Henry VI, Part 2 presents a kind of story that was popular before Shakespeare began writing, tracing the fall of powerful individuals to their untimely deaths. The first to go is the Duke of Gloucester, Lord Protector of England and the most powerful man...

Fairy Tales gathers the unconventional verse dramolettes of the Swiss writer Robert Walser. Narrated in Walser's inimitable, playful language, these theatrical pieces overturn traditional notions of the fairy tale, transforming the Brothers Grimm into...

The Tragedy of King Christophe (1963, revised 1970) is recognized as the Martiniquan writer and activist Aime Cesaire’s greatest play. Set in the period of upheaval in Haiti after the assassination of Jean-Jacques Dessalines in 1806, it follows the...

I am Iphigenia, daughter of the daughter of TyndareusMy father killed meFew contemporary poets elicit such powerful responses from readers and critics as Anne Carson. The New York Times Book Review calls her work “personal, necessary, and important,”...

A foolproof, enormously fun method of teaching your children the classic works of William Shakespeare, by a Tony Award–winning playwright—now featuring two new chapters “You and your children will be transformed by the magic and mystery of Shakespeare...

Playbook.

In 1897 August Strindberg, almost fifty years old, embarked on one of the great comebacks in the history of literature. For six years he had lived as an exile in Germany, Austria, and France. Though more than twenty years earlier he had earned a place in...

Oxford School Shakespeare is an acclaimed edition especially designed for students, with accessible on-page notes and explanatory illustrations, clear background information, and rigorous but accessible scholarly credentials. King Lear is a popular text...

Tom Stoppard’s magnificent trilogy, The Coast of Utopia , was the most keenly awaited and successful drama of 2007. Now “Stoppard’s crowning achievement” (David Cote, Time Out New York ) has been collected in one volume, with an introduction by the...

Now published for the first time as a trade paperback with a new introduction and the short story on which it was based. Williams wrote: “This is a play about love in its purest terms.” It is also Williams’s robust and persuasive plea for endurance and...

“Throwing caution to the winds, I assert that A Little Night Music comes as close as possible to being the perfect romantic comedy musical.” –Brendan Gill, The New Yorker“Heady, civilized, sophisticated and enchanting. Good God! An adult musical.” –Clive...

Theater veteran and acting teacher Joanna Merlin has written the definitive guide to auditioning for stage and screen, bringing to it a valuable dual perspective. She has spent her career on both sides of the auditioning process, both as an award-winning...

The question of Shakespeare’s Catholic contexts has occupied many scholars in recent years, and their growing body of work has been enriched by revisionist accounts of the Reformation society and culture in which he lived and worked.This innovative book...

"Sparkling and combustible" (Bloomberg Businessweek), "DISGRACED rubs all kinds of unexpected raw spots with intelligence and humor" (Newsday). "In dialogue that bristles with wit and intelligence, Akhtar puts contemporary attitudes toward religion under...

Based on her award-winning blog, The Feminist Spectator, Jill Dolan presents a lively feminist perspective in reviews and essays on a variety of theatre productions, films and television series-from The Social Network and Homeland to Split Britches' Lost...

As Henry's throne is threatened by rebel forces, England is divided. The characters reflect these oppositions, with Hal and Hotspur vying for position, and Falstaff leading Hal away from his father and towards excess. During Shakespeare's lifetime Henry...

Love and marriage are the concerns of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Lucentio’s marriage to Bianca is prompted by his idealized love of an apparently ideal woman. Petruchio’s wooing of Katherine, however, is free of idealism. Petruchio takes...

In The Vanishing Christopher Pye combines psychoanalytic and cultural theory to advance an innovative interpretation of Renaissance history and subjectivity. Locating the emergence of the modern subject in the era's transition from feudalism to a modern...

“The Freud-Jones view of Hamlet is very widely known and probably this century’s most distinctive contribution to Shakespearean criticism.” ―Norman N. Holland, Director, Center for the Psychological Study of the Arts, State University of New York at...