In James Goldman’s classic play The Lion in Winter, domestic turmoil rises to an art form. Keenly self-aware and motivated as much by spite as by any sense of duty, Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine maneuver against each other to position their favorite son in line for succession. By imagining the inner lives of Henry, Eleanor, and their sons, John, Geoffrey, and Richard, Goldman created the quintessential drama of family strife and competing ambitions, a work that gives visceral, modern-day relevance to the intrigues of Angevin England. Combining keen historical and psychological insight with delicious, mordant wit, the stage play has become a touchstone of today’s theater scene, and Goldman’s screenplay for the 1968 film adaptation won him an Academy Award. Told in “marvelously articulate language, with humor that bristles and burns” (Los Angeles Times), The Lion in Winter is the rare play that bursts into life on the printed page.

    That current is best identified by its catch-labels--Theater of the Absurd, Black Comedy, the Theater of Cruelty--which is to say the theater of alienation, of moral anarchy and despair. To the practitioners of those philosophies Man of La Mancha must seem hopelessly naive in its espousal of illusion as man's strongest spiritual need, the most meaningful function of his imagination. But I've no unhappiness about that. "Facts are the enemy of truth," says Cervantes-Don Quixote. And that is precisely what I felt and meant."--Dale Wasserman, from the Preface.

    Susy Hendrix, a blind Greenwich Village housewife, is terrorized by a trio of men looking for heroin they believe her husband has hidden in a doll.

    Focusing on each of them in turn, Mr. Brustein considers the nature of their revolt, the methods employed in their plays, their influences on the modern drama, and the playwrights themselves. "One of the standard and decisive books on the modern theater.... It shows us the men behind the works, ... what they wanted to write about and the private hell within each of them which led to the enduring works we continue to treasure."-New York Times Book Review. "The best single collection of essays I know of on modern drama... remarkably fine and sensitive pieces of criticism. "-Alvin, Kernan, Yale Review.

    His book will be of special interest to American readers for its discussions of Shakespeare's plays and also for what it reveals about the new humanistic spirit astir in the Soviet Union today."

    THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL is an outstanding example of Sheridan's dazzling wit. Goldsmith's SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER is full of a robust good humor reminiscent of Shakespeare. Originally produced at a time when the English stage had long been dominated by a succession of mawkish, sentimental dramas, these two plays created immediate sensations. With their bumbling heroes, charming rogues and elegant ladies, their fantastic deceptions and frantic denouements, their fundamental decency and high spirits, these two plays continue to delight modern audiences.

    

    His antics prove fruitful until one final battle with Henry, Earl of Richmond, at the end of the War of the Roses.

    

    She was the first woman to give public readings; she wrote the first social satire for the stage; and, having become a star overnight without previous acting experience, she was the first American to make the acting profession for women respectable--proving that a lady could be an actress and an actress a lady. Ages 12 up.