The Romantic Ladies / The Misanthrope / Don Juan or The Feast of the Statue / Tartuffe / George Dandin / The Would-be Gentleman / The School for Wifes / The School for Wifes Critisized / The Miser: Comedies of Molière


Molière - 1929
    Contents:- The Romantic Ladies- The Misanthrope- Don Juan or The Feast of the Statue- Tartuffe- George Dandin- The Would-be Gentleman- The School for Wifes- The School for Wifes Critisized- The Miser

The Devil's Disciple


George Bernard Shaw - 1897
    1st World Library-Literary Society is a non-profit educational organization. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - At the most wretched hour between a black night and a wintry morning in the year 1777, Mrs. Dudgeon, of New Hampshire, is sitting up in the kitchen and general dwelling room of her farm house on the outskirts of the town of Websterbridge. She is not a prepossessing woman. No woman looks her best after sitting up all night; and Mrs. Dudgeon's face, even at its best, is grimly trenched by the channels into which the barren forms and observances of a dead Puritanism can pen a bitter temper and a fierce pride. She is an elderly matron who has worked hard and got nothing by it except dominion and detestation in her sordid home, and an unquestioned reputation for piety and respectability among her neighbors, to whom drink and debauchery are still so much more tempting than religion and rectitude, that they conceive goodness simply as self-denial. This conception is easily extended to others - denial, and finally generalized as covering anything disagreeable. So Mrs. Dudgeon, being exceedingly disagreeable, is held to be excee-dingly good. Short of flat felony, she enjoys complete license except for amiable weaknesses of any sort, and is consequently, without knowing it, the most licentious woman in the parish on the strength of never having broken the seventh commandment or missed a Sunday at the Presbyterian church.

Faust


Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - 1832
    The devil will do all he asks on Earth and seeks to grant him a moment in life so glorious that he will wish it to last forever. But if Faust does bid the moment stay, he falls to Mephisto and must serve him after death. In this first part of Goethe’s great work, the embittered thinker and Mephistopheles enter into their agreement, and soon Faust is living a rejuvenated life and winning the love of the beautiful Gretchen. But in this compelling tragedy of arrogance, unfulfilled desire, and self-delusion, Faust heads inexorably toward an infernal destruction.The best translation of Faust available, this volume provides the original German text and its English counterpart on facing pages. Walter Kaufmann's translation conveys the poetic beauty and rhythm as well as the complex depth of Goethe's language. Includes Part One and selections from Part Two.

Girls & Boys


Dennis Kelly - 2018
    Before long they begin to settle down, buy a house, juggle careers, have kids – theirs is an ordinary family.But then their world starts to unravel and things take a disturbing turn.A tragic, violent look at parenthood and trauma.

Two for the Seesaw


William Gibson - 1958
    The lawyer is married to a beautiful, well-to-do girl in the midwest whose family sets the pace in local society and intends to run his marriage and his career as well. He has rebelled, come to New York, and taken up residence with this intriguing young woman. He is lonely and in need of consolation; she is one of those rare women whose only purpose seems to be making others happy. Their briefly fulfilling relationship is unhappily destined to failure: he is a cultured gentile with a wife and painful memories while she is a plain Jewish girl with little education and a horrible Bronx accent. They share happy and humorous moments together, but they both see with sadness the utter hopelessness of the affair."It's a whale of a hit, a bittersweet joy ride." - The New York Mirror ."An absorbing, affectionate, and funny delight." - The New York Daily News

The Columnist: A Play


David Auburn - 2012
    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.

Dreams in Black Static: Eight Stories


Ambrose Ibsen - 2020
    After watching it, one of them vanishes...A heart transplant recipient gets much more than he bargained for when he digs into his donor's sinister past...Mourning the death of their son, a young couple is plunged into madness after encountering something otherworldly in the wilderness...DREAMS IN BLACK STATIC is a collection of eight terrifying stories by Ambrose Ibsen, author of The Haunting of Beacon Hill and Asylum. The tales included are:"Me and Mr. Ray" **"Decatur Road" **"Dreams in Black Static" **"Distortional Addict" **"Trim" **"Subterrane Dream" **"Orchard""The Uncanny" **** = Appearing in print for the first time

