Book picks similar to
The Bourgeois Gentleman / The Doctor In Spite of Himself / The Affected Damsels / The Miser (Regular Edition) / The Miser: Four Plays by Molière
plays
lifetime-reading-plan
original
theater-plays
Volpone
Ben Jonson - 1606
The plot concerns a wealthy, lecherous old man who feigns a mortal illness in order to solicit bribes from greedy acquaintances who hope to inherit his fortune. Many complexities of plot and connivance ensue, but in the end, the guilty parties are exposed and punished. Explanatory footnotes.
Exemplary Stories
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra - 1613
Ranging from the picaresque to the satirical, the Exemplary Stories defy the conventions of heroic chivalric literature through a combination of comic irony, moral ambiguity, realism, and sheer mirth. This new translation captures the full vigour of Cervantes's wit and make available two rarely printed gems, "The Illustrious Kitchen Maid" and "The Power of Blood."
English Renaissance Drama
David Bevington - 2002
Edited by a team of exceptional scholars and teachers, this anthology opens an extraordinary tradition in drama to new readers and audiences."
The Dog in the Manger
Lope de Vega - 1618
But when he admits his deception, the countess is faced with a social dilemma. A painful and hilarious comedy for anyone who has ever fallen in love with someone they shouldn’t have fallen in love with, The Dog in the Manger was part of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s acclaimed Spanish Golden Age Season in 2004.
Man of La Mancha
Dale Wasserman - 1966
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.
Here
Wisława Szymborska - 2009
When Here was published in Poland, reviewers marveled, “How is it that she keeps getting better?” These twenty-seven poems, as rendered by prize-winning translators Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak, are among her greatest work. Whether writing about her teenage self, microscopic creatures, or the upsides to living on Earth, she remains a virtuoso of form, line, and thought. From the title poem: I can’t speak for elsewhere, but here on Earth we’ve got a fair supply of everything. Here we manufacture chairs and sorrows, scissors, tenderness, transistors, violins, teacups, dams, and quips . . . Like nowhere else, or almost nowhere, you’re given your own torso here, equipped with the accessories required for adding your own children to the rest. Not to mention arms, legs, and astonished head.
The Saga of the Volsungs with The Saga of Ragnar Lothbrok
Unknown
Together the two sagas recount the story of seven generations of a single legendary heroic family and comprise our best source of traditional lore about its members—including, among others, the dragon-slayer Sigurd, Brynhild the Valkyrie, and the Viking chieftain Ragnar Lothbrok.
The Last Days of Judas Iscariot
Stephen Adly Guirgis - 2005
This latest work from the author of Our Lady of 121st Street "shares many of the traits that have made Mr. Guirgis a playwright to reckon with in recent years: a fierce and questing mind that refuses to settle for glib answers, a gift for identifying with life's losers and an unforced eloquence that finds the poetry in lowdown street talk. [Guirgis brings to the play] a stirring sense of Christian existential pain, which wonders at the paradoxes of faith" (Ben Brantley, The New York Times).
Three Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
David Maule - 1995
There are few cases that he cannot solve. In these three stories we meet a young woman who is terrified of a mysterious speckled band, a family who think that five orange pips are a sign of death, and a banker who believes that his son is a thief. But are things really as they seem?
A Moon for the Misbegotten
Eugene O'Neill - 1947
Moon picks up eleven years after the events described in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, asJim Tyrone (based on O’Neill’s older brother Jamie) grasps at a last chance at love under the full moonlight. This paperback edition features an insightful introduction by Stephen A. Black, helpful to anyone who desires a deeper understanding of O’Neill’s work.
All in the Timing
David Ives - 1994
Ives's characters plunge into black holes called "Philadelphias," where the simplest desires are hilariously thwarted. Chimps named Milton, Swift, and Kafka are locked in a room and made to re-create Hamlet. And a con man peddles courses in a dubious language in which "hello" translates as "velcro" and "fraud" comes out as "freud."At once enchanting and perplexing, incisively intelligent and side-splittingly funny, this original paperback edition of Ives's plays includes "Sure Thing," "Words, Words, Words," "The Universal Language," "Variations on the Death of Trotsky," "The Philadelphia," "Long Ago and Far Away," "Foreplay, or The Art of the Fugue," "Seven Menus," "Mere Mortals," "English Made Simple," "A Singular Kinda Guy," "Speed-the-Play," "Ancient History," and "Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread."
The Death of Trotsky (Kindle Single)
Cecelia Holland - 2015
In The Death of Trotsky, Cecelia Holland brings this fated and fatal day to life, from its quotidian beginnings to its dramatic close. Between Trotsky’s waking and his final rest, she probes the outer-workings and inner thoughts of those who were with him till the end, illuminating a man who exited life as he lived it: defiantly. Cecelia Holland, author of more than 30 books and articles, lives in northern California with her family.Cover Design by Adil Dara.