"Hear Me More Plainly"
"He was not of an age, but for all time," observed Ben Jonson of William Shakespeare almost 400 years ago, and, sure enough, here he is yet again in extravagant, plentiful form. The Arkangel Shakespeare is an immense and noble undertaking, representing the first recording in 40 years of all of the Bard's 38 plays. Published by Audio Partners and sold and distributed by their sister company, Audio Editions (www.audioeditions.com), the plays are produced by Tom Treadwell and Bill Shepherd, directed by Clive Brill, with music composed by Dominique Le Gendre. Until recently, they were available only as the complete set, and that for the daunting price of $600. Now, happily, they can be purchased separately, putting them well within range of those of us who are neither drunken sailors nor acquisition librarians. (Each play consists of two cassettes for $17.95.)
Nearly 400 actors, most of them veterans of the Royal Shakespeare Company, took part in the productions, which were specifically designed for audio format. Having listened to "Macbeth," "Hamlet" and "The Winter's Tale," I can say that these three productions, at least, have an extraordinarily intimate feel, absent the sense of portentous declamation from a stage. Indeed, the rich, preternatural sound values of the recordings create something of a mood of confidentiality among the speakers and, in soliloquy, between speaker and invisible listener. The effect is especially potent in conveying interiority, as in Hamlet's quandary of soul and Lady Macbeth's torment of guilt. In all three plays, the musical accompaniment is spare and evocative, and the occasional sound effects (the clash of battle, tumultuous weather) add their own reality. (You can listen to samples from 10 of the plays at www.audioeditions.com.)
I, for one, had never even read "The Winter's Tale," much less seen this infrequently staged late work -- the source of the celebrated stage direction, "Exit, pursued by a bear." To be sure, that command remains unuttered in the recording, but the beast itself is a brief, ravening presence, a horrid, full-throated roar on "the coast of Bohemia." We have been brought to this hypothetical location by the jealous rage of King Leontes of Sicilia (Ciaran Hinds). Having asked his wife, Hermione (Sinead Cusack), to persuade King Polixenes (Paul Jesson) to prolong a visit, he is suddenly convinced by her warm entreaties that the two are having an affair, that his friend has betrayed him and that his wife is "a bed-swerver." What else could all this "paddling palms and pinching fingers" signify?
Leontes is wrong, of course -- just as he's wrong to suspect Hermione is carrying Polixenes's child, not his. And he's wrong, too, not to believe the Delphic Oracle when it declares the queen innocent, and wrong -- and very bad -- to send the faithful Antigonus (Julian Glover) off to leave his and Hermione's newborn daughter to die in some remote place -- that very coast of Bohemia, as it happens, where the poor man is, as one gentleman puts it, "torn to pieces with a bear."
The baby, Perdita (Alison Reid), is found by a shepherd, while, back in Sicilia, Leontes's son dies; Hermione appears to be dead; and the king realizes he's committed a gaffe. Sixteen years pass, marked by Time speaking in Sir John Gielgud's sluicing, almost deliquescent and certainly unsavory voice. Thereupon wonderful things ensue, as they so often do in Shakespeare, that point to the vexatious relationship between Nature and Art. Moreover, certain parties thought to be dead are shown not to be; a statue comes to life, while among the observers there is such "casting up of eyes, holding up of hands, with countenances of such distraction that they were to be known by garment, not by favour." It's all pretty silly and most entertaining, and is made splendidly more so by an insouciant Alex Jennings playing Autolycus, a rascal, cutpurse and "snapper up of unconsidered trifles."
"Hamlet" and "Macbeth," of course, couldn't be further from silly. In these plays, the immediate quality of the recordings' sound and the players' beautiful control and emotional power bring Shakespeare's glorious language home to the listener's heart, sometimes quite frighteningly. Hamlet's stepfather, Claudius, for instance, is played by Bob Peck with a voice so redolent of cynical dominion that his invitation to young Hamlet to remain at court "in the cheer and comfort of our eye" achieves a true perfection of menace. And if you wish to feel your blood curdle, listen to the three weird sisters from "Macbeth" in the audio sample at the Web address above.
All Unquiet on the Audio Front
Audio books seem particularly suited to literature that proceeds from the unquiet mind. An excellent example is Denise Mina's Deception (www.booksontape.com, 10.5 hrs, 7 cassettes, $31.46; 8 CDs, $35.96). The novel, a psychological mystery set in Glasgow, is beautifully read by Richard Matthews (whom you may know as Robert Whitfield, reading for Blackstone Audiobooks). The story is told through the journal of Lachlan Herriott, the husband of a psychiatrist convicted of murdering a serial killer. Lachlan has given up a medical career (happily, in fact) to look after the couple's toddler and pursue -- more in intention than in deed -- literary ambitions. He now throws himself into trying to prove his wife's innocence by rummaging about in her computer files, with shocking and humiliating results. Lachlan is a bit of a loser; yet he grows on us, in his obsessional musings, his self-deprecation, his occasional comic observations, his weakness for sweets and his love for his child. Matthews's adoption of a Glaswegian accent, with its cadence of affront, is the perfect vehicle for drawing us into this unnerving, unraveling tale of betrayal and deceit.
The Inner Circle (Books on Tape: unabridged, 15 hours, 13 CDs, $49.46; 10 cassettes, $40.46), T.C. Boyle's disconcerting, compassionate novel about Alfred Kinsey and his coterie, is related by another lonely muser, this time dictating into a tape recorder a tale of bafflement, longing and devotion. Narrator Michael Kramer is the voice of John Milk, Kinsey's fictitious first assistant. He is, as his name suggests, a dull, earnest kind of guy: a loyal follower married to a woman who doesn't buy into the whole increasingly dictatorial and unseemly Kinsey package. Kramer's voice -- self-inquiring, sometimes puzzled -- perfectly conveys Milk's personality and predicament.
After those two guys, you might just want to aerate your blood with The Queen of the South, by Arturo Perez-Reverte (translated from the Spanish by Andrew Hurley; Books on Tape: unabridged, 18 hours; 15 CDs, $53.96; 12 cassettes, $44.96). This is a grand outlaw adventure filled with underworld arcana and fast-paced derring-do, ending in one hell of a shoot-up. Teresa Mendoza goes from pretty young thing attached to a drug-running daredevil to fugitive, bargirl, prisoner and, finally, to top boss of an elaborate drug-transport outfit. Lina Patel narrates the story in a faintly husky, Spanish-inflected voice. Her delivery nicely evokes the gritty renaissance heroine's temper, that of a can-do, who-cares, tomorrow-we-die melancholic who can strip down an engine or empty a SIG-Sauer before you can say "narcocorrido." Here is an audio book to turn the most tedious commute into exhilarating escape. •
Katherine A. Powers, who regularly reviews audio books for Book World, writes a literary column for the Boston Globe.
