SATURNINUS. Noble patricians, patrons of my right, Defend the justice of my cause with arms; And, countrymen, my loving followers, Plead my successive title with your swords. I am his first born son that was the last That ware the imperial diadem of Rome; Then let my father's honours live in me, Nor wrong mine age with this indignity. BASSIANUS. Romans, friends, followers, favourers of my right, If ever Bassianus, Caesar's son, Were gracious in the eyes of royal Rome, Keep then this passage to the Capitol; And suffer not dishonour to approach The imperial seat, to virtue consecrate, To justice, continence, and nobility; But let desert in pure election shine; And, Romans, fight for freedom in your choice.

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.

POET. Good day, sir. PAINTER. I am glad y'are well. POET. I have not seen you long; how goes the world? PAINTER. It wears, sir, as it grows. POET. Ay, that's well known. But what particular rarity? What strange, Which manifold record not matches? See, Magic of bounty, all these spirits thy power Hath conjur'd to attend! I know the merchant. PAINTER. I know them both; th' other's a jeweller.

Alongside Spenser, Sidney and the early Donne, Shakespeare is the major poet of the 16th century, largely because of the status of his remarkable sequence of sonnets. Professor Cousins' new book is the first comprehensive study of the Sonnets and narrative poems for over a decade. He focuses in particular on their exploration of self-knowledge, sexuality, and death, as well as on their ambiguous figuring of gender. Throughout he provides a comparative context, looking at the work of Shakespeare's contemporaries. The relation between Shakespeare's non-dramatic verse and his plays is also explored.

This Arden edition of Hamlet, arguably Shakespeare's greatest tragedy, presents an authoritative, modernized text based on the Second Quarto text with a new introductory essay covering key productions and criticism in the decade since its first publication. A timely up-date in the 400th anniversary year of Shakespeare's death which will ensure the Arden edition continues to offer students a comprehensive and current critical account of the play, alongside the most reliable and fully-annotated text available.

Farce

Characters: 3 male, 9 female

Interior Set

In an insane asylum we find a number of schoolteachers who have lost their mental balance trying to educate their pupils. The play starts hilariously when the ladies talk and act like their former charges. A love story is introduced with the visit of the niece of the superintendent and a young staff doctor, but each thinks the other is an inmate. This young girl thinks she would like to be a teacher, but after witnessing the antics of schoolteachers she decides to marry the doctor. We recommend it for churches, schools and parent teachers associations.

Mystery Comedy

George M. Cohan

Characters: 10 male, 4 female

Interior Set

One of the most famous of Cohan's plays happens in a lonely tavern on a wild stormy night where a mysterious vagabond, a woman and the State Governor and his family who have been held up a short distance away gather. Several persons are suspected of the crime and the mysterious vagabond takes infinite delight in observing developments as they take place about him. When suspense reaches an almost unbearable climax, the vagabond is at last located by the keepers of a nearby Sanitorium and it is learned that he, a madman, has been responsible for the vastly amusing and complicated series of misunderstandings.

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.

Jack Sharkey

Full Length, Comedy

Characters: 2 male, 2 female

Interior Set

Take a husband, wife, lover and friend, add a strange lamp, a gun and a rubber chicken plus a party that begins at 8 p.m., then again at 8 p.m. and then again at 8 p.m. and you have this nightmare comedy." Four people find themselves reliving one horrible hour over and over as themselves, as Japanese, as British aristocrats, as gangsters, and almost anything else you can think of. Camille is giving the party. Don shows up in a jealous funk about his wife, Alice, whom he suspects of seeing another man. When Alice and Ben have arrived, it turns out their relationship is innocent. But by the time Don realizes this he has already shot Ben, Alice and even Camille. Camille wishes that things might have turned out differently and that is what happens. All concerned find themselves back at the party's beginning again and again doomed to live that same hour over and over again until they get it right. Is it all an accident? Or is their dilemma part of someone's fiendish plan? A labyrinth of hilarity exits to a shocker of an ending.

MASTER. Boatswain! BOATSWAIN. Here, master; what cheer? MASTER. Good! Speak to th' mariners; fall to't yarely, or we run ourselves aground; bestir, bestir. BOATSWAIN. Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare, yare! Take in the topsail. Tend to th' master's whistle. Blow till thou burst thy wind, if room enough.

