Dramat

Anton Chekhov remarked toward the close of his life that people would stop reading him a year after his death. But his literary stature and popularity have grown steadily with the years, and he is accounted the single most important influence on the development of the modern short story.

Edited and with an introduction by Avrahm Yarmolinsky, The Portable Chekhov presents twenty-eight of Chekhov's best stories, chosen as particularly representative of his many-sided portrayal of the human comedy--including "The Kiss," "The Darling," and "In the Ravine"--as well as two complete...

A diverse collection of monologues featuring the voices of women through the ages
Drawn from poetry, fiction, diaries, journals, and documents of public record, these selections, although not originally intended for theatrical or cinematic performances, offer unique dramatic opportunities for actors, speakers, students, or anyone interested in women s studies.
Stefan Rudnicki has brought together selections from well-known as well as obscure authors, providing a tremendous range of women s perspectives from a variety of sources: poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily...

Before there was Viva Zapata , the acclaimed film for which John Steinbeck received Academy Award nominations for best story and screenplay, there was the original Zapata.

In the research library of UCLA, James Robertson unearthed Steinbeck's original narraive of the life of Emiliano Zapato, "the Little Tiger," champion of the peasants during the Mexican Revolution. This story, upon which Steinbeck based his classic script Viva Zapata , brilliantly captures the conflict between creative dissent and intolerant militancy to give us both a timesless social statement and an...

From the Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, two plays set in the north Dublin suburb of Barrytown
Watch for Roddy Doyle's new novel, Smile, coming in October of 2017
From novelist and screenwriter Roddy Doyle come these two colorful plays. both set in the North Dublin suburb of Barrytown. In Brownbread, three young men kidnap a bishop but soon come to realize--when the U.S. Marines invade--that their brilliant adventure is nothing more than a colossal mistake. War is set at the Hiker's Rest, a pub where two trivia addicts meet...

This volume contains Richard II, Henry IV Part One, Henry IV Part Two, and Henry V. Each play possesses its own distinctive mood, tone and style, and together they inhabit the turbulent period of change from the usurpation of the throne of Richard II by Bolingbroke to the triumph of heroic kingship in Henry V.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout...

A Penguin Classics edition containing The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night
Shakespearean comedy has as much to do with the structure and movement of the drama as with the wit of its dialogue or the humour of its characters. In these four comedies there is a near-tragic crisis at which disaster or happiness may ensue, but the overriding force of goodwill and the power of understanding, love and generosity brings us through to a joyful conclusion. In comedy, 'sweet are the uses of adversity', so that the...

A Penguin Classics edition containing Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth
The theme of the great Shakespearean tragedies is the fall from grace of a great man due to a flaw in his nature. Whether it is the ruthless ambition of Macbeth or the folly of Lear, the irresolution of Hamlet or the suspicion of Othello, the cause of the tragedy - even when it is the murder of a king - is trifling compared to the calamity that it unleashes. Despite his flawed nature, however, the tragic hero has a nobility that emphasizes the greatness of man. From this...

This unique volume includes eight early dramas that mirror American literary, social, and cultural history: Royall TylersThe Contrast(1789); William Dunlap'sAndre(1798); James Nelson Barker'sThe Indian Princess(1808); Robert Montgomery Bird'sThe Gladiator(1831); William Henry Smith'sThe Drunkard(1844); Anna Cora Mowatt'sFashion(1845); George Aiken'sUncle Tom's Cabin(1852); and Dion Boucicault'sThe Octoroon(1859).
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world....

Shaw began writing MAN AND SUPERMAN in 1901 and determined to write a play that would encapsulate the new century's intellectual inheritance. Shaw drew not only on Byron's verse satire, but also on Shakespeare, the Victorian comedy fashionable in his early life, and from authors from Conan Doyle to Kipling. In this powerful drama of ideas, Shaw explores the role of the artist, the function of women in society, and his theory of Creative Evolution. As Stanley Weintraub says in his new introduction, this is "the first great twentieth-century English play" and remains a classic expose of the...

