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"Blanche DuBois, a haggard and fragile southern beauty finds her pathetic last grasp at happiness cruelly destroyed in large part by her brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski." "A study of sexual frustration, violence, and aberration, set in New Orleans, in which Blanche Dubois' fantasies of refinement and grandeur are brutally destroyed by her brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski, whose animal nature fascinates and repels her." Oxford Companion to English...
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Shakespeare loved to use the device of mistaken identity, and nowhere does he use this convention more skilfully than in Twelfth Night. Viola, surviving a shipwreck, walks ashore at Illyria, and immediately embarks on a gambit to allow her to make her way in a world of men. Dressed as a man, Viola, now Cesario, insinuates herself into the service of the Duke of Illyria, Orsino. Orsino longs for the love of a neighbouring countess, Olivia , who as...
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This beautiful new edition features an eye-opening Afterword written by Tappan Wilder that includes Thornton Wilder's unpublished notes and other illuminating photographs and documentary material. Our Town was first produced and published in 1938 to wide acclaim. This Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of life in the small village of Grover's Corners, an allegorical representation of all life, has become a classic. It is Thornton Wilder's most renowned...
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At Rome, upon the death of the Emperor, the succession is disputed by his two sons, Saturninus and Bassanius. When the old General, Titus Andronicus, returns from the wars bringing as captive Tamora the Queen and three of her sons, he causes Saturninus to be confirmed as Emperor. Titus allows his sons to sacrifice two of Tamora's sons, which enflames her to vengeance. Saturninus makes Tamora his Empress, but in secret she continues to enjoy the love...
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The powerful drama of Willy Loman & his tragic end. Ever since it was first performed in 1949, Death of a Salesman has been recognized as a milestone of the American theater. In the person of Willy Loman, the aging, failing salesman who makes his living riding on a smile and a shoeshine, Arthur Miller redefined the tragic hero as a man whose dreams are at once insupportably vast and dangerously insubstantial. He has given us a figure whose name has...
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"I believe that the reader will discover here the essential nature of one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history," Arthur Miller wrote in an introduction to The Crucible, his classic play about the witch-hunts and trials in seventeenth-century Salem, Massachusetts. Based on historical people and real events, Miller's drama is a searing portrait of a community engulfed by hysteria. In the rigid theocracy of Salem, rumors that women...
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Each edition includes: - Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play - Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play - Scene-by-scene plot summaries - A key to famous lines and phrases - An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language - An essay by an outstanding scholar providing a modern perspective on the play - Illustrations from the Folger Shakespeare Library's vast holdings of rare...
10) Major Barbara
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It is evening in the library of Lady Britomart Undershaft's house in January 1906. Her son, Stephen enters. Britomart aggressively announces that as a grown man, Stephen must take charge of the family affairs. Lomax, his sister Sarah's fiancé, will not receive his trust fund for years. Barbara, the most promising member of the household, has joined the Salvation Army and taken up with a tempestuous Greek scholar, Adolphus Cusins. Britomart cannot...
11) Henry V
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Shakespeare's drama about King Henry V's attempt to unite England under his rule is accompanied by commentary, a synopsis of the plot, summaries of scenes, notes on main characters, questions, and classroom activities.
12) Hedda Gabler
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Henrik Ibsen's 1890 drama Hedda Gabler is one of the Norwegian playwright's best-known works and boasts one of the greatest female lead roles in the history of theatre. A new bride, Hedda is bored and disillusioned with her marriage. The reappearance of Eilert, her former lover and recovering alcoholic writer creates havoc in her own marriage to George, a sober academic. When Hedda and George come into possession of the only copy of Eilert's explosive...
14) The Trojan women
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The Trojan Women (Ancient Greek: Τρῳάδες, Trōiades), also translated as The Women of Troy, and also known by its transliterated Greek title Troades, is a tragedy by the Greek playwright Euripides. Produced in 415 BCE during the Peloponnesian War, it is often considered a commentary on the capture of the Aegean island of Melos and the subsequent slaughter and subjugation of its populace by the Athenians
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Set in the 1930s, this novel traces the rise and fall of demagogue Willie Talos, a fictional Southern politician who resembles the real-life Huey "Kingfish" Long of Louisiana. Talos begins his career as an idealistic man of the people, but he soon becomes corrupted by success, caught between dreams of service and a lust for power.
16) Peer Gynt
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Among the masterpieces of world literature, this early verse drama by the celebrated Norwegian playwright humorously yet profoundly explores the virtues, vices, and follies common to all humanity — as represented in the person of Peer Gynt, a charming but irresponsible young peasant. Based on Norwegian folklore and Ibsen’s own imaginative inventions, the play relates the roguish life of the world-wandering Peer, who finds wealth and fame...
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Close friends Valentine and Proteus become rivals for the hand of Silvia, daughter of the Duke of Milan, who has promised her to the foolish coward Thurio. Proteus has Valentine banished, but Silvia escapes to the forest to join him. Proteus follows with Julia, who dotes on him. After a confrontation, the Duke eventually allows Valentine and Silvia to wed, and Proteus marries Julia.
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Shakespeare may have written Julius Caesar as the first of his plays to be performed at the Globe, in 1599. For it, he turned to a key event in Roman history: Caesar's death at the hands of friends and fellow politicians. Renaissance writers disagreed over the assassination, seeing Brutus, a leading conspirator, as either hero or villain. Shakespeare's play keeps this debate alive.
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Algernon is a gentlemen from a wealthy family. Algernon's close friend Jack, has a ward, Cecily. Both Algernon and Jack have created alter egos to make life more interesting. Algernon arrives for a weekend visit in the country posing as Earnest. Having heard of Earnest's misadventures, Cicely has developed an infatuation with the rogue, and Algernon's impersonation of him works famously on Cicely. Meanwhile, Algernon's cousin, Gwendolyn, arrives for...