Alan Cumming Releases Shakespeare Album Today

Broadway and Hollywood crossover star Alan Cumming is bringing his MACBETH mettle to the recording studio with a new solo album of Shakespearean monologues titled THE HEAD THAT WEARS A CROWN, subtitled "Speeches For Royal Men By William Shakespeare," available now digitally and set to be released in physical form today, April 23.

THE HEAD THAT WEARS A CROWN features Cumming performing 22 of Shakespeare's most well-remembered and best-loved dramatic, tragic and comic moments, including a few that the well-regarded triple-threat thespian has famously played himself once upon a time, such as the delicious Saturninus speech as seen in Julie Taymor's visionary film version of TITUS ANRONICUS as well as a preview of his work in the one-man MACBETH in which Cumming currently stars on Broadway.

The entire list of material included on THE HEAD THAT WEARS A CROWN is as follows:

"O for a Muse of fire" (HENRY V)
"Now is the winter of our discontent" (RICHARD III)
"You common cry of curs!" (CORIOLANUS)
"I have been studying how I may compare This prison" (RICHARD II)
"Look here, upon this picture" (HAMLET)
"Mad world! mad kings! mad composition!" (KING JOHN)
"If it were done when 'tis done" (MACBETH)
"Go call the Earls of Surrey and of Warwick;" (HENRY IV Part 2)
"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;" (HENRY V)
"To be, or not to be: that is the question;" (HAMLET)
"What must the king do now?" (RICHARD II)
"Methinks I am a prophet new inspired" (RICHARD II)
"Why, lords, what wrongs are these!" (TITUS ANDRONICUS)
"O that this too too sullied flesh would melt," (HAMLET)
"Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile," (AS YOU LIKE IT)
"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow," (MACBETH)
"What's he that wishes so?" (HENRY V)
"Hear, Nature, hear!" (KING LEAR)
"How all occasions do inform against me," (HAMLET)
"Let me speak, sir," (HENRY VIII)
"If music be the food of love, play on;" (TWELFTH NIGHT)
"Now my charms are all o'erthrown," (THE TEMPEST)

More information is available at the official site here.

Cumming discusses the project and provides a preview of a few tracks in this EPK below.