Weary of academic study, an eminent scholar turns to magic and makes a deal with the Devil. Mephistopheles will serve him and give him whatever he wants, but after twenty-four years Faustus must keep his side of the bargain. This edition contains a detailed introductory section that puts the play in its historical context, in-depth textual notes, extracts from key critical works and exam-style questions.

You can paint your placards 'til the cows come home, but until you have marched through this town in five inch heels and fishnets, you will never know what it is to truly be a faggot on the front line. Told against the backdrop of Dublin's burgeoning gay rights movement of the 1980s and 1990s and the contemporary LGBTQ+ community of today, Once Before I Go charts the close friendship of Lynn, Daithi, and the luminous Bernard, and sits on the exhilarating edge between comedy, tragedy and melodrama. Exploring the fragile yet resilient bonds of Irish queer lives across three decades in Dublin, London and Paris, the play steps between the early days of the AIDS crisis and today's LGBTQ+ community, living in an era of marriage equality, gender self-determination, and untransmittable HIV. At once political, joyous and heart-breaking, Once Before I Go honours the fabulous people we lost along the way, and celebrates those who fight on. This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at Dublin's Gate Theatre in October 2021.

Though a staple in high school English classes, Julius Caesar is not a simple play. Seemingly irreconcilable forces are at work: fate and free will, the changeableness and stubbornness of ambitious men, the demands of public service and the desire for private gain. Drawn from history as recorded by Plutarch, the major characters-Caesar, Brutus, Cassius, and Mark Antony-are complex, as are the twists and turns of their fortunes. What kind of man rises to power? What price does he pay when he becomes a politician? These questions raised by Shakespeare are relevant in every age, whether ancient Rome, Elizabethan England, or even in our own day.

The world can and will go on without us but I have to think that we have made this world a better place. That we have left it richer, wiser than had we not chosen the way of art. The 1996 Tony Award winner for Best Play. Terrence McNally's Master Class presents the legendary opera diva, Maria Callas, as she puts aspiring young singers through their paces in a series of master classes. Both moving and entertaining, this theatrical tour de force dramatizes the Callas phenomenon and "is an unembarrassed, involving meditation on Callas's life and the nature of her art. Such subjects are not easily dramatized, certainly not with this brio." (New York Times) After opening on Broadway in 1995 with Zoe Caldwell and Audra McDonald, the play premiered in London in 1997 with Patti LuPone. It was last revived on Broadway and in the West End in 2011-12 starring Tyne Daly.

The final volume in Methuen Drama's acclaimed series of work by Arthur Miller who, during his lifetime, was acknowledged as "the greatest American dramatist of our age" (Evening Standard). Featuring two plays from the 1990s and his final two plays (2002 and 2004), it offers the first ever publication of Miller's final play, Finishing the Picture. Inspired by his experience during the filming of The Misfits with his then wife Marilyn Monroe, the play was completed and produced at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago, just months before the playwright's death in February 2005. Broken Glass (1994) is set in Brooklyn in 1938 and intertwines a woman's obsession with the news from Germany that government thugs are smashing Jewish stores, with her strange relationship with her husband. "It balances private lives with public morality. . . it is also an amazingly full-blooded piece, bursting with pain and passion." (Daily Telegraph). Mr Peters' Connections (1998) is an unforgettable journey through one man's mind at a time of suspended consciousness, where the living and dead intermingle in his memory. Resurrection Blues (2002) is Miller's astonishing black comedy set in a South American banana republic, that satirises global politics and the predatory nature of a media saturated culture. The volume also features a chronology of the writer's work and an introduction by Enoch Brater, professor of English Literature at the University of Michigan.

