Biographies, show books, musical scores, history, and must-read theatre books.
The sensitive and poetic Richard II is undoubtedly the rightful king of England, but he is unscrupulous and weak. When his cousin Henry Bolingbroke returns from banishment to usurp the crown, Richard's right to the throne proves of little help to him. Richard is forced to abdicate, but as his power is stripped away, he gains dignity and self-awareness, and he meets his death heroically.
The Comedy of Errors is one of William Shakespeare's earliest plays. It is his shortest and one of his most farcical comedies, with a major part of the humour coming from slapstick and mistaken identity, in addition to puns and word play. The Comedy of Errors (along with The Tempest) is one of only two of Shakespeare's plays to observe the classical unities. It has been adapted for opera, stage, screen and musical theatre. The Comedy of Errors tells the story of two sets of identical twins that...
The daughter of a renowned physician pursues her passion for an elusive bridegroom through a comic maze of mistaken identities, betrayals, repentance, and dramatic revelation. This extraordinary combination of romantic melodrama and outright farce offers a thought-provoking subtext on the way to fulfilling the promise of its title.
Henry VI, Part 3 or The Third Part of Henry the Sixt (often written as 3 Henry VI) is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1591, and set during the lifetime of King Henry VI of England. Whereas 1 Henry VI deals with the loss of England's French territories and the political machinations leading up to the Wars of the Roses, and 2 Henry VI focuses on the King's inability to quell the bickering of his nobles, and the inevitability of armed conflict, 3 Henry VI deal...
Henry VI, Part 2 or The Second Part of Henry the Sixt (often written as 2 Henry VI) is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1591, and set during the lifetime of King Henry VI of England. Whereas 1 Henry VI deals primarily with the loss of England's French territories and the political machinations leading up to the Wars of the Roses, and 3 Henry VI deals with the horrors of that conflict, 2 Henry VI focuses on the King's inability to quell the bickering of his ...
Henry VI, Part 1 or The First Part of Henry the Sixt (often written as 1 Henry VI) is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1591, and set during the lifetime of King Henry VI of England. Whereas 2 Henry VI deals with the King's inability to quell the bickering of his nobles, and the inevitability of armed conflict, and 3 Henry VI deals with the horrors of that conflict, 1 Henry VI deals with the loss of England's French territories and the political machination...
Henry V is a historical play by William Shakespeare, written in 1599. It is based on the life of King Henry V of England, and focuses on events immediately before and after the Battle of Agincourt (1415) during the Hundred Years' War. The play is the final part of a tetralogy, preceded by Richard II, Henry IV, part 1 and Henry IV, part 2. The original audiences would thus have already been familiar with the title character, who was depicted in the Henry IV plays as a wild, undisciplined lad...
Titus Andronicus is a tragedy by William Shakespeare that may be his earliest tragedy and is thought to have been written in the early 1590s. By far Shakespeare's bloodiest work, the play depicts a cycle of revenge between the Roman general Titus and his enemy Tamora, the Queen of the Goths. It lost popularity during the Victorian era because of its gore, but its critical reputation and popularity have recently revived.
Richard III is one of Shakespeare's most popular plays on the stage and has been adapted successfully for film. This new and innovative edition recognizes the play's pre-eminence as a performance work: a perspective that informs every aspect of the editing. Challenging traditional practice, the text is based on the 1597 Quarto which, brings us closest to the play as it would have been staged in Shakespeare's theater. The introduction, which is illustrated, explores the long performance history f...
Shakespeare's last tragedy explores the career and death of a brilliant and arrogant Roman general. This is an ambitious and intriguing story of heroism.
I come no more to make you laugh; things now That bear a weighty and a serious brow, Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe, Such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow, We now present. Those that can pity here May, if they think it well, let fall a tear: The subject will deserve it. Such as give Their money out of hope they may believe May here find truth too. Those that come to see Only a show or two, and so agree The play may pass, if they be still and willing, I'll undertake may see awa...
While emphasizing the liveliness of Shakespeare's play in stage terms, David Crane also claims that this citizen comedy needs to be taken as an expression of Shakespeare's fundamental understanding of human life, conveyed centrally in the character of Falstaff. In the process Crane also examines the bard's free and vigorous use of different linguistic worlds within the play.
Perhaps one of Shakespeare's most adventure-filled plays, "Pericles" follows the extended sailing journeys of a young prince. Pericles is forced to flee Antioch when he correctly guesses a riddle that reveals the incestuous activity of King Antiochus. Unable to stay at home in Tyre because of Antiochus' vengeance, he sails away and ends up shipwrecked in Pentapolis, where he fights for and wins a princess named Thaisa. The trials and tribulations of this couple and their daughter Marina fill th...
