The Complete Works
William Shakespeare - 1623
Part 1 King Henry IV. Part 2 King Henry V King Henry VI. Part 1 King Henry VI. Part 2 King Henry VI. Part 3 King Richard III King Henry VIII Troilus and Cressida Coriolanus Titus Andronicus Romeo and Juliet Timon of Athens Julius Caesar Macbeth Hamlet King Lear Othello Anthony and Cleopatra Cymbeline Pericles Venus and Adonis Rape of Lucrece Sonnets Lover's Complaint Passionate Pilgrim Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music Phoenix and the Turtle
The Ring of the Nibelung
Richard Wagner - 1853
His own libretto to the operas, translated by Andrew Porter, is an intricate system of metric patterns, imaginative metaphors and alliteration,combining to produce the music in text.'Andrew Porter's utterly natural, often poetic, faithfully rendered English text should be a revelation...The immediacy of instant comprehension gives the entire drama an added dimension.'--The New York Times
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.
Rhinoceros and Other Plays
Eugène Ionesco - 1959
A rhinoceros suddely apears in a small town, tramping through its peaceful streets. Soon there are two, then three, until the "movement" is universal: a transformation of average citizens into beasts, as they learn to "move with the times." Finally, only one man remains. "I'm the last man left, and I'm staying that way until the end. I'm not capitulating!" Rhinoceros is a commentary on the absurdity of the human condition made tolerable only by self-delusion. It shows us the struggle of the individual to maintain integrity and identity alone in a world where all others have succumbed to the "beauty" of brute force, natural energy and mindlessness.
No Exit and Three Other Plays
Jean-Paul Sartre - 1947
NO EXIT is an unforgettable portrayal of hell. THE FLIES is a modern reworking of the Electra-Orestes story. DIRTY HANDS is about a young intellectual torn between theory and praxis. THE RESPECTFUL PROSTITUTE is an attack on American racism.
Three Plays: Juno and the Paycock / The Shadow of a Gunman / The Plow and the Stars
Seán O'Casey - 1969
He never went to school but received most of his education in the streets of Dublin, and taught himself to read at the age of fourteen. He was successively a newspaper-seller, docker, stone-breaker, railway-worker and builders' labourer. In 1913 he helped to organise the Irish Citizen Army which fought in the streets of Dublin, and at the same time he was learning his dramatic technique by reading Shakespeare and watching the plays of Dion Boucicault. His early works were performed at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, and Lady Gregory made him welcome at Coole, but disagreement followed and after visiting America in the late thirties O'Casey settled in Devonshire. He lived there until his death in 1964, though still drawing the themes of many of his plays from the life he knew so well on the banks of the Liffey. Out of the ceaseless dramatic experimenting in his plays O'Casey created a flamboyance and versatility that sustain the impression of bigness of mind that is inseparable from his tragi-comic vision of life.
The Pitchfork Disney
Philip Ridley - 1991
Manifesting Ridley's vivid and visionary imagination and the dark beauty of his outlook, the play resonates with his trademark themes: East London, storytelling, moments of shocking violence, memories of the past, fantastical monologues, and that strange mix of the barbaric and the beautiful he has made all his own.The Pitchfork Disney was Ridley's first play and is now seen as launching a new generation of playwrights who were unafraid to shock and court controversy. This unsettling, dreamlike piece has surreal undertones and thematically explores fear, dreams and story-telling. First produced in 1991, it has gone on to be recognised as the annunciation of Ridley's dark and seductive world.
The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950
T.S. Eliot - 1952
This omnibus collection includes all of the author’s early poetry as well as the Four Quartets, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, and the plays Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, and The Cocktail Party.
The Journey to the East
Hermann Hesse - 1932
H.H., a German choirmaster, is invited on an expedition with the League, a secret society whose members include Paul Klee, Mozart, and Albertus Magnus. The participants traverse both space and time, encountering Noah's Ark in Zurich and Don Quixote at Bremgarten. The pilgrims' ultimate destination is the East, the "Home of the Light," where they expect to find spiritual renewal. Yet the harmony that ruled at the outset of the trip soon degenerates into an opening conflict. Each traveler finds the rest of the group intolerable and heads off in his own direction, with H.H. bitterly blaming the others for the failure of the journey. It is only long after the trip, while poring over records in the League archives, that H.H. discovers his own role in the dissolution of the group, and the ominous significance of the journey itself.
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories
Franz Kafka - 1915
Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.Virtually unknown during his lifetime, Franz Kafka is now one of the world’s most widely read and discussed authors. His nightmarish novels and short stories have come to symbolize modern man’s anxiety and alienation in a bizarre, hostile, and dehumanized world. This vision is most fully realized in Kafka’s masterpiece, “The Metamorphosis,” a story that is both harrowing and amusing, and a landmark of modern literature. Bringing together some of Kafka’s finest work, this collection demonstrates the richness and variety of the author’s artistry. “The Judgment,” which Kafka considered to be his decisive breakthrough, and “The Stoker,” which became the first chapter of his novel Amerika, are here included. These two, along with “The Metamorphosis,” form a suite of stories Kafka referred to as “The Sons,” and they collectively present a devastating portrait of the modern family.Also included are “In the Penal Colony,” a story of a torture machine and its operators and victims, and “A Hunger Artist,” about the absurdity of an artist trying to communicate with a misunderstanding public. Kafka’s lucid, succinct writing chronicles the labyrinthine complexities, the futility-laden horror, and the stifling oppressiveness that permeate his vision of modern life.Jason Baker is a writer of short stories living in Brooklyn, New York.
A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur
Tennessee Williams - 1979
Louis in the mid-thirties––a lovely Sunday for a picnic at Creve Coeur Lake. But Dorothea, one of Tennessee Williams’s most engaging "marginally youthful," forever hopeful Southern belles, is home waiting for a phone call from the principal of the high school where she teaches civics––the man she expects to fulfill her deferred dreams of romance and matrimony. Williams’s unerring dialogue reveals each of the four characters of A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur with precision and clarity: Dorothea, who does even her "setting-up exercises" with poignant flutters; Bodey, her German roommate, who wants to pair Dotty with her beer-drinking twin, Buddy, thereby assuring nieces, nephews, and a family for both herself and Dotty; Helena, a fellow teacher, with the "eyes of a predatory bird," who would like to "rescue" Dotty from her vulgar, common surroundings and substitute an elegant but sterile spinster life; and Miss Gluck, a newly orphaned and distraught neighbor, whom Bodey comforts with coffee and crullers while Helena mocks them both. Focusing on one morning and one encounter of four women, Williams once again skillfully explores, with comic irony and great tenderness, the meaning of loneliness, the need for human connection, as well as the inevitable compromises one must make to get through "the long run of life."