Characters of Shakespear's Plays is an 1817 book of criticism of Shakespeare's plays, written by early nineteenth century English essayist and literary critic William Hazlitt. Characters of Shakespear's Plays consists primarily of Hazlitt's impressions of and thoughts about all of William Shakespeare's plays he believed to be genuine. It was the first book of the kind that anyone had yet written. His main focus is on the characters that appear in the plays, but he also comments on the plays' dramatic structure and poetry, referring frequently to commentary by earlier critics, as well as the...

Quiller-Couch here gives us these four fairy tales that have been perennial favorites for centuries. The first three fairy tales are 'The Sleeping Beauty, ' 'Blue Beard, ' and 'Cinderella, ' all three of which were popularized in France by Charles Perrault in 1697 in his Tales of Mother Goose. The last tale in the compilation is 'Beauty and the Beast, ' this version attributed to Gabrielle de Villeneuve, who published it in 1740 and 1756. Quiller-Couch had this to say regarding his translation of these tales: 'I began by translating Perrault's tales, very nearly word for word....the...