Publisher Description
The Second Part of Henry the Fourth continues the story with the defeat and deaths of Hotspur and his fellow conspirators. The Shakespeare Recording Society, directed by Peter Wood, presents the complete play. Performed by Dame Edith Evans, Anthony Quayle, and a Full Cast.
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About William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564–1616), English poet and dramatist of the Elizabethan and early Jacobean period, is the most widely known author in all of English literature and often considered the greatest. He was an active member of a theater company for at least twenty years, during which time he wrote many great plays. Plays were not prized as literature at the time and Shakespeare was not widely read until the middle of the eighteenth century, when a great upsurge of interest in his works began that continues today.
About the Narrators
Anthony
Quayle (1913–1989) was an English actor and director who began his career on
stage in 1931. Tall, burly, round-faced, and possessed of a powerful and
resonant voice, he was mentored early on in his career by the well-known stage
director Tyrone Guthrie. In 1936, he appeared on Broadway in The Country Wife and had roles in eight
more productions, earning a Tony Award nomination in 1956 and winning a Drama
Desk Award for Outstanding Performance in Sleuth
in 1971. From 1948 to 1956, he was director of the Shakespeare Memorial
Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, bringing into the company some of the biggest
stars of the stage, including Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud. In motion
pictures he often portrayed authority figures, such as his role in Lawrence of Arabia, or was used in
historical epics due to his classical training, such as his performance as
Cardinal Wolsey in Anne of the Thousand
Days, which earned him an Academy Award nomination. Over the years, he
consolidated his position as a Shakespearean actor, and his voice was heard as
narrator of Shakespeare classics, of The
Six Wives of Henry VIII, and on radio in anything from The Ballad of Robin Hood to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Purloined Letter.
Dame Edith Evans (1888-1976) was one of
the UK’s finest stage actresses of the twentieth century. She made her
professional debut in 1912 as Cressida in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida,
and went on to excel in the West End and on Broadway, as well as the
Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon. She was made a Dame
Commander of the British Empire in 1946 and granted three honorary degrees for
the universities of London, Oxford, and Cambridge in the early 1950s. Once
transitioning from stage to film, Dame Edith won a Golden Globe and the New
York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress for her performance in The
Whisperers, and earned three Oscar nominations throughout her career.