William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night is a comedy. In medieval and Tudor times, the 'Twelfth Night' was the end of a winter festival that started on 31 October (All Hallows Eve, or as we know it today, Halloween). Mulled cider was drunk, and special pastries baked, and a king and queen (who could have been servants in charge for the night) ruled the festival until the clock struck midnight. People expected a topsy-turvy evening, with singing and clowning about, when the normal order of things was reversed, and the Lord of Misrule symbolised the world turning upside down. Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, with its rebellious gender jokes, crossdressing, practical jokes, daft costumes, moonstruck lovers and comic revenge would have been amusing for audiences. Today we study the play to understand the language and appreciate the play's entertaining nature, and we enjoy the farcical mixing- up of men and women, and the funny characters such as Malvolio. This new edition includes the complete text with explanatory notes, Shakespeare's language, and themes, and also explores typical exam themes and questions.

A Schools Edition of Men Should Weep by Scottish playwright Ena Lamont Stewart, a popular set text for SQA Higher English. Set in the 1930s, Men Should Weep centres on the challenges faced by the Morrison family. This riveting portrayal of life in Glasgow's slums explores themes such as poverty, love and the role of women. This edition includes: - An educational introduction with an overview of the play and playwright - The full playscript - Notes on the text, key quotations and questions to improve students' understanding of the play - Tasks and activities designed to support study/revision and build the skills of analysis and evaluation - Assessment advice for the Critical Reading question paper

In Joe and Kate Keller's family garden, an apple tree - a memorial to their son Larry, lost in the Second World War - has been torn down by a storm. But his loss is not the only part of the family's past they can't put behind them. Not everybody's forgotten the court case that put Joe's partner in jail, or the cracked engine heads his factory produced which caused it and dropped twenty-one pilots out of the sky ...

A stage adaptation of the drama "An Enemy of the People" by Henrik Ibsen in which a Norwegian doctor is shunned by the townspeople after he discovers their famous spring water is really poisoned.

An eye for an eye. It's very simple. You choose your homeland like a hyena picking and choosing where he steals his next meal from. Scavenger. Yes you grovel to the feet of Mengistu and when his people spit at you and kick you from the bowl you scuttle across the border. Scavenger. As a violent civil war rages back home in Ethiopia, teenager Alem and his father are in a bed and breakfast in Berkshire. It's his best holiday ever. The next morning his father is gone and has left a note explaining that he and his mother want to protect Alem from the war. This strange grey country of England is now his home. On his own, and in the hands of the social services and the Refugee Council, Alem lives from letter to letter, waiting to hear something from his father. Then he meets car-obsessed Mustapha, the lovely 'out-of-your-league' Ruth and dangerous Sweeney - three unexpected allies who spur him on in his fight to be seen as more than just the Refugee Boy. Lemn Sissay's remarkable stage adaptation of Benjamin Zephaniah's bestselling novel is published here in the Methuen Drama Student Edition series, featuring commentary & notes by Professor Lynette Goddard (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK) that help the student unpack the play's themes, language, structure and production history to date.

Edited, Introduced and Annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex. The Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare Series presents a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeare's works. The Textual editing takes account of recent scholarship while giving the material a careful reappraisal. Hamlet is not only one of Shakespeare's greatest plays, but also the most fascinatingly problematical tragedy in world literature. First performed around 1600, this a gripping and exuberant drama of revenge, rich in contrasts and conflicts. Its violence alternates with introspection, its melancholy with humour, and its subtlety with spectacle. The Prince, Hamlet himself, is depicted as a complex, divided, introspective character. His reflections on death, morality and the very status of human beings make him 'the first modern man'. Countless stage productions and numerous adaptations for the cinema and television have demonstrated the continuing cultural relevance of this vivid, enigmatic, profound and engrossing drama.

Deeply Regretted By . . ., Maeve Binchy's classic television play, is a moving and powerful account of a tragedy affecting a woman in London who discovers, on the death of her 'husband', that their married life was a lie. When shown on RTE Television twenty-five years ago Deeply Regretted By . . . affected audiences intensely, and exposed a hidden vein in Irish society--that of bigamy. The play reflects the sociopolitical realities of Irish men marrying and starting families both at home and abroad, principally after they were forced to emigrate for work. Deeply Regretted By . . is a brave and revealing account of a hidden layer of Irish society which Maeve Binchy first brought to the surface in her Irish Times story, "Death in Kilburn," (also included in this volume). Arlen House are proud to publish Deeply Regretted By . . . as the first in a new series of Arlen Classic Literature.

