Subverting assumptions that American musical theater is steeped in nostalgia, cheap sentiment, misogyny, and homophobia, this book shows how musicals of the 1950s and early 1960s celebrated strong women characters who defied the era's gender expectations...

This anthology concentrates on the developments in dramatic theory over the last 150 years, examining its striking instability, the new concepts which have arisen in this century, and the seemingly outdated ones which have been resurrected. Including...

This book offers students and teachers a comprehensive, readable and authoritative introduction to the study of Shakespeare, by means of nineteen newly commissioned essays. An international team of prominent scholars provide a broadly cultural approach...

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...

PericlesThe first of Shakespeare's late romances moves spectacularly from one dramatic period to another as the hero, Pericles, sails off to adventure and love, and experiences what for him is a miracle.CymbelineA favorite romantic drama, this play of a...

The Normal Heart, set during the early years of the AIDS epidemic, is the impassioned indictment of a society that allowed the plague to happen, a moving denunciation of the ignorance and fear that helped kill an entire generation. It has been produced...

The magnificent, timeless drama is the world's most famous tale of "star-crossed lovers." The young, unshakable love of Juliet and Romeo defies the feud that divides their families—the Capulets and Montagues—as their desperate need to be together, their...

This is one of Shakespeare’s darkest comedies, for the romantic story of a young man, Bassanio, who has squandered his fortune and must borrow money to woo the wealthy lady he loves is set against the more disturbing story of the Jewish moneylender...

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...

Menagerie was Williams's first popular success and launched the brilliant, if somewhat controversial, career of our pre-eminent lyric playwright. Since its premiere in Chicago in 1944, with the legendary Laurette Taylor in the role of Amanda, the play...

The ill-fated reign of King Richard II and his eventual overthrow take center stage in one of Shakespeare's greatest history plays.This title in the Signet Classics Shakespeare series includes:• An overview of William Shakespeare’s life, world, and...

Molière understood profoundly what makes us noble, pathetic, outrageous and funny, and in his splendid comedies satirized human folly to perfection. One of the best of his plays — and one of the greatest of all comedies — is The Misanthrope, first...

A triumphantly patriotic play that also casts a critical eye at war and warriors, this great epic drama depicts a charismatic ruler in a time of national struggle. The young King Henry’s victory over the French despite overwhelming odds creates a...

“A great achievement, the work of an author with an almost devout passion for good poems.”—Frank Kermode, New Republic“Criticism of the Sonnets, and by extension, critical accounts of poetry, will never be the same again.”—Tom Paulin, London Review of...

A king foolishly divides his kingdom between his scheming two oldest daughters and estranges himself from the daughter who loves him. So begins this profoundly moving and disturbing tragedy that, perhaps more than any other work in literature, challenges...

Featuring the rise of King Henry V, this history play chronicles England's underdog victory over the French at the Battle of Agincourt during the Hundred Years' War. This revised Signet Classics edition includes unique features such as: • An overview of...

"Boal and his work are marvelous examples of the post-modern situation-its problems and its opportunities. Twice exiled, Boal is 'at home' now wherever he finds himself to be. He makes a skeptical, comic, inquisitive and finally optimistic theatre...

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet C.K. Williams presents this fluent and accessible version of the Athenian playwright Euripides's great tragedy.Based on the Greek myth of the god Dionysus's punishment of King Pentheus and his mother Agave, Williams' The...