The School for Scandal (1777) is his masterpiece, a brilliantly crafted comedy of contrasts in which brothers Joseph and Charles Surface contend for Maria, with hilariously differing intentions and results. Also a work of acute comic irony, The Rivals satirizes the romantic posturing of Lydia Languish while her disguised suitor Captain Absolute's resourceful contrivances advance an ever inventive and skilfully wrought plot. Included in this edition are the opera play The Duenna and the rarely printed musical play A Trip to Scarborough, adapted from Vanbrugh's The Relapse. Sheridan's last play, The Critic, is an exuberant parody of the modish tragic drama of the day. Lampooning Sir Fretful Plagiary's absurdly bombastic historical drama during its confused stages of production, its satire never fails to delight. The texts of the plays have been newly edited by the General Editor of the Oxford World's Classics English Drama series. A fine introduction and notes on Sheridan's playhouses and critical inheritance make this an invaluable edition for study and performance alike.

    He is also an accomplished screenwriter who has in the past few years turned his hand to writing plays. The results, collected here, hilariously explore serious questions of love, happiness and the meaning of life; they are rich with equal parts of pain and slapstick humour, torment and wit.

    DramaFull LengthCast: 3 men, 1 woman: 4 totalSetting: EXTERIORTHE STORY: Tracing the legacy of war through three generations of a Puerto Rican family, the play focuses on nineteen-year-old Elliot, a recently anointed hometown hero who returns from Iraq with a leg injury and a difficult question: Will he go back to war a second time? While on leave, Elliot learns the stories of his father and grandfather who served in Korea and Vietnam before him.

    Prior is a man living with AIDS whose lover Louis has left him and become involved with Joe, an ex-Mormon and political conservative whose wife, Harper, is slowly having a nervous breakdown. These stories are contrasted with that of Roy Cohn (a fictional re-creation of the infamous American conservative ideologue who died of AIDS in 1986) and his attempts to remain in the closet while trying to find some sort of personal salvation in his beliefs.

    Joe sits at the nexus of Washington life: beloved, feared, and courted in equal measure by the very people whose careers and futures he determines. But as the sixties dawn and America undergoes dizzying change, the intense political dramas Joe has been throwing his weight around in—supporting the war in Vietnam and Soviet containment, criticizing student activism—come to bear a profound personal cost.Based on the real-life story of Joe Alsop, whose columns at the time of his 1974 retirement were running three times a week in more than three hundred newspapers, David Auburn’s The Columnist is a deft blend of history and storytelling. A hilarious, searing portrait of the glorious rewards and devastating losses that accompany ego, ambition, and the pursuit of power, The Columnist pens a vital letter from a radically changing decade to our own turbulent era.

    

    From dark fairytales to alien skies, Monk's stories blend haunting yesterdays, forgotten todays and twisted tomorrows wherein:...A normal little girl in a city made of gears, takes on the world to save a toy.......A normal ancient monster living in Seattle, must decide if love is worth trusting a hero......A normal patchwork woman and her two-headed boyfriend stitch their life and farm together with needle, thread, and time......a normal vampire in a knitting shop must face sun-drenched secrets......a normal snow creature's wish changes a mad man's life......a normal man breaks reality with a hamster......and yes, a normal little robot, defines how extraordinary friendship can be.Poignant, bittersweet, frightening, and funny, these stories pour out worlds that are both lovely and odd, darkly strange and tantalizingly familiar, where no matter how fantastic the setting or situation, love, freedom, and hope find a way to take root and thrive.“Dusi” (Realms of Fantasy, Oct 1999)“Beer with a Hamster Chaser”(Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #14, June 2004)“Probe” (Odyssey #5, 1998)“That Saturday” (Better off Dead, Daw Books, Nov 2008)“The Wishing Time” (First publication in the 1st edition, 2010)“Bearing Life” (Maiden, Matron, Crone, Daw Books, May 2005)“A Cup of Normal” (First publication in 2nd edition, 2015)“Stitchery” (Black Gate #2, 2001; Year’s Best Fantasy 2, Eos, 2002)“Last Tour of Duty” (Realms of Fantasy, Dec 2001)“Oldblade” (Talebones #19, Spring 2000)“Skein of Sunlight” (Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance 2, 2009)“Stringing Tomorrow” (Talebones #32, Spring 2006)“X-Day” (First publication in the 1st edition, 2010)“Menders” (First publication in the 1st edition, 2010)“Leeward to the Sky” (Realms of Fantasy, June 2002)“Fishing the Edge of the World” (Talebones #28, Summer 2004)“Moonlighting” (Fantasy Gone Wrong, Daw Books, Sept 2006)“Christmas Card” (First publication in the 1st edition, 2010)“Ducks in a Row” (Realms of Fantasy, April 2006)“Singing Down the Sun” (Fantastic Companions, May 2005)“Here After Life” (Realms of Fantasy, Feb 2003)“Falling with Wings” (Realms of Fantasy, Aug 2004)“When the Train Calls Lonely” (Realms of Fantasy, Oct 2007)

