I have the strength to walk my own path, no matter how hard, in my search for reality, and not cling to the splendid wagon of desperate illusions. A writer of novels, short stories, folktales, plays, and essays, Zora Neale Hurston combined a hunger for research and a desire to penetrate the deepest of popular beliefs with a truly exquisite narrative talent. This illuminating biography of Hurston-a compelling story of a free spirit who achieved national...

A comedy about the greatest love story almost never told. When Will Shakespeare needs passionate inspiration to break a bad case of writer's block, a secret romance with the beautiful Lady Viola starts the words flowing like never before. There are just two things he'll have to learn about his new love: not only is she promised to marry someone else, she's successfully impersonating a man in order to play the lead in Will's latest production.

This program artfully brings together a treasury of visual resources to retrace Shakespeare's life and work. Included are the landmarks of Elizabethan London associated with his plays; depictions of the structure and operations of the Globe Theatre (including scenes from Laurence Olivier's Henry V); historical sources of the plays in art and architecture surviving today; theatrical traditions that influenced the playwright, like folk festivals and...

This condensed adaptation of Macbeth, performed by experienced Shakespearean actors of the innovative Big Adventures Theatre Company, uses the Bard's own immortal words to tell the story of Duncan King, head of King Enterprises, and his scheming employee, Macbeth, recently awarded the coveted Cawdor contract. After Macbeth's fateful meeting with three saucy witches-not on the heath, but at the Heath Nightclub-the tragedy unfolds, leading to the inevitable...

Amorous sparks fly alongside barbed repartee in this hip adaptation of Shakespeare's classic romantic comedy. A modern television news studio provides the setting, transforming Beatrice and Benedick-played by Sarah Parish and Damian Lewis-into bickering co-anchors. Meanwhile, Don, a jealous studio tech, tries to sabotage the budding love affair between Claude the sports guy and Hero the weather girl. Screenplay writer David Nicholls cleverly weaves...

Renowned restaurateur Duncan Docherty has built a gastronomic empire, but his sous-chef and maitre d' are cooking up treachery. In this modern retelling of Shakespeare's tragedy, screenwriter Peter Moffat sets the action in a 3-star London restaurant with a kitchen full of flashing blades and bloody business. James McAvoy plays Joe Macbeth, revered by his staff and relied on by Duncan-even to groom his son, Malcolm, to take over the operation. Keeley...

But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Performed at Shakespeare's Globe, London's faithful reconstruction of the open-air playhouse designed in 1599, Romeo and Juliet is arguably the best-loved of all love stories in Western literature. The play's masterful combination of lyricism, suspense, and dramatic changes of mood is dramatized by an energetic cast that stars Adetomiwa Edun-called "a Romeo...

Philip Cumbus is the King of Navarre and Michelle Terry is the Princess of France in this performance of Love's Labour's Lost at Shakespeare's Globe, London's faithful reconstruction of the open-air playhouse designed in 1599. True to the play's original Renaissance staging and costume, this production is a festive parade of every weapon in the youthful Shakespeare's comic arsenal-excruciating cross-purposes, silly impersonations, drunkenness, bust-ups,...

A brilliant video release and a particularly effective version for study of the play, with Laurence Harvey as Romeo and Susan Shentall as Juliet, with an unforgettable Flora Robson as the Nurse.

Half a tragedy centered on the mad jealousy of King Leontes and half a romance of young love triumphant and old love restored, The Winter's Tale is arguably one of Shakespeare's most captivating dramas. This highly acclaimed production by The Royal Shakespeare Company was performed at the Barbican Theatre in London. Interviews with key members of both the cast and the RSC production team offer insights into the play and its staging.