“Mr. Kushner’s glorious specialty is in giving theatrical life to internal points of view, in which our thoughts meld with a character’s wayward speculations or fantasies... He makes the personal and the universal, the trivial and the cosmic come...

The authoritative edition of The Tempest from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for both students and general readers.Putting romance onstage, The Tempest gives us a magician, Prospero, a former duke of Milan...

In 1953, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot premiered at a tiny avant-garde theatre in Paris; within five years, it had been translated into more than twenty languages and seen by more than a million spectators. Its startling popularity marked the...

The acclaimed Pelican Shakespeare series edited by A. R. Braunmuller and Stephen Orgel   The legendary Pelican Shakespeare series features authoritative and meticulously researched texts paired with scholarship by renowned Shakespeareans. Each book...

Three plays by the comedian of Ancient GreeceWriting at the time of political and social crisis in Athens, Aristophanes was an eloquent yet bawdy challenger to the demagogue and the sophist. The Achanians is a plea for peace set against the background of...

Few have had quite as much impact in both the academy and in the world of theatre production as Richard Schechner. For more than four decades his work has challenged conventional definitions of theatre, ritual and performance. When this seminal...

In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare creates a violent world, in which two young people fall in love. It is not simply that their families disapprove; the Montagues and the Capulets are engaged in a blood feud. In this death-filled setting, the movement from...

The complete plays of Christopher Marlowe, in which the lure of dark forces drives the shifting balances between weak and strong, sacred and profaneMarlowe's seven plays dramatise the fatal lure of potent forces, whether religious, occult or erotic. In...

The ancient myth of Oedipus, which still reverberates to this day, provided Sophocles with material for three great tragedies -- Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone -- that together recount the downfall of Oedipus, king of Thebes, his death in...

Exclusive to Penguin Classics: the definitive text of Shaw’s brilliantly witty exposure of the British class system—part of the official Bernard Shaw LibraryA Penguin ClassicShaw wrote the part of Eliza Doolittle—“an east-end dona with an apron and three...

"[Our Town] leaves us with a sense of blessing, and the unspoken but palpable command to achieve gratitude in what remains of our days on earth." -- The New Yorker Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of life in the mythical village of...

The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with...

The second part of Shakespeare's classic tale of King Henry IV picks up where Part One left off, at the Battle of Shrewsbury. It continues the story of the English monarch's final months of life, his reconciliation with his wayward heir, and his eventual...

The Signet Classics edition of William Shakespeare's vision of the Trojan War. This story of doomed love explores the relationship between Troilus, a prince of Troy, and Cressida, the daughter of a Trojan traitor. An unconvential tragedy set against the...

"W. H. Auden, poet and critic, will conduct a course on Shakespeare at the New School for Social Research beginning Wednesday. Mr. Auden has announced that in his course . . . he proposes to read all Shakespeare's plays in chronological order." The New...

Exclusive to Penguin Classics: the definitive text of Shaw’s powerful historical drama about Joan of Arc, which led him to win the Nobel Prize for Literature—part of the official Bernard Shaw Library  A Penguin Classic With Saint Joan, which distills...

The acclaimed Pelican Shakespeare series edited by A. R. Braunmuller and Stephen OrgelThe legendary Pelican Shakespeare series features authoritative and meticulously researched texts paired with scholarship by renowned Shakespeareans. Each book includes...

Exclusive to Penguin Classics: the definitive text of Shaw’s volume of “unpleasant” plays, Widowers’ Houses, The Philanderer, and Mrs. Warren’s Profession—part of the official Bernard Shaw LibraryA Penguin Classic With Plays Unpleasant, Shaw issued a...