    The play revolves around Amal, a child confined to his adopted uncle's house by an incurable disease who, inspired by the construction of a local post office, fantasizes about receiving a letter from the king or being a postman. The play was translated into English by W. B. Yeats, and was performed in English for the first time in 1912, by the 'Irish Theatre Company' in London with Tagore in attendance. The Bengali original was staged in Calcutta in 1917. Rabindranath Tagore (1861 1941) was a Bengali polymath who reformed Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We are republishing this antiquarian volume now complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author."

    While clearly guilty of lust and murder, these unsavoury characters become startlingly heroic under pressure, challenging both conventional moral judgements and oppressive social forces."This revised student edition contains a lengthy new introduction with background on the author, date and sources, theme, critical interpretation and stage history. The introduction discusses Webster's radical experimentation with tragic modes, his interest in the heroic potential of women, and evaluates the handling of both in recent stage productions.

    Presents the script of a 1988 play about a group of women in Chinquapin, Louisiana, who learn to draw upon their underlying strength and love to meet the challenges of life.

    Derived from interviews with a wide range of  people who experienced or observed New York's 1991  Crown Heights racial riots, Fires In The  Mirror is as distinguished a work of  commentary on current Black-White tensions as it is a  work of drama.

    

    "Its a ghost story, a thriller, an action-packed murder mystery, and a great tragedy that is profoundly moving." With an outstanding cast of international actors--including Derek Jacobi as Claudius, Julie Christie as Gertrude, Kate Winslet as Ophelia, Charlton Heston as the Player King, Robin Williams as Osric, and Gerard Depardieu as Reynaldo--Branagh's version, in which he will play the title role as well as direct, is sure to go down in film history.This beautiful volume includes Branagh's introduction and screenplay adaptation of Shakespeare's text, color and black-and-white stills, and a production diary that takes us behind the scenes for a day-to-day look at the shooting of his film.

    During the Seven Years War, just after the events narrated in The Last of the Mohicans, Natty brings the daughter of a British sergeant to her father’s station on the Great Lakes, where the French and their Indian allies are plotting a treacherous ambush. Here, for the first time, he falls in love with a woman, before Cooper manages bring off Leatherstocking’s most poignant, and perhaps his most revealing, escape.The Deerslayer (1842) brings the saga full circle and follows the young Natty on his first warpath. Instinctively gifted in the arts of the forest, pious in his respect for the unspoiled wilderness on which he loves to gaze, honorable to friend and foe alike, stoic under torture, and cool under fire, the young Leatherstocking emerges as Cooper’s noblest figure of the American frontier. Enacting a rite of passage both for its hero and for the culture he comes to represent, this last book in the series glows with a timelessness that readers everywhere will find enchanting.

    Dunstan's Church, just a few blocks away from the Royal Courts of Justice. On this site, they say, he robbed and murdered more than 150 customers. To dispose of their remains, he carried them through underground tunnels to the bakery of one Mrs. Lovett a few blocks away, where they supplied the stuffing for her meat pies, the favorite mid-day repast of the lawyers who worked nearby and got their shaves from Sweeney Todd. The man you lunched with yesterday could be your lunch today!The story first appeared in 1846 as a best-selling "penny dreadful", a sensational thriller published in installments. Before the final chapters even had a chance to hit the stands, the first stage version was packing them in at the Royal Britannia Saloon. Since then, there have been numerous stage and literary versions of the story.This script has been specially commissioned by Blackstone Audio, Inc., based on the original sources of the tale.