This Wordsworth Edition includes an exclusive Introduction and Notes by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex. As You Like It is one of Shakespeare's finest romantic comedies, variously lyrical, melancholy, satiric, comic and absurd. Its boldly implausible plot generates a profusion of love-lorn men, a resourceful heroine in disguise, sexual ambiguity, sceptical philosophising, and finally a multiplicity of marriages. The ironic medley of pastoral artifice, romantic ardour and quizzical reflection has helped to make As You Like It perennially popular in the...
This Wordsworth Edition includes an exclusive Introduction and Notes by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex. As You Like...
Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex.
Antony and Cleopatra is one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies: a spectacular, widely-ranging drama of love and war, passion and politics. Antony is divided between the responsibilities of imperial power and the intensities of his sexual relationship with Cleopatra. She, variously generous and ruthless, loving and jealous, petulant and majestic, emerges as Shakespeare's most complex depiction of a woman:
'Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex.
Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English Literature, University of Sussex.
The Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare's 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 Taming of the Shrew is one of the most famous and controversial of Shakespeare's comedies. The central relationship, in which Petruchio boisterously 'tames' a rebellious Kate, has often appeared problematic. In the...
Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English Literature, University of Sussex.
Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex.
The Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare's 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 Tempest is the most lyrical, profound and fascinating of Shakespeare's late comedies. Prospero, long exiled from Italy with his daughter Miranda, seeks to use his magical powers to defeat his former enemies. Eventually, having proved...
Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex.
Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex.
The Winter's Tale, one of Shakespeare's later romantic comedies, offers a striking and challenging mixture of tragic and violent events, lyrical love-speeches, farcical comedy, pastoral song and dance, and, eventually, dramatic revelations and reunions. Thematically, there is a rich orchestration of the contrasts between age and youth, corruption and innocence, decline and regeneration. Both Leontes' murderous jealousy and Perdita's love-relationship with...
Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex.
Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex.
In the hope of saving her brother's life, should a woman submit to rape? Should the law be respected when its administrator is corrupt? How powerful in the state should religion become? Although Measure for Measure ends like a comedy, with reconciliations, forgiveness and marriages, it has often been regarded as one of Shakespeare's problem plays. The drama shows the difficulty of effecting an appropriate balance between judicial severity and mercy,...
Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex.
Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, Research 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.
Much Ado About Nothing has long been celebrated as one of Shakespeare's most popular comedies. The central relationship, between Benedick and Beatrice, is wittily combative until love prevails. Broader comedy is provided by Dogberry,...
Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex.
Shakespeare's sonnets have an intensity of both feeling and meaning unmatched in English sonnet form. They divide into two parts; the first 126 sonnets are addressed to a fair youth for whom the poet has an obsessive love and the second chronicles his love for the notorious 'Dark Lady'.
In addition to the sonnets, this volume includes Shakespeare's two lengthy narrative poems on classical themes, The Rape of Lucrece which looks forward to the dark imagery of Macbeth, and Venus and Adonis...
With an Introduction by Tim Cook.
Shakespeare's sonnets have an intensity of both feeling and meaning unmatched in English ...
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...
Richard III is one of the finest of Shakespeare's historical dramas. Although it has a huge cast, Richard himself, gleefully wicked, charisma...
'And when I shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars.' This collection of Shakespeare's soliloquies, including both old favourites and lesser-known pieces, shows him at his dazzling best. One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.
'And when I shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars.' This collection of Shakespeare's soliloquies, including both old favourites and less...
