Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7980 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-08-25
• Rating: Exempt
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 240 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
The BBC series In Search of Shakespeare could be the English teacher's most important ally yet. With his typical mixture of intensive research, detective work, boyish enthusiasm and popular appeal, television historian Michael Wood comes closer than anyone to bringing the Bard to life. There are some astonishing discoveries along the way, which help to give a documentary cohesion to Shakespeare's story. But Wood is never arrogant enough to claim to have pinned the playwright's character down. The ifs, buts and maybes are all part of the fascination. The man himself remains tantalisingly just out of reach, which is probably as it should be.

Instead, Wood takes us on an exhilarating journey through Elizabethan and Jacobean England, building a picture of his subject through painstaking reference to the climate of the age: a police state in which Shakespeare's family was devastated by the persecution of Catholics. Social, familial and political influences are all unravelled and pieced together, counterpointed with scenes from the plays--RSC actors conveniently to hand--and the life and times of the travelling actor and playwright are evoked in front of our eyes, becoming tangible and relevant.

Wood gives us the chance to consider the plays in context, products of a great mind living in interesting times, rather than in academic isolation. It's a compelling tale, full of bloody danger, sex, celebrity and social history, and densely packed with layers of detail. Wood's great gift is to tell it in such an accessible way and without the sense of superiority that some of his peers bring to popular history. --Piers Ford

DVD Description
Complete four part series exploring the life of the world's greatest and most famous writer. Presenter-led, mixing travel, adventure, live action interviews and specially shot documentary and live action sequences with the RSC on the road.

A history series - it focuses not on the plays, but on the history and sets the life of the poet in the extraordinary times in which he lived. We are introduced to the dark world of Queen Elizabeth's police state - a time of surveillance, militarism and foreign wars. We are reminded that Shakespeare lived through the Spanish Armada, the Gunpowder Plot, the colonisation of the New World and the beginnings of British power in America. But most importantly Shakespeare also lived through England’s Cultural Revolution: an enforced split with the old medieval English spirit world which was to lead the English people into a brave new Protestant future. A split which defined Shakespeare’s life -and our modern world.

Running time: 240 mins approx.

Special Features
Previously unseen footage
English SDH subtitles
Dolby Digital stereo
16:9

Customer Reviews

Reason for going multi-Region in US!
I never had the pleasure or even the opportunity to view this series on TV. Reading the reviews of the show and being a Shakespeare addist, I knew I had to see this, had to own the set. What with the new multi-region player (bought primarily for this very DVD) and the discs and the postage, this must have cost me $150. Well worth the price! I sat right down and watched it and in 2 sessions, had seen it all.

Beat out my Shakespeare 101 classes at university hands down for interest and content! Not only was the information exciting and (some) new (and perhaps speculative), but the host was engaging, the photography stunning (I am decided I MUST go to England next year!) and the locations fascinating.

You really do owe this to yourself if you have ANY interest in the Bard. If you're in the UK you can own it for pennies on the dollar (shillings on the pound?) than my costs. Highest accolades!

The Complete Shakey
There is one thing that we can be certain of Micheal Wood has never produced a dull or uninteresting series.His books on Insearch of The Doomesday Book and Insearch of the Darkages are timeless classics sadly missing on either video and dvd.

To be given your seventh BBc series you can be sure it is quality and appealing to a mass market.Most people are turned off by the works of Shakespeare simply because they had it thrust down them in school and prabably found it booring.

Michael actually visits the very classroom at Stratford where the young William attended and follows his known whereabouts throughout the country chronicling his huge rise to fame.

There are few series as well researched as this one with Woods accademic background shinning through.When someone like him approaches a subject as interesting as this one you are guaranteed of top class entertainment.

This series like all of Woods starts with when Shakespeare was born and into what kind of family background.Remember this is late 16century England with the struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism.

More relevant is that Christopher Marlowe was the biggest playwrite around but when Shakespeare began his rise to fame he outsold Marlowe by a huge margin.Wood takes us to actual public houses with connections to Shakespeare,one in particular that Shakespeare actually performed at and had sell out shows grossing fabulous boxoffice takings.

This series takes us into the seedier underworld of Elizabethan society and also follows around literally The Royal Shakespeare during their rehersals and various plays.
In effect this very interesting series tells us a great deal about Elizabethan life and how Shakespeare became its major celebrity.

You prabably think by taking the time to read my revue its just another boring English Literature lesson but if you want to see one of the most interesting accounts of Shakespeares life then you most certainly will find Michael Woods series a very interesting four hours unlike my revue which has prabably bored you to tears. SORRY

Splendid stuff: Michael Wood is the thinking woman's crumpet.
The peerless Dr. Wood (I assume he's got a Ph.D) was my sixth form pin up twenty five years ago when he began his BBC 'In Search of' series. He's done it again with a passionate and breathless recce round Stratford, Lancashire and London. Shakespeare's underground Catholicism is thumped home a fair bit, but the whole spirit of place thing, in the darkened Elizabethan rooms that another reviewer mentioned, is very very well done. Also, one tends not to hear much about Shakespeare's dalliances with the underworld, and with the hitherto unreported black community in Elizabethan London, and also his father's rise and fall, but it is all here and incredibly well done. I like the interspersing with RSC moments, performed in unusual but very Shakespearean locations. The only bit I didn't like was the assumption by one of the people interviewed that Shakespeare was a Brummie, or the inference that he spoke like Lenny Henry from Dudley in the Black Country. I am Warwickshire born and bred, and can assure you that the good people of Stratford upon Avon are not Brummies, nor are they from the Black Country. Warwickshire has a multitude of its own accents, thank you, without having to borrow from the neighbouring West Midlands, which didn't actually exist in its present form when Shakespeare trod the boards.

Altogether, though, an excellent piece of work by the enthusiastic and sexy Dr. Wood.