn't match the critical analysis of the text.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!