Young King Ferdinand and his courtiers agree to dedicate three years to ascetic and celibate study. But when the fetching Princess of France and her ladies arrive on a diplomatic mission, the men’s resolve is put to an arduous – and witty – test. The tension between their vow and their passion forms the subject of this charming, sparkling early comedy. Performed by Greg Wise, Samantha Bond, and the Arkangel cast.
Zora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance. Of Hurston's four novels and more than 50 published short stories, plays, and essays, she is best known for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Gritty, laconic, well-known poet Komunyakaa (who won a Pulitzer for 1993's Neon Vernacular) teams up with playwright and dramaturge Garcia for a compelling, short, stage-ready adaptation of the Sumerian epic that may be the oldest story in the world. In the play, as in its ancient source, the ill-content King Gilgamesh develops a deep passion for Enkidu, a wild man who grew up among beasts. The king and the wild man fight together against the spectral forest-monster Humbaba; they win, but the r...
Late in life Saroyan wrote: “In 1943 I turned my back on Broadway, but I did not stop writing plays… I wrote new plays every year… and they are part of the real American theatre, and of the real world theatre, even though they have not been produced, performed, and witnessed.” In fact, William Saroyan left some 150 unpublished plays, two of which are offered here. Typically Saroyan in their graceful, acrobatic use of language, these plays have a breadth, a universality, and a somber...
A day-by-day candid account of the creativity, conflict and compromise involved in the making of a smash-hit Broadway play.
William Dean Howells (1837-1920) was an American realist author and literary critic. He wrote his first novel, Their Wedding Journey, in 1871, but his literary reputation really took off with the realist novel A Modern Instance, published in 1882, which describes the decay of a marriage. His 1885 novel The Rise of Silas Lapham is perhaps his best known, describing the rise and fall of an American entrepreneur in the paint business. His social views were also strongly reflected in the novels Ann...
Still best known for The Heidi Chronicles, which won a Tony Award and a Pulitzer Prize in 1989, Wasserstein is a comic and satirical playwright who has carved out a target area defined by wealth and the rarefied air of privilege. Poking fun at members of the American aristocracy is easy, but Wasserstein also makes us care about them as people. Old Money is no exception. This is a comedy of manners the kind of play that is funny if the manners are bad enough. It is set in fashionable Manhattan du...
Comprised of a collage of interrelated scenes, the action begins with a reunion, six years after graduation, of five close friends and classmates at Mount Holyoke College. They compare notes on their activities since leaving school and then, in a series of flashbacks, we see them in their college days and learn of the events, some funny, some touching, some bitingly cynical, that helped to shape them. Each of the group is a distinct individual, and it is their varying reaction to the staid, shel...
Play Script. Beware! The horseman rides through a hollow that is anything but sleepy in this nimble new musical. Space staging. Cast of 6 males, 4 females, but flexible and may be larger. Imaginative traditional costumes. The classic tale of Washington Irving emerges transformed by the theatrical genius of Jones and the musical talent of Cole. We are challenged to look our fears squarely in the face - - or hoof, as the case may be. Schoolmaster Ichabod offers a new twist in teaching as his st...
ZARA and Nerestan, Christian slaves, had grown up in the palace of Osman, Sultan of Turkey. Zara was but a baby when she was brought to the palace. In fact, the only proof that she was a Christian lay in the ornamental cross she wore. Consequently she had found no difficulty in accepting the Moslem faith. Nerestan, however, though but a young lad when captured, took his obligations to Christianity and his fellow slaves seriously. Two years before the opening of the play he had secured from the ...
Œdipus was written when Voltaire was but nineteen years of age. It was played for the first time in 1718, and ran for forty-five nights. Du Frêsne, a celebrated actor, and of the same age as the author, played the part of Œdipus; and Madame Desmarêts, a famous actress, did Jocaste, and soon after quitted the stage. In this edition, the part of Philoctetes is restored, and stands exactly as it was in the first representation. Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are pri...
"This Comedy is called in the French Nanine, ou le Préjugé Vaincu (Nanine, or Prejudice Overcome). It is written, as we are told in the title-page, in verses of ten syllables. The absurdity of comedies in rhyme I have already remarked. The original begins thus: Il faut parler, il faut, Monsieur le Comte, Vous expliquer nettement sur mon Compte. The reader cannot but observe, what villainous rhymes Comte and Compte are, and perhaps will more readily forgive my reducing this comedy into plain p...
