検索キーワード： 古代・古典・中世の文学

Will the unlikely romance between the rough and tumble stoker, Mat Burke, and Anna Christopherson, the world-weary daughter of the captain of a coal barge, survive? Set in 1910, the timeless question of, "How does love make us grow?" is pondered. This American classic, Anna Christie by Eugene O'Neill, is a play in four acts and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1922.

The Boor (sometimes translated as The Bear) is an atypical romantic comedy by Anton Chekhov. A surly landowner visits a widow who is one of his debtors - with unexpected results.

Uncle Vanya is Anton Chekhov's 1902 tragicomedy focusing on the romantic entanglements of the residents of a declining country estate. Vanya loves Helena, the unhappily married wife of aged professor Serebrakoff. Sonia loves Dr. Astroff, but he's more interested in Helena. Serebrakoff loves only himself and is idealized by Vanya's mother, who believes him to be a genius.

Travel back in time to 16th century Denmark, as renowned vocal actor David Ian Davies introduces you to Shakespeare's timeless play, Hamlet. Filled with all of the excitement and zest you would expect from the Bard, this production is an audio treasure from beginning to end.

Miss Julie is probably the most famous play by the Swedish playwright August Strindberg, one of the founding fathers of naturalistic theater. In this claustrophobic drama, the interplay between social order and individual identity is explored in great detail. At the end the aristocratic Julie, goaded by her manipulative manservant, John, is faced with the ultimate decision: independence or annihilation.

La comedia narra los divertidos entresijos en la alta burguesía del viejo Londres, y la doble personalidad que el protagonista, Jack Worthing adopta para, por una parte lograr tener la conciencia tranquila en armonía con lo que la sociedad nos dicta, el “ser formales, ser como es debido”, y por otra parte mostrarse como realmente es, con sus instintos, sus bajezas, en definitiva con su cara más natural.

In this elegant comedy of manners, Penelope O'Farrell discovers that her husband has been having an affair with an attractive married woman. Instead of lapsing into despair, she decides to employ some cunning strategies to save her marriage.

The Three Sisters is Anton Chekhov's 1901 play about the Prosorov family, who are stuck in a provincial Russian town. The sisters - Olga, Masha, and Irina - fantasize about one day returning to Moscow. Meanwhile, their brother Andrey courts village girl Natasha, and the family socializes with the soldiers stationed nearby. Dreams, longing, and illicit love drive the action of Chekhov's comic drama.

Together with the Iliad, the Odyssey, The Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost, the Aeneid is one of the true monuments of world literature. Like all these great classics, over the centuries it has become stultified by academic formalism, and its true glory as a narrative of thrilling power and richness has become very much obscured. This new translation seeks to highlight the vigor and immediacy of Virgil's epic while still respecting the grandeur of the original language.

A magical tale of love frustrated, tested, and finally triumphant, A Midsummer Night's Dream has always been one of Shakespeare's most popular plays. It is also one of his most accessible, and its broad humor remains vivid and compelling to this day. On the serious side, as a dramatic examination of love in all its guises - romantic, conjugal, filial, parental, and patriotic - A Midsummer Night's Dream has never been surpassed.

Euripides (c. 480-406 B.C.E.) is the author of eighteen extant plays and many more only surviving in fragments. He is the youngest of the three great Athenian tragedians with Aeschylus and Sophocles. Hippolytus, bastard son of Theseus and the Amazon Hippolyta, has sworn chaste allegiance to the goddess Artemis, thus severely offending the goddess Aphrodite by failing to revere her. Aphrodite swears revenge and promises that he will die before the day is done, taking with him Queen Phaedra, wife of Theseus.

Lady Windermere's Fan is a four-act comedy by Oscar Wilde. Like many of Wilde's comedies, it bitingly satirizes the morals of Victorian society, particularly marriage. The story concerns Lady Windermere, who discovers that her husband may be having an affair with another woman. She confronts her husband but he instead invites the other woman, Mrs. Erlynne, to his wife's birthday ball. Angered by her husband's unfaithfulness, Lady Windermere leaves her husband for another lover. Or does she?

Often considered to be Ibsen's most popular play in his lifetime, The League of Youth caused fighting in the streets, with conservatives claiming it was an attack on their party and liberals claiming it was an attack on theirs! A thought-provoking comedy that's sure to feel shockingly familiar. Unusually for Ibsen, this play has a lot of humour and a more-or-less happy ending.

Rosmersholm is a play surrounding the deep and intense political and cultural change in Norway in the middle of the 1880s, a period during which the traditional ruling class were forced to relinquish their right to impose their ideals on the rest of society. We follow Johannes Rosmer, a pastor who has resigned from his position; Rebecca West, a woman who sees Rosmer's potential and believes she can help him to realize his dream of creating a world of "happy, noble people"; and Headmaster Kroll, Rosmer's former best friend.

In survey after survey, Abraham Lincoln is universally ranked as the greatest of America's presidents, setting standards for honesty, courage, compassion and ethical responsibility. John Drinkwater's play was the British poet's first theatrical success, opening in England in 1918 to surprising acclaim and making its way to Broadway in 1919, to even stronger public enthusiasm. It was produced on radio by Orson Wells on August 15, 1938, on his program, The Mercury Theater on the Air.

Louis Esson is considered to be the first great Australian dramatist. The political comedy The Time is Not Yet Ripe was first produced in 1912 and is one of his best known works. Doris, daughter of the incumbent prime minister, Sir Joseph Quiverton, has news for her father - she has just become engaged. Much to Sir Joseph's dismay her fiancé is none other than an opposing candidate in the forthcoming general election - and a revolutionary socialist to boot. Is Sir Joseph in danger of losing both his reputation and his majority in parliament?

Frank Wedekind (1864-1918) was the most controversial dramatist of his age. Most of his work focuses on the ubiquity and inevitably corrupting influence of sexual attraction. His most famous plays are the two that depict the rise, fall, and eventual gruesome death of the vampish Lulu, who, in Wedekind’s presentation, became a ghastly parody of Goethe’s “Eternal Feminine”. The first of the plays is Earth Spirit, in which Lulu marries and survives three husbands, only to face prosecution for the shooting of the third.

Purgatory is the second part of Dante's The Divine Comedy. The listener finds the Poet, with his guide Virgil, ascending the terraces of the Mount of Purgatory inhabited by those doing penance to expiate their sins on earth. There are the proud - forced to circle their terrace for eons bent double in humility; the slothful running around crying out examples of zeal and sloth; while the lustful are purged by fire.

Led by his guide Beatrice, Dante leaves the Earth behind and soars through the heavenly spheres of Paradise. In this third and final part of The Divine Comedy, Dante encounters the just rulers and holy saints of the Church. The horrors of the Inferno and the trails of Purgatory are left far behind. Ultimately, in Paradise, Dante is granted a vision of God's Heavenly court - the angels, the Blessed Virgin, and God Himself.

Charles Dickens' classic Yuletide tale is one of the most popular tales of personal redemption in world literature, and has been adapted many times for presentation on film and on stage.