Royal Shakespeare Company and British Library Launch First CD Set

A two CD set, The Essential Shakespeare Live, featuring scenes from Royal Shakespeare Company performances from 1959 to 2003, recorded by the British Library Sound Archive and personally selected by RSC Associate Director Gregory Doran, is made commercially available for the first time on Wednesday 26 October 2005.

The CDs cover a period of over four decades of Shakespeare performances including the earliest live Royal Shakespeare Company recording held by the British Library Sound Archive - Peter Hall’s Coriolanus with Laurence Olivier at Stratford-upon-Avon, in April, 1959, recorded by then stage manager Hal Rogers - Paul Scofield in an excerpt from Peter Brook’s King Lear at the Aldwych Theatre in 1964 and Judi Dench in All’s Well that Ends Well in 2002. Other celebrated productions included in the collection are the now legendary Wars of the Roses from 1963 and John Barton’s Richard II with Richard Pasco and Ian Richardson. Actors represented include Peggy Ashcroft, Alan Howard, Derek Jacobi, Ian McKellen, Alan Rickman, Antony Sher, Donald Sinden, Robert Stephens, Patrick Stewart, Janet Suzman, David Oyelowo and David Warner.