Customer Reviews

Antony and Cleopatra (Arkangel Complete Shakespeare)

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Many decades ago, there was an excellent and elegant reading of the complete text of <Antony and Cleopatra> on Decca/London labels with Richard Johnson and Mary Morris in the title roles. Then came the better-paced Shakespeare Recording Society with Anthony Quayle and Pamela Brown, recently reissued on cassettes by Harper Audio. And now we have the liveliest of them all as part of the Arkangel Complete Shakespeare Series, issued by Penguin Books this side of the Atlantic.

With the older set long out of print, the Arkangel certainly has the most appeal to modern listeners, giving as it does less a reading than the sounds of an actual production. The Antony of Ciaran Hinds does not quite come up to the poetical reading that is Quayle's, while Estelle Kohler's Queen of the Nile is a bit juicier than the more dryly delivered one of Brown. But both partners are really fabulous on their own terms and both performances are well worth having side by side in your collection.

The Arkangel set does make some strange use of regional accents. Perhaps they are strange only to American ears (viz., mine), but it continues to be a bit jarring to hear Scottish accents on Roman soldiers. On the other hand, the use of Cockney for the lower classes has become an accepted tradition on British recordings, so perhaps we can grow accustomed to anything, given enough time and understanding.

Teachers should take note, however, that classes will probably respond better to this new, more dramatized version despite a little loss in the grand old style of poetic declamation.