Six Centuries of Verse

Disc 1
Episode 1: Chaucer–Ted Hughes, 1384-1984
A sweeping introduction to English-language poetry.
Featured performers:Peggy Ashcroft, Cyril Cusack, Nicholas Gecks, Julian Glover, Lee Remick, Ian Richardson, and Gary Watson.

Episode 2: Old English
Humor, adventure, faith, and violence in Anglo-Saxon poetry, including Beowulf.
Featured performers:Nicholas Gecks and Julian Glover.

Episode 3: Chaucer, 1340-1400
The Canterbury Tales showcases Chaucer’s wit and brilliant characterizations.
Featured performers:Gary Watson, Brian Coburn, Nicholas Gecks, Gerrard McArthur, and Ian Richardson.

Episode 4: Medieval–Elizabethan, 1400-1600
Poems by John Skelton, Thomas Wyatt, Chidiock Tichborne, Thomas Nashe, Christopher Marlowe, Walter Raleigh, and William Shakespeare, ranging from simple, heartfelt sentiments to sophisticated social commentary.
Featured performers:Peggy Ashcroft, Nicholas Gecks, Julian Glover, and Ian Richardson.

Episode 5: Shakespeare, 1564-1616
The “rough magic” of William Shakespeare’s onstage verse.
Featured Performers:John Gielgud, Peggy Ashcroft, and Ralph Richardson.

Episode 6: Metaphysical and Devotional, 1590-1670
Poems of carnal and spiritual love by John Donne, George Herbert, and Andrew Marvell.
Featured performers:Peggy Ashcroft and Julian Glover.

Disc 2
Episode 7: Milton, 1608-1674
The power of Milton’s lyrical poetry and great epic, Paradise Lost.
Featured performer:Ian Richardson.

Episode 8: Restoration and Augustan, 1660-1745
Political, social, and literary satire from John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester; John Dryden; Jonathan Swift; and Alexander Pope.
Featured performers:Nicholas Gecks, Julian Glover, and Ian Richardson.

Episode 9: Romantic Pioneers, 1750-1805
Imagination loosed in William Blake, Christopher Smart, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Wordsworth.
Featured performers:Peggy Ashcroft, Julian Glover, and Ian Richardson.

Episode 10: Wordsworth, 1770-1850
Nature and human nature in William Wordsworth.
Featured performers:John Gielgud and Julian Glover.

Episode 11: Younger Romantics, 1800-1824
The brief but dazzling genius of Percy Shelley, John Keats, and Lord Byron.
Featured performers:Peggy Ashcroft, Nicholas Gecks, and Ian Richardson.

Disc 3
Episode 12: Victorians, 1837-1901
Love and death in Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Emily Brontë; Christina Rossetti; Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning; Matthew Arnold; Dante Gabriel Rossetti; and A.C. Swinburne.
Featured performers:Peggy Ashcroft, Julian Glover, and Ian Richardson.

Episode 13: American Pioneers, 1855-1910
The distinctly American voices of Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, Julia Ward Howe, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson.
Featured performers:Stacy Keach and Lee Remick.

Episode 14: Romantics and Realists, 1870-1920
Subtle emotional shadings in Thomas Hardy, Gerard Manley Hopkins, A.E. Housman, and Rudyard Kipling.
Featured performers:Peggy Ashcroft, Nicholas Gecks, Julian Glover, and Ian Richardson.

Episode 15: Early Twentieth Century, 1914-1939
The refined world-weariness of W.B. Yeats, Wilfred Owen, Edward Thomas, Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, and W.H. Auden.
Featured performers:Isla Blair, Cyril Cusack, Nicholas Gecks, Stacy Keach, and Ian Richardson.

Episode 16: Towards the Present
Energy and alienation in Dylan Thomas, Robert Lowell, Philip Larkin, and Ted Hughes.
Featured performers:Julian Glover, Anthony Hopkins, and Stacy Keach.

• 20-page viewer’s guide includes What to Listen For, questions to consider, and avenues for further learning.
• Lives of the Poets
• About the Actors

Packaging: Boxed set
Run Time: 410 minutes
Format: Full screen
Number of discs: 3
Language: English
Subtitles: N/A
Color or B&W: Color
CC: No
SDH: Yes
Region Code: 1
Aspect Ratio: 4:3
Rating: NR

"Pure delight"—Daily Mail(UK)

One of the finest Shakespearean actors of his generation, John Gielgud won an Oscar®, Emmy®, Tony®, and Grammy during his long career. An accomplished poet, writer, and teacher, Anthony Thwaite received the Order of the British Empire for his services to poetry in 1992.