Six Centuries of Verse

A sweeping introduction to English-language poetry. Featured performers: Peggy Ashcroft, Cyril Cusack, Nicholas Gecks, Julian Glover, Lee Remick, Ian Richardson, Gary Watson.

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

The Canterbury Tales showcases Chaucer's wit and brilliant characterizations. Featured performers: Gary Watson, Brian Coburn, Nicholas Gecks, Gerrard McArthur, and Ian Richardson.

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.

The "rough magic" of William Shakespeare's onstage verse. Featured performers: John Gielgud, Peggy Ashcroft, and Ralph Richardson.

Poems of carnal and spiritual love by John Donne, George Herbert, and Andrew Marvell. Featured performers: Peggy Ashcroft and Julian Glover.

The power of Milton's lyrical poetry and great epic, Paradise Lost. Featured performer: Ian Richardson.

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.

Imagination loosed in William Blake, Christopher Smart, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Wordsworth. Featured performers: Peggy Ashcroft, Julian Glover, and Ian Richardson.

Nature and human nature in William Wordsworth. Featured performer: Julian Glover.

The brief but dazzling genius of Percy Shelley, John Keats, and Lord Byron. Featured performers: Peggy Ashcroft, Nicholas Gecks, and Ian Richardson.

Love and death in Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Emily Bronte; Christina Rossetti; Robert Browning; Matthew Arnold; and A.C. Swinburne. Featured performers: Peggy Ashcroft, Julian Glover, and Ian Richardson.

The distinctly American voices of Walt Whitman, Edgar Allen Poe, Julia Ward Howe, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson. Featured performers: Stacy Keach and Lee Remick.

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.

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.

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