The only surviving trilogy from ancient times - a story of murder, madness and justice

Aeschylus (525-c.456 bc) set his great trilogy in the immediate aftermath of the Fall of Troy, when King Agamemnon returns to Argos, a victor in war. Agamemnon depicts the hero's discovery that his family has been destroyed by his wife's infidelity and ends with his death at her callous hand. Clytemnestra's crime is repaid in The Choephori when her outraged son Orestes kills both her and her lover. The Eumenides then follows Orestes as he is hounded to Athens by the Furies'...

Three of Strindberg's most famous plays, including Miss Julia, the basis for the major motion picture Miss Julie, starring Jessica Chastain and Colin Farrell

The plays in this volume focus on the tumultuous relationships between men and women, whether they are father and daughter, brother and sister, or lovers. Miss Julia is a ruthlessly realistic depiction of an upper-class woman's seduction of a servant, emphasizing the differences and the antagonism between them. In The Father a mom is brought to madness and driven out of his home by the suspicion...

Aeschylus (525-456 BC) brought a new grandeur and epic sweep to the drama of classical Athens, raising it to the status of high art. In Prometheus Bound the defiant Titan Prometheus is brutally punished by Zeus for daring to improve the state of wretchedness and servitude in which mankind is kept. The Suppliants tells the story of the fifty daughters of Danaus who must flee to escape enforced marriages, while Seven Against Thebes shows the inexorable downfall of the last members of the cursed family of Oedipus. And The Persians, the only Greek tragedy to deal with...

Three plays by Racine

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Brilliantly adapting Greek New Comedy for Roman audiences, the sublime comedies of Plautus (c. 254-184 BC) are the earliest surviving complete works of Latin literature. The four plays collected here reveal a playwright in his prime, exploring classic themes and developing standard characters that were to influence the comedies of Shakespeare, Moliere and many others. In The Ghost, a dissolute son who has squandered his father's money is thrown into disarray when he returns from abroad, a theme that is explored further in the comedy of errors A Three-Dollar Day. In The...

Features plays written during the long battles with Sparta that were to ultimately destroy ancient Athens. This title contains: The Children of Heracles, Andromache, The Suppliant Women, Phoenician Women, Orestes and Iphigenia in Aulis.

Although their Mongol overlords (beginning with the founding of the Yuan dynasty by Kublai Khan in 1280) tyrannized the Chinese in nearly every area of life, the arts enjoyed a new-found freedom. On the one hand oppressed, on the other released from the straight-jacket of Confucianism, the Chinese made the most of recent developments in poetry and drama. Yuan plays were a tonic, an amazing spectacle colorful outbursts of singing, dancing, music, acting and mime. They poured new life into old stories oppressors were ridiculed, servants became masters, scenes changed, day followed night in the...

This volume compiles three of Corneille's most lauded plays: The Cid, Corneille's masterpiece set in medieval Spain, was the first great work of French classical drama; Cinna, written three years later in 1641, is a tense political drama; and The Theatrical Illusion, an earlier work, is reminiscent of Shakespeare's exuberant comedies.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history...

The Roman dramatist Terence (c. 186-159 BC) adapted many of his comedies from Greek sources, rendering them suitable for audiences of his own time by introducing subtler characterization and more complex plots. In his romantic play, The Girl from Andros, Terence portrays a love affair saved by a startling discovery. The Self-Tormentor focusses on a man's remorse after sending his son to war, and The Eunuch depicts a case of mistaken identity. Phormio is as rich in intrigue as a French farce, while The Mother-in-Law shows two families striving to save a marriage and...

Features the play Robbers that presents a passionate consideration of liberty, fraternity and deep betrayal; and Wallenstein that explores a flawed general's struggle to bring the Thirty Years War to an end against the will of his Emperor.

Written between 42 and 37 b.c., ten pastoral poems believed to be the first authentic work by Virgil are presented with the original Latin on the left-hand page and the translation on the right.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and...