Shakespeare's gentle melancholy, enlivened by a comic sub-plot of considerable accomplishment, has long made Twelfth Night a favourite with Shakespearian audiences.
Initially described as a comedy, Shakespeare's explorations of prejudice, duty and the nature of justice make The Merchant of Venice a far darker, more alluring play.
Four plays by the revered Elizabethan dramatist tell of men driven to evil by ambition and jealousy-and of one who escapes the dangers of bad influence.
The doomed king of Thebes brings shame on his family in this iconic three-play cycle of ancient Greek literature, a foundational work of Western drama.
Considered the Greek playwright's greatest work: "e;A bawdy antiwar comedy [about] one woman's extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnesian War"e; (Classical Literature).
From Harold Bloom, one of the greatest Shakespeare scholars of our time, comes an intimate, wise, deeply compelling portrait of Cleopatraone of the Bard's most riveting and memorable female charactersin ';a masterfully perceptive reading of this seductive play's endless wonders' (Kirkus Reviews).
From Harold Bloom, one of the greatest Shakespeare scholars of our time comes ';a timely reminder of the power and possibility of words [and] the last love letter to the shaping spirit of Bloom's imagination' (front page, The New York Times Book Review) and an intimate, wise, deeply compelling portrait of FalstaffShakespeare's greatest enduring and complex comedic characters.
The authoritative edition of Troilus and Cressida from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers.
The authoritative edition of Pericles from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers.
The authoritative edition of Richard II from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers.
The authoritative edition of Henry V from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers.
The Visual Spectacle of Witchcraft in Jacobean Plays: Blackfriars Theatre is an ideal reference for early modern scholars and lecturers who seek a thorough and practical guide to stage directions in print and performance, and paying particular attention to the early texts as evidence of performance practice.
The dramatic traditions and conventions available to Shakespeare at the time he wrote King Lear were so rich and varied as to constitute an extremely resonant and complex vocabulary, one that Shakespeare fully utilized to shape his audience's response and to create the unique world of this play.
In the decades before history was institutionalized as a scholarly discipline, historical writing was practiced variously by poets, record keepers, lawyers, sermonizers, mythologizers, and philosophers.
In the decades before history was institutionalized as a scholarly discipline, historical writing was practiced variously by poets, record keepers, lawyers, sermonizers, mythologizers, and philosophers.
Set in politically unstable environments, Shakespeare's history plays--Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV and Henry V--and HBO's Western series Deadwood (2004-2006) all stand as critiques of myths of national origin, the sanitized stories we tell ourselves about how power imposes order on chaos.
