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 available for the first time.

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 and Patrick Stewart.

Mr Doran said he enjoyed the challenge of listening to the archive recordings and putting the CDs together.

"I felt a sense of privilege at being able to listen to performances I had heard so much about, but never imagined would be able to experience. Theatre is a transitory art. That is its essence. It vanishes into thin air. But here it has been snatched back.

"The British Library has been recording Royal Shakespeare Company productions live in performance for nearly five decades. The ones I have chosen are just a few extracts from some of my personal favourites," he said.