Le fanatisme, ou Mahomet le Prophete, is a five-act tragedy written in 1736 by French playwright and philosopher Voltaire. It received its debut performance in Lille on 25 April 1741. The play is a study of religious fanaticism and self-serving manipulation based on an episode in the traditional biography of Muhammad in which he orders the murder of his critics.[1] Voltaire described the play as "written in opposition to the founder of a false and barbarous sect to whom could I with more propr...
Hérode et Mariamne or Mariamne is a 1724 tragedy by Voltaire. Adapted from the writings of the historian Josephus, it is set in ancient Jerusalem, and portrays the tragic death of Mariamne at the hands of her jealous husband, Herod the Great, king of Judea, who suspects her of an intrigue with Varus, the Roman governor of Syria. The play premiered with Adrienne Lecouvreur as Mariamne, Baron as Hérode and Duclos as Salome, but it was withdrawn after just one performance when the audience gave...
Cromwell is a play by Victor Hugo written in 1827. It was a result of the creation of the literary circle around Hugo which identified itself as Romanticist, taking Shakespeare as their model dramatist rather than the Classicist models of Jean Racine and Pierre Corneille supported by the French Academy. The play was never performed on stage. It tells the story of Oliver Cromwell's internal disputes in being offered the crown of England. It is notable for its preface which is considered the man...
In the Fall of 1992, Millennium Approaches, the first part of Tony Kushner's Angels in America, won England's prestigious Evening Standard award as the season's Best Play. By the Spring of 1993, Millennium had come to Broadway and won its highest honor, the Tony Award for Best Play, and the distinguished Pulitzer Prize for drama as well. Through its epic theatrical panorama of the intimate and political dynamics that arise when individuals, histories, and cultures intersect, Millennium captured...
Louisiana, 1963: A nation reeling from the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement and the Kennedy assassination. Caroline, a black maid, and Noah, the son of the Jewish family she works for, struggle to find an identity for their friendship. Through their intimate story, this beautiful new musical portrays the changing rhythms of a nation. Tony Kushner and composer Jeanine Tesori have created a story that addresses contemporary questions of culture, community, race and class through the lens and musi...
Winner of the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best New Play Nominated for the Governor General's Award This award-winning play by Native playwright Tomson Highway is a powerful and moving portrayal of seven women from a reserve attempting to beat the odds by winning at bingo. And not just any bingo. It is THE BIGGEST BINGO IN THE WORLD and a chance to win a way out of a tortured life. The Rez Sisters is hilarious, shocking, mystical and powerful, and clearly establishes the creative voice of ...
Does an opera producer do anything besides tell the singers where to stand? Can a single note be played more or less beautifully on the piano? In these essays, five of our most accomplished artists and critics explore the relationship between technique and interpretation in the performing arts. Tom Stoppard considers ways of controlling how an audience gets information while watching a play, and Charles Rosen reflects on the very physical relationship between the musician and the instrument. Jon...
With his characteristically brilliant wordplay and extraordinary scope, Tom Stoppard has in Hapgood devised a play that “spins an end-of-the-cold-war tale of intrigue and betrayal, interspersed with explanations of the quixotic behavior of the electron and the puzzling properties of light” (David Richards, The New York Times). It falls to Hapgood, an extraordinary British intelligence officer, to try to unravel the mystery of who is passing along top-secret scientific discoveries to the Sovi...
A talented ensemble cast brings to life Stoppard's classic play featuring the loves and loves lost of playwright Henry; his wife, Charlotte; an actor named Max; and his activist wife, Annie. Featuring a play within a play, this production is superbly performed if slightly confusing in audiobook format—it's often difficult to keep track of who is speaking and to keep track of the endlessly reconfiguring relationships. Henry searches for meaning both in art and romantic relationships as he atte...
2 Males, 1 Female Synopsis: Laura is a ‘cool finder,’ a person hired by corporations to observe street culture and predict fashion trends. During one of her visits to a local skate park, she encounters Pack, 16, who seems to be a homeless street kid. Pack agrees to help Laura gather information in exchange for money and beer. Soon, the two develop a sort of friendship, and Laura finds herself intrigued with Pack's life story. Matt, who has been in a relationship with Laura for years, is n...
Based on the original stage production at the Stratford Festival of Canada, directed by Martha Henry. In this daring and original production of Timothy Findley's Governor-General Award winning play, William Shakespeare and the formidable Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I, are brought together in a remarkable encounter on the night of April 22, 1616. The night the Queen's Lover will be executed, by the Queen's decree. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.
The Globe Quartos is a ground-breaking new series of forgotten plays co-published with Shakespeare's Globe in London. It marks the astonishing discovery of work by Shakespeare's contemporaries, and for some of the plays, this is the first time they have been in print in over 400 years. Middleton's craft and wit abound in this masterly satire of London Society at the turn of the 17th century. Disjointed and dysfunctional families wrangle and plot, cuckold and gull, 'but women's wit is ever at fu...
