Felix Lope de Vega y Carpio (Madrid, 1562-Madrid, 1635). Espana. Nacio en una familia modesta, estudio con los jesuitas y no termino la universidad en Alcala de Henares, parece que por asuntos amorosos. Tras su ruptura con Elena Osorio (Filis en sus poemas), su gran amor de juventud, Lope escribio libelos contra la familia de esta. Por ello fue procesado y desterrado en 1588, ano en que se caso con Isabel de Urbina (Belisa). Paso los dos primeros anos en Valencia, y luego en Alba de Tormes, al servicio del duque de Alba. En 1594, tras fallecer su esposa y su hija, fue perdonado y volvio a Madrid. Alli tuvo una relacion amorosa con una actriz, Micaela Lujan (Camila Lucinda) con la que tuvo mucha descendencia, hecho que no impidio su segundo matrimonio, con Juana Guardo, del que nacieron dos hijos. Entonces era uno de los autores mas populares y aclamados de la Corte. En 1605 entro al servicio del duque de Sessa como secretario, aunque tambien actuo como intermediario amoroso de este. La desgracia marco sus ultimos anos: Marta de Nevares una de sus ultimas amantes quedo ciega en 1625, perdio la razon y murio en 1632. Tambien murio su hijo Lope Felix. La soledad, el sufrimiento, la enfermedad, o los problemas economicos no le impidieron escribir.

Eva Lange's life had become a hellish nightmare. The violent death of her parents catapults the pretty 13-year-old into the arms of evil incarnate. Eva is brutalized and forced into child prostitution by her custodians, but fleeing her sexual exploitation only places her squarely in the path of still greater peril sex slavery at the hands of a powerful drug lord and his ruthless wife. It's a dangerous double life. By day, Eva is nanny to her captors' three children; at night she is subject to the cruel whims of her tormentors. Ensnared in a seedy underworld of sex trafficking, torture and humiliation, and illicit drugs and hopelessly trapped in this hell by political corruption Eva could easily become beat down by forces greater than herself. But Eva Lange staunchly resists the compulsion to surrender to a seemingly inescapable destiny. Refusing to believe her fate is sealed, she is determined to use her beauty, wiles and will to break free for good. Eva plots a bold escape and sets her sights on an even loftier goal: revenge. Can Eva surmount the oppressive powers that have defeated so many others and turn the tables on her tormentors?

Published alongside The Japan Foundation, this collection features five creative and bold plays by some of Japan's most prolific writers of contemporary theatre. Translated into English for the first time, these texts explore a wide range of themes from dystopian ideas of the future to touching domestic tragedies. Brought together in one volume, introduced by the authors and The Japan Foundation, this collection offers English language readers an unprecedented look at some of Japan's finest works of contemporary drama by writers from across the country. The plays include: The Bacchae-Holstein Milk Cows by Satoko Ichihara (Translated by Aya Ogawa) This play takes themes of the ancient Greek tragedy Bacchae by Euripides to examine various aspects of contemporary society, from love and sex, man and woman, intermixture of different species, discrimination and abuse, to artificial insemination, criticism of anthropocentricism and more. It was the winner of the 64th Kishida Drama Award. One Night by Yuko Kuwabara (Translated by Mari Boyd) The setting is a small taxi company run out of the home of its owner in a country town. One night the mother, Koharu Inamura, decides to leave the home in order to protect her children from her husband's domestic violence, promising them that she will come back in 15 years. The play depicts the family's reunion after having to live with the burden of that one night's (hitoyo) incident and how they restarted their lives after it. Isn't Anyone Alive? by Shiro Maeda (Translated by Miwa Monden) This laid back, absurdist work examines death through a goofy lens. In the play, strange urban legends abound in a university hospital where young people die one after another, all with mobile phones in their hands. The Sun by Tomohiro Maekawa (Translated by Nozomi Abe) Depicts young people torn apart in a near future setting where humanity has split into two forms: Nox humans who can only go out at night, and Curios, the original type of humans that can live under the sun. Carcass by Takuya Yokoyama (Translated by Mari Boyd) This play takes its name from the Japanese word for dressed carcasses of beef and pork that have been halved along the backbone for meat . It deals with the dignity of being alive as seen through the lives of workers in the meat industry based on interviews and research. It won the Japan Playwrights Association's 15th New Playwright Award in 2009.

By 1714 the inability to measure longitude accurately at sea had led to the tragic loss of hundreds of trading ships, and thousands of lives. Pressure from merchants and seamen finally drove the government to form the Board of Longitude, and a prize of 20,000 was offered for a successful solution. Although scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton knew that a clock would solve the problem of identifying longitude, it was generally considered impossible to build one that would withstand the motion of a ship or the extremes of temperature in foreign climes. Only Harrison, an uneducated carpenter from Lincolnshire, dared to pit his genius against the establishment belief that the answer lay in the stars, pursuing the realisation of his invention against years of scepticism."

Richard Bean's English version of The Servant of Two Masters is set in Brighton in the 1960s. Centred on the bumbling Francis Henshall, a minder to both Roscoe Crabbe - a local gangster - and Stanley Stubbers - an upper-class criminal. But Roscoe is dead, killed by Stanley Stubbers and being impersonated by his sister Rachel, who is also Stanley's girlfriend, and in Brighton to collect GBP6,000 from Roscoe's fiancee's dad. Chaos unfolds as Francis tries to stop the two 'guvnors' from meeting and everyone else tries to hide their real identities. Richard Bean's award-winning play is a glorious celebration of British comedy: laugh-out-loud satire, songs, slapstick and glittering one-liners. One Man, Two Guvnors opened at the National Theatre in May 2011, before transferring to the West End and embarking on a successful UK tour. It won Best Play in the Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2011.

