John Gielgud
Self - Presenter
No poster
Series SeasonSeason 1 episodes1984
Six Centuries of Verse
Season 1
No season overview available.
Episodes
Each episode has its own detail page.
Episode 1400 min1984-05-02
Chaucer - Ted Hughes
This introductory programme establishes the continuity and variety of poetry over six centuries, touching on different genres by using extracts from some of the many poems featured in the series - from Chaucer to Ted Hughes.
Episode 2400 min1984-05-09
Old English
A look at the poetry composed between the mid-seventh century and the Norman Conquest, including Julian Glover's reading of part of his own adaptation of the heroic epic Beowulf.
Episode 3400 min1984-05-16
Chaucer 1340-1400
Chaucer was the first great named poet in English. This programme focuses on The Canterbury Tales, with a reading of the introduction by Gary Watson and a detailed exploration of The Pardoner's Tale.
Episode 4400 min1984-05-23
Medieval - Elizabethan 1400-1600
This programme explores the late Medieval period leading into the Renaissance, discussing poems dealing with love, death and ambition by Skelton, Wyatt, Raleigh, Marlowe and Shakespeare.
Episode 5400 min1984-05-30
Shakespeare 1564-1616
A chronological look at Shakespeare's dramatic genius, using extracts from eight plays: Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, Cymbeline and The Tempest.
Episode 6400 min1984-06-06
Metaphysical and Devotional 1590-1670
The vigour and audacity of John Donne's love poetry is contrasted with his equally powerful devotional works. The programme then explores the work of Donne's disciple George Herbert, and Andrew Marvell.
Episode 7400 min1984-06-13
Milton 1608-1674
Milton's dedication, his humanity and his blindness are all given illustration in Ian Richardson's reading of the sonnet to his dead wife, Katharine, while his eloquence is highlighted in Richardson's spectacular readings from Paradise Lost.
Episode 8400 min1984-06-20
Restoration and Augustan 1660-1745
An overview of the great age of satire: among the works featured are Rochester's 'A Satire Against Reason and Mankind', Dryden's 'Absalom and Achitophel' and the mock-heroic 'MacFlecknoe', and Pope's masterpiece of mordant wit, 'The Dunciad'.
Episode 9400 min1984-10-21
Romantic Pioneers 1750-1805
This programme features excerpts from Jonathan Smart's 'Jubilate Agno', written in Bedlam, five poems by Blake, Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan', and Wordsworth's 'The Solitary Reaper' - a fine example of "emotion recollected in tranquillity".
Episode 10400 min1984-10-28
Wordsworth 1770-1850
'Upon Westminster Bridge', 'Daffodils', 'A Slumber Did My Spirit Steal', and an extract from Book I of 'The Prelude' are among the poems read by Julian Glover; all were filmed in Wordsworth's native Lake District.
Episode 11400 min1984-11-04
Younger Romantics
Among the poems featured are Shelly's 'Ozymandias', 'The Mask of Anarchy' and 'Adonais'; Keats' 'La Belle Dame sans Merci' and 'To Autumn'; and part of Byron's 'Don Juan'.
Episode 12400 min1984-11-11
Victorians 1837-1901
The Victorian period of richly represented with extracts of poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Emily Bronte, Christina Rossetti, Robert Browning, Matthew Arnold and Agernon Charles Swinburne.
Episode 13400 min1984-11-18
American Pioneers 1855-1910
Lee Remick reads Julia Ward Howe's 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic' along with poems by Edgar Allen Poe and Emily Dickinson; Stacy Keach reads poems by Walt Whitman and Herman Melville; John Gielgud recites Robinson's 'Miniver Cheevy'.
Episode 14400 min1984-11-25
Romantics and Realists
This programme covers verse of the late Victorian period and the early twentieth century, with poems by Thomas Hardy, Gerard Manley, A.E. Houseman and Rudyard Kipling.
Episode 15400 min1984-12-02
Early Twentieth Century 1914-1939
Wilfred Owen's 'Anthem for Doomed Youth' and Edward Thomas' 'Old Man' are among the featured poems, while Cyril Cusack reads a selection of poems by W.B. Yeats, and Ian Richardson and Isla Blair give voices to an excerpt from Eliot's 'The Waste Land'.
Episode 16400 min1984-12-09
Towards the Present 1934-1984
Anthony Hopkins reads two of Dylan Thomas' most widely known poems, and Stacy Keach reads Robert Lowell's 'For the Union Dead'; poetry by Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes close the series.
Season Media
Posters and videos for this season.
Videos
No season videos available.
Posters
No season posters available.