Product Description

Shakespeare is rightly considered the world's greatest playwright for the soaring beauty of his language, for his profound insight into human nature, for the truths he dramatized and for the realism of the characters he created. He was, and remains, a superb entertainer.

These BBC and Time-Life film productions feature some of Britain's most distinguished theatrical talent (Anthony Hopkins, Sir John Gielgud, Patrick Stewart, Derek Jacobi, Claire Bloom and more), these DVD's now are the number-one choice for continuing personal enjoyment.

This special Drama DVD Giftbox Set contains 5 of Shakespeare's most popular tragedies: *Romeo and Juliet

*Hamlet

*Macbeth

*Julius Caesar

*Othello.

The Plays contain sub-titles in English that can be turned on or off.

TV Guide Raves: "Shakespeare Would Be Amused.by the care, money, time and talent that are being lavished on the mammoth task of producing all 37 of his plays."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #43427 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-07-22
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Box set, Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Original recording remastered, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 5
• Running time: 906 minutes

Peter Nichols, NY Times - August 23, 2002
"It's a fine year for theater on DVD. Now from Ambrose Video. Comes sets of Shakespeare and Beckett."

Customer Reviews

Unbox will not fly until they change the rules
Didn't watch it. If you rent, Unbox rules, which I'm sure they had to accept from clueless Hollywood executives, require you to watch it in 30 days and once you hit play you only have 24 hours to watch it, so no previewing or watching it over a couple of days or more. Obviously, they are ridiculous rules. You can rent a DVD and watch as often as you like over multiple days. You can download a pay per view and keep it on your Tivo forever and watch it as often as you like. For the same price, Unbox is saddled with a significant competitive disadvantage. Thanks for trying, Amazon, I would be eager to use your service, and I would use it a lot, especially for kids shows, but the rules you are stuck with do not match the way the viewing public watches video. Someone doesn't want you to succeed.

OVERPRICED
To anyone who is thinking of buying more than one of these overpriced sets, consider purchasing a region-free dvd player and heading over to amazon.co.uk. Their set of all 37 plays is 100 pounds (about 200 bucks). Cyberhome sells a region-free player for around 50 dollars...do the math.

Othello wasn't a mellow fellow
William Shakespeare's tragedy of love, twisted love and deceit and treachery has been presented many times and from many angles. Thus the real task of a reviewer is to decide whether the presentation holds up to the bard's intention. This BBC production overall does so but with a couple of complains from this quarter. Anthony Hopkins plays Othello here. His reading of the role is to make Othello something of a frantic and hysterical lover and husband. These qualities make it hard to believe that, given this characterization, that Othello would be chosen to lead the military defense of Venice and its commerical interests.

Great warriors, in any case, do not necessarily have to be prudent lovers, or prudent anything else for that matter. Although it is easy to see how this Othello will come to a bad end it is hard to see that as tragic on this reading. As for the other important role, Iago, played here by Bob Hoskins, it is hard to see that even a jealousy and susceptible Othello could take his offerings on faith. There is just a little too much of the modern gangster here (a genre that Hoskins excels at) for my tastes. My read on Iago calls for more cunning and much more guile. Desdemonda is mainly window dressing here, although it is not hard to see that she would for Othello. However, as always with a full presentation of Shakespeare (3 hours 20 minutes) savor the language. That is worth the price of admission.