The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, is widely considered Shakespeare's greatest play. Hamlet is confronted by the ghost of his father, who tells him that Hamlet's uncle and mother conspired to poison him. Knowing that his uncle, who now sits upon the throne, and his mother, who has married his uncle and is now his queen, have murdered his father, Hamlet sets out to avenge his father's death and set things to right. But his plan could destroy the entire realm. To be, or not to be-that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them. To die-to sleep- No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks

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. The Merchant of Venice is one of Shakespeare's most popular comedies, but it remains deeply controversial. The text may seem anti-Semitic; yet repeatedly, in performance, it has revealed a contrasting nature. Shylock, though vanquished in the law-court, often triumphs in the theatre. In his intensity he can dominate the play, challenging abrasively its romantic and lyrical affirmations. What results is a bitter-sweet drama. Though The Merchant of Venice offers some of the traditional pleasures of romantic comedy, it also exposes the operations of prejudice. Thus Shakespeare remains our contemporary.

Enter the Malcontent...a misfit, an outcast, a 'strayer from the drove', one who laughs at the follies of others from a distance, like Jacques, or who snarls and rails acerbically like Thersites or Timon. Sometimes, like Iago, he has murder in his heart. He might be an alienated intellectual, like Bosola or Flamineo, with an education he cannot use, or a cynical adventurer like Bussy, or a revenger, like Vindice, out to right wrongs; a bastard like Edmund; a Jew like Barabas; an outcast, a social climber, a man with a deformity, a man passed over for office, a professional clown with ambitions, a professional soldier with a grudge, a Prince with an impossible mission, even a usurping king determined to 'prove a villain'...The Malcontent comes in various garbs and guises, sometimes glowering and dressed in black, and sometimes not. But his kind is legion, his intelligence rare, and he figures on the English stage at a uniquely innovative point in its history. The Jacobean stage Malcontent had his immediate antecedents in real life. He also had a dramatic ancestry in the medieval Vice and the Fool. His anarchic hey-day began in the late 1580s and was effectively over by the mid 1620s, but this brief period produced some of the most influential dramatists the Anglophone world has known, stage-writers of brilliance who were engaged in re-working Roman and Greek Classicism, and incorporating and adapting English medieval staples and histories in modern works which revolutionised stage business and stage language. By the time a play called The Malcontent by John Marston appeared in 1604, it was satirising a familiar phenomenon: not only of a stage figure, but of a whole tranche of plays and theatre-writing distinctly malcontented in tone and matter. Written and performed in a time of new intellectual inquiry and a spirit of scepticism regarding the old fixtures of Man's place in the World and the political and religious structures that underpinned it - a time of social flux, of discovery of new worlds, of war, spying, bitter religious faction, and political and economic uncertainty - these works were presenting a diverse public audience with the exciting and possibly terrifying spectacle of this fixture's actual fragility, and the capacity of Man to challenge his destiny. The author's remarkably perceptive The Stoic, the Weal and the Malcontent sheds new light on the the development and relevance of the Malcontent in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. Julia Lacey Brooke read English Literature and Renaissance History at the University of East Anglia, later taking an MLitt at the University of Birmingham's Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. Now based in rural Tuscany, she is a freelance editor, teacher and lecturer, and writes satirical fiction.

Fortune's Fool Here is William Shakespeare's brilliant play the Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, set in Verona during a feud between the Capulets and the Montagues. Romeo, a Montague, falls desperately in love with Juliet, a Capulet, and the two secretly marry. Lyrical and poignant, this immortal play of star-crossed lovers will stay with you long after the play ends. 'Tis but thy name that is my enemy. Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O, be some other name What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

Few are aware that the true identity of William Shakespeare represents Western Civilization's greatest mystery. Even fewer realize that the commonly accepted authorship of William Shaksper of Stratford, who was illiterate, is a complete hoax manufactured by England's most powerful politicians.

The hoax survived largely unscathed until 1920 when J. Thomas Looney's brilliant book, ""Shakespeare" Identified," plucked Edward de Vere out of historical obscurity and introduced him to the world as the real Shakespeare. Fighting the astonishing power of Conventional Wisdom, de Vereans have steadily built their case through solid research in the past ninety years.

This book series salvages fascinating, neglected authorship material which repeatedly and convincingly shows that Edward de Vere was the uniquely creative genius who wrote under the coerced pen name of William Shakespeare.

Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex. Richard III is one of the finest of Shakespeare's historical dramas. Although it has a huge cast, Richard himself, gleefully wicked, charismatically Machiavellian, always dominates the play: a role to gratify such leading actors as David Garrick, Laurence Olivier, Anthony Sher, Ian McKellen and Al Pacino. Since, in real life, political Machiavellianism is never out of date, Richard III remains perennially topical. Numerous revivals on stage and screen have demonstrated the enduring cogency of this drama about the lethally corrupting quest for power. Richard III is the twenty-first play in the Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare Series. The Times Literary Supplement says: 'Many students and ordinary readers will be grateful to Watts and his publishers for making such useful editions available at such low cost.'

Rain, Wind, Thunder, Fire-- King Lear is Shakespeare's brilliant play about truth, love, and madness. King Lear slowly descends into madness after dividing his kingdom between the two daughters who are willing to flatter him rather than giving it to the one daughter who actually loves him. Have more than thou showest, Speak less than thou knowest, Lend less than thou owest, Ride more than thou goest, Learn more than thou trowest.

"Shakespeare Now!" is a series of short books of truly vital literary scholarship, each with its own distinctive form. "Shakespeare Now!" recaptures the excitement of Shakespeare; it doesn't assume we know him already, or that we know the best methods for approaching his plays. "Shakespeare Now!" is a new generation of critics, unafraid of risk, on a series of intellectual adventures. Above all - it is a new Shakespeare, freshly present in each volume. Shakespearean thinking is always dynamic: thinking that happens in the living moment of its performance, in quickly passing process. This book offers a model of human mentality that can be shown through the dense immediacy of dramatic thinking, as embodied above all in Shakespeare's working method. "Shakespeare Thinking" discusses the positioning of Shakespeare as the paradigm of fully human mental creativity from the Romantics to the latest neurological experiments which show that Shakespeare can reveal new understandings of the hard-wiring of the human brain, and the sheer sudden electricity of its synaptic development.

To Die Upon a Kiss-- Othello is Shakespeare's great tragic play of love, trust, and deceit. Iago, an officer of the watch, sets out to destroy Othello by convincing him that his young bride, Desdemona, has betrayed him and is secretly in love with another man. What sense had I of her stol'n hours of lust? I saw't not, thought it not, it harm'd not me; I slept the next night well, was free and merry; I found not Cassio's kisses on her lips. He that is robb'd, not wanting what is stol'n, Let him not know't and he's not robb'd at all.

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.