'Much like Mr. Miller, Quentin is a witness to alarming public and personal catastrophes: the stock market crash, the Holocaust, the McCarthy witchhunts and the self-destruction of a show business idol to whom he is married.' NEW YORK TIMES Haunted by past romantic failures, Quentin, a New York City Jewish intellectual, retreats into his mind as he debates marrying for a third time: as he revisits past loves and losses, his mind and memory fragments under philosophical questions; are our failures really just our own? Or is possible to hide away from the mistakes of the past? One of Miller's most personal plays, After the Fall takes place almost entirely inside the mind of the play's protagonist, who is often read as a stand-in for the playwright himself. Touching on themes of the Holocaust, McCarthyism and inherited sin, the play is one of the most discussed within Miller's canon. This Methuen Drama Student Edition is edited by Ramon Espejo-Romero, with commentary and notes that explore the play's production history (including excerpts from an interview with Michael Blakemore, former Associate Director of the Royal National Theatre,) as well as the dramatic, thematic and academic debates that surround it.

'Mr. Miller knows his audience... he is letting us know, the devil will have his due.' NEW YORK TIMES When insurance agent Lyman Felt is hospitalised following a near-fatal car crash, both of his wives show up at his bedside and his duplicitous bigamy is revealed. As his shocked spouses - the prim Theo and the assertive Leah - reel from this revelation and their husband's hypocrisy, an outrageous question is presented: is marriage actually easier this way? Touching on themes of betrayal, crisis and reconciliation, The Ride Down Mt. Morgan is one of Miller's more controversial works, and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play in 1991. This Methuen Drama Student Edition is edited by Thiago Russo, with commentary and notes that explore the play's production history (including excerpts from an interview with director David Esbjornson) as well as the dramatic, thematic and academic debates that surround it.

Turtlemen... a myth born from the loss of myth. A book of prose, poem and play arising from generations of a people who were isolated on the mid-Atlantic island of Bermuda, a people torn from their continent and severed from their ancestral stories. In a language often raw and heartbreaking, Turtlemen is composed to take you to the deepest recesses of sex, oppression, intimacy and ultimately what it means to survive - it is for speaking out loud.

Shakespeare's Religious Allusiveness complicates debates about whether Shakespeare's plays are fundamentally Protestant or Catholic in sympathy, challenging analyses that either find Protestant elements consistently undercutting Catholic motifs or, less often, discover evidence of the playwright's endorsement of Catholic doctrine and customs. Rather, Maurice Hunt argues that Shakespeare's syncretistic method of incorporating both Protestant and Catholic elements into his plays was singular among early modern English playwrights at a time when governmental and social tolerance of Protestantism in the theatre was high and criticism of stereotyped Catholicism was correspondingly rampant in drama. In-depth discussions of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, the Second Henriad, All's Well That Ends Well, Twelfth Night, and Othello reveal how Shakespeare allusively integrates Reformation Protestant and Roman Catholic motifs and systems of thought. This book sheds new light on the playwright's knowledge of and interest in Elizabethan and Jacobean religious debates over the nature of spiritual reformation, the efficacy of merit for redemption, and the operation of Providence. It will appeal not only to Shakespeare scholars but to those interested in the cultural history of the Reformation.

Mike Bartlett's 'future history play' explores the people beneath the crowns, the unwritten rules of our democracy, and the conscience of Britain's most famous family. Queen Elizabeth II is dead. After a lifetime of waiting, her son ascends the throne. A future of power. But how to rule? Drawing on the style and structure of a Shakespearean history play, King Charles III opened at London's Almeida Theatre, directed by its Artistic Director Rupert Goold, in April 2014, before transferring to the West End. The play went on to win Best New Play at both the Critics' Circle Theatre Awards and the Olivier Awards. It also won the South Bank Sky Arts Theatre Award.