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. Romeo and Juliet is the world's most famous drama of tragic young love. Defying the feud which divides their families, Romeo and Juliet enjoy the fleeting rapture of courtship, marriage and sexual fulfilment; but a combination of old animosities and new coincidences brings them to suicidal deaths. This play offers a rich mixture of romantic lyricism, bawdy comedy, intimate harmony and sudden violence. Long successful in the theatre, it has also generated numerous operas, ballets and films; and these have helped to make Romeo and Juliet perennially topical.

Marlene hosts a dinner party in a London restaurant to celebrate her promotion to managing director of 'Top Girls' employment agency. Her guests are five women from the past: Isabella Bird (1831- 1904) - the adventurous traveller; Lady Nijo (b1258) - the mediaeval courtesan who became a Buddhist nun and travelled on foot through Japan; Dull Gret, who as Dulle Griet in a Bruegel painting, led a crowd of women on a charge through hell; Pope Joan - the transvestite early female pope and last but not least Patient Griselda, an obedient wife out of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. As the evening continues we are involved with the stories of all five women and the impending crisis in Marlene's own life. A classic of contemporary theatre, Churchill's play is seen as a landmark for a new generation of playwrights. It was premiered by the Royal Court in 1982. "Top Girls has a combination of directness and complexity which keeps you both emotionally and intellectually alert. You can smell life, and at the same time feel locked in an argument with an agile and passionate mind." (John Peter, Sunday Times)

In one of the poorest cities in America - Reading, Pennsylvania - a group of factory workers struggle to keep their present lives in balance, ignorant of the financial devastation looming in their near future. Based on the playwright's extensive interviews with residents of Reading, Lynn Nottage's play Sweat is a tale of friends pitted against each other by big business, and a topical reflection of the present and poignant decline of the American Dream. The play premiered in Oregon in 2015, before being produced at the Public Theater, New York, in 2016, and the following year on Broadway, where it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It received its UK premiere at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in 2018, directed by Lynette Linton, and went on to win Best Play at the 2019 Evening Standard Theatre Awards.

South Africa, 2019. Twenty-five years since the first post-apartheid democratic elections, two men from contrasting walks of life are thrust together to reflect on a quarter-century of change. Jack Morris is a celebrated classical actor who has just been given both a career-defining role and a life-changing diagnosis. Besides his age, Jack has seemingly little in common with his at-home nurse Lunga Kunene, but the two men soon discover their shared passion for Shakespeare, which ignites this ‘rich, raw and shattering head-to-head’ (The Times).

Written by South African actor, activist and playwright John Kani, this refreshingly funny and vital new play premiered in the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon in 2019, before transferring to the Ambassadors Theatre in London. A co-production with the Fugard Theatre, it was directed by Janice Honeyman with moving performances from Antony Sher and John Kani.