Shakespeare: The Problem Plays: All’S Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, the Merchant of Venice, Timon of Athens, Troilus and Cressida, the Winter’s Tale(Argo Classics)

William Collins Books and Decca Records are proud to present ARGO Classics, a historic catalogue of classic prose and verse read by some of the world’s most renowned voices. Originally released as vinyl records, these expertly remastered stories are now available to download for the first time. All 6 of Shakespeare’s ‘Problem Plays’ are collected here, performed by the celebrated Marlowe Dramatic Society and Professional Players. Mystery, power, and malevolence are present in these plays, all of which subvert the happy endings that one would expect in a comedy, and the tragic effect one would expect in a tragedy, to pose deeper, moral questions that echo modern society. Performed by an incredible array of the 20th century’s greatest actors, Marlowe alumni including Roy Dotrice, Prunella Scales, Ian McKellen, Michael Hordern, and Derek Jacobi can be heard in these recordings. All of the Shakespeare plays within the ARGO Classics catalogue are performed by the Marlowe Dramatic Society and Professional Players. The Marlowe was founded in 1907 with a mission to focus on effective delivery of verse, respect the integrity of texts, and rescue neglected plays by Shakespeare’s contemporaries and the less performed plays of Shakespeare himself. The Marlowe has performed annually at Cambridge Arts Theatre since its opening in 1936 and continues to produce some of the finest actors of their generations. Thurston Dart, Professor of Music at London University and a Fellow of Jesus College Cambridge, directed the music for this production. This collection includes all 6 plays considered as Shakespeare’s Problem Plays: • All’s Well That Ends Well • Measure For Measure • The Merchant of Venice • Timon of Athens • Troilus and Cressida • The Winter’s Tale The full casts for each production in this collection can be found in the description of the individual play’s product page.

About the Author :
William Shakespeare is regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and was an eminent dramatist. His plays are perenially adapted and re-interpreted within different contexts. There is much mystery and a timeless fascination around Shakespeare's as a person and as a writer. Robert Westall is a National Curriculum recommended author Born in Leytonstone, London in 1938, Derek Jacobi always wanted to be an actor. At the age of six, Derek made his acting debut, playing both lead roles in a local library production of The Prince and the Swineherd. He won a scholarship to Cambridge, where he studied and acted alongside other future greats including Ian McKellen. His talent was quickly recognised and in 1963 he was invited to become one of the founder members of Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre. Olivier’s protégé, Derek later, in turn, became mentor to Kenneth Branagh.Derek Jacobi has worked nonstop throughout his career, starring in roles including the lead in I, Claudius, the monk detective Cadfael, Hitler in Inside The Third Reich and Francis Bacon in the controversial Love Is The Devil. But it is his numerous Shakespearean roles that have gained him worldwide recognition. He is the only actor, apart from Sir Laurence Olivier, to have the honour of holding two knighthoods, Danish and English. Michael Morpurgo is one of Britain's best loved writers for children with sales of over 35 million copies. He has written over 150 books and won many prizes, including the Smarties Prize and the Whitbread Award. In 2005 he won the Blue Peter Book Award for his novel Private Peaceful, which was also adapted into an acclaimed stage play. His subsequent book, The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips, spent an astonishing 20 weeks in the bestseller charts, and his enormous success has continued with his most recent novels, Alone on a Wide Wide Sea and Born to Run. Michael was Children's Laureate from 2003 to 2005. The charity Farms for City Children, which he founded thirty years ago with his wife Clare, has now enabled over 60,000 children to spend a week living and working down on the farm. He was knighted in 2018 for services to literature and charity. Michael Morpurgo is, in his own words, "oldish, married with three children, and a grandfather six times over." After schools in London, Sussex and Canterbury (one of which was horrible enough to inspire him to describe it obliquely in The Butterfly Lion), he went on to London University to study English and French, followed by a job in a primary school in Kent. It was there that he discovered what he wanted to do. "We had to read the children a story every day and my lot were bored by the book I was reading. I decided I had to do something and told them the kind of story I used to tell my kids – it was like a soap opera, and they focussed on it. I could see there was magic in it for them, and realised there was magic in it for me." In 1976, Michael Morpurgo and his wife, Clare, started the charity Farms For City Children which aims to relieve the poverty of experience of young children from inner city areas by providing them with a week in which they work actively and purposefully on farms in the heart of the countryside. They now have three farms – Nethercott in Devon, Treginnis in Wales and Wick in Gloucestershire. "As a teacher I realised many children had little real contact with the world around them – to them the television was real. I wanted them to experience life at first hand."