Ranjit Bolt updates Much Ado About Nothing with a merry new translation. In Much Ado About Nothing, a series of miscommunications and misunderstandings spiral out of control, leaving two sets of lovers to untangle their words and their hearts. Ranjit Bolt, an accomplished translator, takes on Shakespeare's well-loved comedy to update much of the obscure language while maintaining the humor, characterization, and wit that audiences know and love. For modern readers, Beatrice, Benedick, Hero, and Claudio are just as enchanting as always-and perhaps funnier than ever before. This translation of Much Ado About Nothing was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present work from "The Bard" in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare's verse. Enlisting the talents of a diverse group of contemporary playwrights, screenwriters, and dramaturges from diverse backgrounds, this project reenvisions Shakespeare for the twenty-first century. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print-a new First Folio for a new era.

When he came across an old-English limerick that made him laugh, playwright Ranjit Bolt started writing nonsensical verse to entertain his friends. On a whim he decided to staple some together and offer them at a market in his home town of Cambridge when not writing plays. Readers would go away chuckling to themselves and the booklets flew away. Their chuckling response led to A Lion Was Learning to Ski.

A collection of deliciously hilarious limericks guaranteed to make the most miserable person chuckle.

Includes the plays The Liar, The Illusion, Le Cid Pierre Corneille (1606 - 84), the great seventeenth-century neoclassical dramatist, wrote over thirty plays during his long and varied career. Triumphant in both comedy and tragedy, his plays remain at the core of the repertory. When the young Moliere saw The Liar (Le Menteur), a delightful chronicle of a pathological liar's adventures in love, he decided to become a playwright. The Illusion (L'Illusion Comique) is a fascinating and mysterious tragi-comedy, one of the first plays to explore consciously the relationship between theatre and the real world. Le Cid, Corneille's best known play, was controversial in its day, and led to a resurgence in French drama. Ranjit Bolt's version of The Liar finds a way of rendering rhyming couplets which 'no one else from the history of translating for the theatre has ever done - with some style and without sacrificing the sense of gallantry that is so essential to the original text.' (BBC Radio3's Critics Forum.) Both The Liar and The Illusion recently enjoyed critical and box office success at the Old Vic, reaffirming Ranjit Bolt as one of the world's foremost translators of drama.

"Comic poet and dazzling swordsman, Cyrano is hopelessly in love with Roxane. But Roxane loves the dashing Christian. Cyrano, in a selfless act of love, woos Roxane on Christian's behalf, writing his love letters, feeding him his lines. Romance. Tragedy. Comedy. Excitement. A universal, actionpacked love story which has been a popular hit on the stage for over a century and the inspiration for countless films. This version of the classic by Ranjit Bolt opened at Bristol Old Vic in May 2007."

Frustrated at the ongoing violence of the civil war, Lysistrata decides that the women of Athens must take matters into their own hands. Against heartfelt resistance, she eventually persuades the female population that the only way to make peace is to stop making love: they will deny their husbands sex until a treaty has been signed.

L'Avare (1666) is Moliere's great satire on materialism, a funny yet sophisticated story of cunning, guile and double-dealing, not only by the Miser himself, but also by the Miser's family and servants. First performed at the Festival Theatre, Chichester in 1995, it was revived at the Salisbury Playhouse in April 2001. Includes L'Etourdi (1653), the first, the fastest, and perhaps the funniest of Moliere's verse comedies, in a new and highly entertaining translation.

"Includes the plays The Hypochondriac, George Dandin and Scapin Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, dit Moliere (1622-1673) was originally intended for a career at court. His legal training was to stand him in good stead as his plays often aroused the anger and hatred of many prominent social groups including the medical profession and the clergy. Moliere was continually surrounded by controversy and his works were often banned. This volume contains new versions of Moliere's plays by distinguished translators Ranjit Bolt and Gerard Murphy. The Hypochondriac was Moliere's last play. He himself took the title role in the first production on the fourth performance was seized by a coughing fit and died, ending a brilliant yet turbulent career thathad lasted for over thirty years. With a foreword by Nicholas Dromgoole."

"Juno, wife of Jove (Jupiter) is jealous of Alcmene, mother of Hercules by Jove, and has been persecuting Hercules by imposing labours on him, through her intermediary, the tyrant Eurystheus. The final labour, which Hercules has just completed, was the bringing up of Cereberus, the three-headed watchdog of the Underworld, up to the world above. To do this, Hercules has achieved the astonishing feat, never before accomplished, of returning from the realm of Death. Juno has now decided that sine labours cannot break Hercules, she will turn his own strength against him, by driving him mad when he returns to his home town of Thebes. In his madness, he will commit atrocities that will preclude his ascension into Heaven, which Juno is determined to prevent. "

"In the year of the bicentenary of the death of Carlo Goldoni, one of Italy's most brilliant dramatists, two of his greatest comedies are brought to life in Ranjit Bolt's vibrant translations. The Venetian Twins is a classic tale of mistaken identity and the ensuing confusion. The play was given its premiere at the Royal Shakespeare Company in a production directed by Michael Bogdanov. Mirandolina is one of Goldoni's best known works and was produced at the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh. "

""How I deplore the bogus ways Of society these days - A sort of national contest To find out who can a*se-lick best!" In this witty cutting version of Le Misanthrope Moliere's angry hero Alceste becomes Alan - journalist, intellectual and free spirit- who finds himself adrift in a social whirl of false flattery and schmooze. In a world where nobody calls a spade a spade (or even knows what a spade is for), how can the cantankerous but high-minded Alan secure the affections of Celia - a spoiled, feckless, fickle socialite, who happens to be the love of his life? The Grouch was first performed at West Yorkshire Playhouse in February 2008"

"The religious fraud Tartuffe has wormed his way into the affections and household of rich merchant, Orgon, with pantomime piety and counterfeit zeal. So comprehensively has he hoodwinked Orgon that he looks set to succeed in driving away the son, marrying the daughter, seducing the wife and imprisoning Orgon. Moliere's classic satire was denounced on its first performance as a sacrilegious outrage and banned from further public view. Only after petition to Louis XIV was the ban lifted, and the play's trenchant mockery of human frailties has ensured its popularity ever since."