Don Juan, the -Seducer of Seville, - originated as a hero-villain of Spanish folk legend, is a famous lover and scoundrel who has made more than a thousand sexual conquests. One of Moliere's best-known plays, Don Juan was written while Tartuffe was still banned on the stages of Paris, and shared much with the outlawed play. Modern directors transform Don Juan in every new era, as each director finds something new to highlight in this timeless classic. Richard Wilbur's flawless translation will be the standard for generations to come, as have his translations of Moliere's other plays. Witty,...

Blackberries for Amelia
Fringing the woods, the stone walls, and the lanes,
Old thickets everywhere have come alive,
Their new leaves reaching out in fans of five
From tangles overarched by this year's canes.
They have their flowers too, it being June,
And here or there in brambled dark-and-light
Are small, five-petaled blooms of chalky white,
As random-clustered and as loosely strewn
As the far stars, of which we now are told
That ever faster do they bolt away,
And that a night may come in which, some say,
We shall have only blackness to behold....

A skillful translation of the classical French tragedy about the captivity of Hector's wife after her abduction by the son of Achilles. The rhymed couplets retain the simplicity of form and powerful language of the original. " This translation] is a striking tour de force" (Hudson Review). Drawings by Igor Tulipanov.

Two classic plays translated by a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet into English verse. In The Misanthrope, society itself is indicted and the impurity of its critic s motives is exposed. In Tartuffe, the bigoted and prudish Orgon falls completely under the power of the wily Tartuffe. Introductions by Richard Wilbur.
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This volume represents virtually all of Wilbur s published poetry to date, including his six earlier collections, twenty-seven new poems, and a cantata. Winner of the 1989 Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry.
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This collection includes Advice to a Prophet and Other Poems, Things of This World, Ceremony and Other Poems, and The Beautiful Changes and Other Poems. "One of the best poets of his generation, Richard Wilbur has imagined excellence, and has created it" (Richard Eberhart, New York Times Book Review).

Phaedra is consumed with passion for Hippolytus, her stepson. Believing her husband dead, she confesses her love to him and is rebuffed. When her husband returns alive, Phaedra convinces him that it was Hippolytus who attempted to seduce her. In his interpretation, Racine replaced the stylized tragedy with human-scale characters and actions. Introduction by Richard Wilbur.

The School for Wives concerns an insecure man who contrives to show the world how to rig an infallible alliance by marrying the perfect bride; The Learned Ladies centers on the domestic calamities wrought by a domineering woman upon her husband, children, and household. Wilbur...makes Moliere into as great an English verse playwright as he was a French one (John Simon, New York). Introductions by Richard Wilbur.
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The translation into English verse of one of Moliere's most masterful and most popular plays. "A continuous delight from beginning to end" (Richard Eberhart). Introduction by Richard Wilbur.