This volumes contains The House of Atreus (Agamemnon, The Libation-Bearers, and The Furies) and Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus, Oedipus the King and Antigone by Sophocles, Hippolytus and The Bacchae by Europides, and the Frogs by Aristophanes. Additional translation by Gilbert Murray and B. B. Rogers.

What is real or unreal? If one looks close, things may not be what they appear to be. In his second collection of plays set in the 1980s, Michael JP Williams takes a look back at a time when Ronald Reagan's Hollywood glamour sparked the American spirit and prosperity graced many homes-even as the AIDS crisis quietly intensified in the shadows. In "Skin Savers," Key West, Florida, a mecca for artists, writers, transplanted New Yorkers, seves as the setting and as a perfect place for Hank and Beau, two businessmen who have been trying for years to make their fortunes at their fabric firm. Discouraged by a recent chain of events, they are thrilled when they receive the resume of a young talented artist. But as they recruit him to work at their company, they have no idea that Mickey D'West is battling his own issues. In the second play "Old Tavern Tales," Paul and Mickey fall in love and soon become immersed in a bizarre relationship where neither has respect for the other-or themselves. "Baptism by Green Fire" highlights a time when Key West was abruptly changed with the arrival of a horrifying disease that robbed the world of many beautiful, vibrant, and talented men.

Exploring a wide range of material including dramatic works, medieval morality drama, and lyric poetry this book argues for the central significance of literary material to the history of emotions. Early modern English writing about pity evidences a social culture built specifically around emotion, one (at least partially) defined by worries about who deserves compassion and what it might cost an individual to offer it. Pity and Identity in the Age of Shakespeare positions early modern England as a place that sustains messy and contradictory views about pity all at once, bringing together attraction, fear, anxiety, positivity, and condemnation to paint a picture of an emotion that is simultaneously unstable and essential, dangerous and vital, deceptive and seductive. The impact of this emotional burden on individual subjects played a major role in early modern English identity formation, centrally shaping the ways in which people thought about themselves and their communities. Taking in a wide range of material - including dramatic works by William Shakespeare, Thomas Heywood, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, and William Rowley; medieval morality drama; and lyric poetry by Philip Sidney, Thomas Wyatt, Samuel Daniel, Thomas Lodge, Barnabe Barnes, George Rodney and Frances Howard - this book argues for the central significance of literary material to the broader history of emotions, a field which has thus far remained largely the concern of social and cultural historians. Pity and Identity in the Age of Shakespeare shows that both literary materials and literary criticism can offer new insights into the experience and expression of emotional humanity.

SAINT JOAN by BERNARD SHAWA. Contents . .: PREFACE: Joan the Original and Presumptuous . 7..loan and Socrates . . 8Contrast with Napoleon . 9Was Joan Innocent or Guilty ? . . IIJoans Good Looks . 13Joans Social Position . . 14Joans Voices and Visions 16The Evolutionary Appetite 19The Mere Iconography does not Matter 21The Modern Education which Joan Escaped 21Failures of the Voices 24Joan a Galtonic Visualize 25Joans Manliness and Militarism 25Was Joan Suicidal ? 28Joan Summed Up 29Joans Immaturity and Ignorance 30The Maid in Literature 31Protestant Misunderstandings of the Middle Ages 35Comparative Fairness of Joans Trial 36Joan not tried as a Political Offender 38The Church Uncompromised by its Amends 41Cruelty, Modern and Medieval 43Catholic AntiClericalism 45Catholicism not yet Catholic Enough 45The Law of Change is the Law of God 47Credulity, Modern and Medieval 49Toleration, Modern and Medieval 50Variability of Toleration 52The Conflict between Genius and Discipline 53Joan as Theocrat 55Unbroken Success essential in Theocracy 56Modem Distortions of Joans History 57History always Out of Date 58The Real Joan not Marvellous Enough for Us 58The Stage Limits of Historical Representation 60A Void in the Elizabethan Drama.. 61Tragedy, not Melodrama 62The Inevitable Flatteries of Tragedy 63Some Wellmeant Proposals for the Improvement of 65the Play . .The Epilogue . . 66To the Critics, lest they should feel Ignored . 67SAINT JOAN . . . 7. PREFACE: JOAN THE ORIGINAL AND PRESUMPTUOUS JOAN OF ARC, a village girl from the Vosges, was bomabout 1412 burnt for heresy, witchcraft, and sorcery in1431 rehabilitated after a fashion in 1456 designatedVenerable in 1904 declared Blessed in 1908 and finallycanonized in 1920, She is the most notable Warrior Saintin the Christian calendar, and the queerest fish among theeccentric worthies of the Middle Ages. Though a professedand most pious Catholic, and the projector of a Crusadeagainst the Husites, she was In fact one of the first Protestant martyrs. She was also one of the first apostles of Nationalism, and the first French practitioner of Napoleonic realismin warfare as distinguished from the sporting ransom gambling chivalry of her time. She was the pioneer ofrational dressing for women, and, like Queen Christina ofSweden two centuries later, to say nothing of Catalina deErauso and innumerable obscure heroines who have disguised themselves as men to serve as soldiers and sailors, she refused to accept the specific womans lot, and dressedand fought and lived as men did.