This bold and wide-ranging study takes a fresh look at a controversial question: what do the acts and shows of grief performed in early modern drama tell us about the religious culture of the world in which they were historically staged? Many rites of mourning shown in the theatre held Catholic resonances, but how did such memories of traditional worship work in post-Reformation England? Drawing on performance studies, this book provides detailed readings of major playtexts, Shakespearean and others, to explore the politics, pathologies, physiologies and parodies of mourning.

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.

SLY. I'll pheeze you, in faith. HOSTESS. A pair of stocks, you rogue SLY. Y'are a baggage; the Slys are no rogues. Look in the chronicles: we came in with Richard Conqueror. Therefore, paucas pallabris; let the world slide. Sessa HOSTESS. You will not pay for the glasses you have burst? SLY. No, not a denier. Go by, Saint Jeronimy, go to thy cold bed and warm thee.

By carefully selecting extracts from sources, scholars and scriptwriters, Gordon McMullan tells a series of stories about Romeo and Juliet, globally and from their legend's origins to the present day. This edition includes: Introductory materials and explanatory annotations by Gordon McMullan as well as numerous images; Sources and early rewritings by Luigi Da Porto, Matteo Bandello, Pierre Boaistuau, Kareen Klein and Thomas Otway, amongst others; Critical readings and later rewritings spanning four centuries and including those by Stanley Wells, Wendy Wall, Dympna C. Callaghan, Jill L. Levenson, Niamh Cusack, David Tennant and Courtney Lehmann. A Selected Bibliography is also included.

A wide-ranging survey of critical responses to Shakespeare's masterpiece. The Merchant of Venice has always been one of Shakespeare's most popular plays. However, the critical tradition reveals sharply divided opinions, reflecting the tremendous capacity of the play to provoke discussion among its readers and audiences. This volume collects the work of over seventy commentators writing between 1775 and 1939 (when the first signs of Nazi anti-Semitism are noted). They include well-known critics and scholars, such as Hazlitt, Ruskin, Furnivall, Brandes, Moulton, Stoll, Spurgeon, Wilson Knight and Middleton Murry, but also little-known writers who addressed the Jewish issues in the play with some authority: George Farren, Israel Davis, Sidney Lee, Charles Salaman, 'El Seyonpi', F. S. Boas, Israel Gollancz, Gerald Friedlander, and Cecil Roth. In addition, reflecting the play's great popularity in the theatre, this collection documents four celebrated interpretations of Shylock (Macklin, Kean, Edwin Booth, and Henry Irving), and two of Portia (Helen Faucit, Ellen Terry).

CHORUS. Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; Whose misadventur'd piteous overthrows Doth with their death bury their parents' strife. The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love, And the continuance of their parents' rage, Which, but their children's end, naught could remove, Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage; The which if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

William Dodd (29 May 1729 - 27 June 1777) was an English Anglican clergyman and a man of letters. He lived extravagantly, and was nicknamed the "Macaroni Parson." He dabbled in forgery in an effort to clear his debts, was caught, convicted, and, despite a public campaign for a Royal pardon, became the last person to be hanged at Tyburn for forgery. The Beauties of Shakespear was his most successful book and played a key role in reviving Shakespeare's popularity. This is a facsimile edition.

From the author's preface to this collection of "Greatest Hits"

I shall not attempt any labored encomiums of Shakspeare, or endeavor to set forth his perfections, at a time when such universal and just applause is paid him, and when every tongue is big with his boundless fame. He himself tells us -

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess."
And wasteful and ridiculous indeed it would be to say anything in his praise, when presenting the world with such a collection of Beauties as per- haps is nowhere to be met with, and, I may very safely affirm, cannot be paralleled from the produc- tions of any other single author, ancient or modern. There is scarcely a topic, common with other writers, on which he has not excelled them all; there are many nobly peculiar to himself, where he shines unrivalled, and like the eagle, properest emblem of his daring genius, soars beyond the common reach and gazes undazzled on the sun.

Read Shakespeare's plays in all their brilliance--and understand what every word means! Don't be intimidated by Shakespeare! These popular guides make the Bard's plays accessible and enjoyable. Each No Fear guide contains: The complete text of the original play A line-by-line translation that puts the words into everyday language A complete list of characters, with descriptions Plenty of helpful commentary

GLOUCESTER. Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York; And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house In the deep bosom of the ocean buried. Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths; Our bruised arms hung up for monuments; Our stern alarums chang'd to merry meetings, Our dreadful marches to delightful measures. Grim-visag'd war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front, And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. But I-that am not shap'd for sportive tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass- I-that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty To strut before a wanton ambling nym