Blues for an Alabama Sky - Acting Edition


Pearl Cleage - 1999
    Theatre script, playbook

Love Letters and Two Other Plays: The Golden Age, What I Did Last Summer


A.R. Gurney - 1990
    R. Gurney has wittily captured the manners of upper-middle-class WASP America, but never as gracefully or with such dazzling economy as in Love Letters. Tracing the lifelong correspondence of the staid, dutiful lawyer Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and the lively, unstable artist Melissa Gardner, the story of their bittersweet relationship gradually unfolds from what is written--and what is left unsaid--in their letters. A smash hit both off and on Broadway, Love Letters captures Andy and Melissa with a precision of detail and depth of feeling that only Gurney can command. Two other, thematically related plays by Gurney, The Golden Age and What I Did Last Summer, are included, providing a trio of wry and affectionate paeans to love lost, found, and fleetingly glimpsed.

Friends


Kōbō Abe - 1967
    A family enters the apartment of a young man and announces that they will save him from his loneliness by living with him. Slowly, they destroy everything, in the cheerful psychotic name of "brotherly love".

My Mum's A Twat


Anoushka Warden - 2018
    Which is really hard when you’ve just started being a teenager.(As if growing up wasn’t hard enough already…)I remember thinking if you were ‘the chosen’ one, why does that mean your dress sense has to be so shit?A celebration of teenage rebellion and resilience.Anoushka Warden’s debut play will be directed by Royal Court Artistic Director Vicky Featherstone and Jude Christian.

Dear Evan Hansen


Steven Levenson - 2017
    Evan is shy, lonely, and bullied for it―teeming with the irrepressible emotions all too familiar with anyone who's ever been a teenager. After a tragedy strikes, Evan's life suddenly gets turned around, but is it ultimately for the better?

The Crucible: Text and Criticism


Arthur MillerAldous Huxley - 1971
    Based on historical people and real events, Miller's drama is a searing portrait of a community engulfed by hysteria. In the rigid theocracy of Salem, rumors that women are practicing witchcraft galvanize the town's most basic fears and suspicions; and when a young girl accuses Elizabeth Proctor of being a witch, self-righteous church leaders and townspeople insist that Elizabeth be brought to trial. The ruthlessness of the prosecutors and the eagerness of neighbor to testify against neighbor brilliantly illuminate the destructive power of socially sanctioned violence. Written in 1953, The Crucible is a mirror Miller uses to reflect the anti-communist hysteria inspired by Senator Joseph McCarthy's "witch-hunts" in the United States. Within the text itself, Miller contemplates the parallels, writing "Political opposition...is given an inhumane overlay, which then justifies the abrogation of all normally applied customs of civilized behavior. A political policy is equated with moral right, and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence." The Viking Critical Library edition of Arthur Miller's dramatic recreation of the Salem witch trials contains the complete text of The Crucible as well as extensive critical and contextual material about the play and the playwright, including:Selections from Miller's writings on his most frequently performed playEssays on the historical background of The Crucible, including personal narratives by participants in the trials and records of witchcraft in Salem from the original documentsReviews of The Crucible, in production by Brooks Atkinson, Walter Kerr, Eric Bentley, and othersExcerpts from Jean-Paul Sartre's Les Sorcières de Salem, a "spin-off" of Miller's play, and three analogous works by Twain, Shaw, and Budd SchulbergCritical essays on the play, on Miller, and on the play in the context of Miller's oeuvreAn introduction by the editor, a chronology, a list of topics for discussion and papers prepared by Malcolm Cowley, and a bibliography

33 Variations


Moisés Kaufman - 2011
    A composer coming to terms with his genius. And, even though they're separated by 200 years, these two people share an obsession that might, even just for a moment, make time stand still. Drama, memory and music combine to transport you from present-day New York to nineteenth-century Austria in this extraordinary American play about passion, parenthood and the moments of beauty that can transform a life.

The Women of Lockerbie (Acting Edition)


Deborah Brevoort - 2005
    She meets the women of Lockerbie, who are fighting the U.S. government to obtain the clothing of the victims found in the plane s wreckage. The women, determined to convert an act of hatred into an act of love, want to wash the clothes of the dead and return them to the victim s families. THE WOMEN OF LOCKERBIE is loosely inspired by a true story, although the characters and situations in the play are purely fictional. Written in the structure of a Greek tragedy, it is a poetic drama about the triumph of love over hate. Winner of the silver medal in the Onassis International Playwriting Competition and the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays award.