Thomas Middleton's notorious play, A Game at Chess, provoked a scandal when it was first performed in 1624. Through a masterly use of the metaphor of chessplay, this satire of men in high places was immediately recognized. The play was performed nine times to large theater audiences before the Privy Council closed the Globe theatre. Numerous contemporary reports and official documents relating to the scandal (printed in the appendix, some for the first time ever), provide a rich content for thi...
De Spectaculis (also known as On the Spectacles) is a surviving moral and ascetic treatise by Tertullian. Written somewhere between 197-202, the work looks at the moral legitimacy and consequences of Christians attending the circus, theatre, or amphitheatre ("the pleasures of public shows"). In it, Tertullian posits against the popular view that human enjoyment can be of no offence to God. His view of these public entertainments are that they are a misuse of God's creation and a perversion of ...
When the Agatean Empire requests the Great Wizzard, Lord Vetinari of Ankh-Morpork sends a pathetically inept wizard named Rincewind 6000 miles away to the Counterweight Continent to intercede. The latest novel in the satirical fantasy "Discworld" series; for fantasy collections with the series.
The play is a simple love story of a somewhat puritanical Southern girl and an unpuritanical young doctor. Each is basically attracted to the other but because of their divergent attitudes toward life, each over the course of years is driven away from the other. Not until toward the end does the doctor realize that the girl's high idealism is basically right, and while she is still in love with him, it turns out that neither time nor circumstances will allow the two ultimately to come together. ...
The definitive text of this American classic—reissued with an introduction by Edward Albee (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and A Delicate Balance) and Williams' essay "Person-to-Person." Cat on a Hot Tin Roof first heated up Broadway in 1955 with its gothic American story of brothers vying for their dying father's inheritance amid a whirlwind of sexuality, untethered in the person of Maggie the Cat. The play also daringly showcased the burden of sexuality repressed in the agony of her husban...
This second volume of the playwright's correspondence begins at a time, after the staging of The Glass Menagerie, when Williams had "no interest... in more Broadway productions." It wouldn't be long, though, before he started writing A Streetcar Named Desire, which would become an even greater success and was the first of many collaborations with director Elia Kazan. Williams had plenty of advice for Kazan about the staging of Streetcar and subsequent plays, and the letters reveal the active ro...
The Theatre of Tennessee Williams brings together in matching format the plays of one of America's most persistently influential and innovative dramatists. Arranged in chronological order, this ongoing series includes the original cast listings and production notes for all full-length plays.
Written in 1938 when Williams was 27, still living at home and a good six years away from Broadway, Not about Nightingales is as much writing exercise as fully realized drama. It lacks the originality and depth of The Glass Menagerie, written only a few years later, and his later masterworks. Nevertheless, it is of considerable interest, not least because it was inspired by a real occurrence in which several unruly prisoners were cooked alive as punishment. And after all, it is Williams' first f...
The Pulitzer Prize and Drama Critics Circle Award winning play—reissued with an introduction by Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman and The Crucible), and Williams' essay "The World I Live In." It is a very short list of 20th-century American plays that continue to have the same power and impact as when they first appeared—57 years after its Broadway premiere, Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire is one of those plays. The story famously recounts how the faded and promiscuous Blanche ...
This set collects all of Williams's plays, including the recently rediscovered early efforts Spring Storm and Not About Nightingales up through his most famous works and later lesser-known dramas. These magnificent titles are essential for all academic and public libraries.
This set collects all of Williams's plays, including the recently rediscovered early efforts Spring Storm and Not About Nightingales up through his most famous works and later lesser-known dramas. These magnificent titles are essential for all academic and public libraries.
A collection of interviews with screen and stage actors, directors, playwrights and critics, Terkel's latest richly entertaining oral history is a departure from his bestselling interview books on weightier themes (Working; Hard Times; Race). Here, Terkel offers interviewsAmany of them reading almost like monologues, Terkel says so littleAfirst heard on the Chicago radio program he has hosted for the past 45 years. Many of the exchanges feel dated, and there is an awful lot of chitchat. Neverth...
An elegant new edition of the Pulitzer Prize-winner's "richly entertaining" (Publishers Weekly) conversations with the masters of stage and screen. The Studs Terkel Interviews: Film and Theater collects the Pulitzer Prize-winning oral historian's remarkable conversations with some of the greatest luminaries of film and theater. Originally published under the title The Spectator, this "knowledgeable and perceptive" (Library Journal) look at show business presents the actors, directors, playwr...
