It is this loss of faith, together with his vulnerability and disequilibrium, his pronounced sense of evil, his desperate challenge to established values and beliefs, that carries Kleist more forcefully than Goethe or Schiller across the gap between the eighteenth century and today.

    Passionate and powerful, the three plays collected together in this volume represent August Strindburge (1849-1912) at his best, 'The Father', 'Miss Julia', and the more mystical 'Easter.' In all three plays, Strindberg combines acute psychological analysis with total mastery of the power to create unforgettable dramas of human life and love.

    In Sophocles' Oedipus Rex the king sets out to uncover the cause of the plague that has struck his city, only to disover the devastating truth about his relationship with his mother and his father.Medea is the terrible story of a woman's bloody revenge on her adulterous husband through the murder of her own children.

    The atmospheric stories and sketches collected here—fin-de-siècle fairy tales from the Vienna of Klimt and Freud, a number of them never before translated into English—propel the reader into a shadowy world of uncanny fates and secret desires. An aristocrat from Paris in the plague years shares a single night of passion with an unknown woman; a cavalry sergeant meets his double on the battlefield; an orphaned man withdraws from the world with his four servants, each of whom has a mysterious power over his destiny.The most influential of all of Hofmannsthal's writings is the title story, a fictional letter to the English philosopher Francis Bacon in which Lord Chandos explains why he is no longer able to write. The "Letter" not only symbolized Hofmannsthal's own turn away from poetry, it captured the psychological crisis of faith and language which was to define the twentieth century.

    

    No qualifications. Go out and buy it everybody."Kenneth Rexroth, The Nation"The translations deliberately avoid the highly wrought and affectedly poetic; their idiom is contemporary....They have life and speed and suppleness of phrase."Times Education Supplement"These translations belong to our time. A keen poetic sensibility repeatedly quickens them; and without this inner fire the most academically flawless rendering is dead."Warren D. Anderson, American Oxonian"The critical commentaries and the versions themselves...are fresh, unpretentious, above all, functional."Commonweal"Grene is one of the great translators."Conor Cruise O'Brien, London Sunday Times"Richmond Lattimore is that rara avis in our age, the classical scholar who is at the same time an accomplished poet."Dudley Fitts, New York Times Book Review

    Plautus's broad humor, reflecting Roman manners and contemporary life, is revealed in these five plays: The Pot of Gold (Aulularia), The Prisoners (Captivi), The Brothers Menaechmus (Menaechmi), The Swaggering Soldier (Miles Gloriosus), and Pseudolus.

    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.

    A wonderful collection of moral tales, anecdotes, jokes, reports of murders, disasters and mysteries, all originally written for inclusion in a popular religious almanac.First issued in collected form in 1811, Hebel's stories cover a broad spectrum of human experience, with characters ranging from Napoleon and the Austrian Emperor Joseph, to common soldiers and working men and women.

    Alternate cover edition can be found here, here, here, hereIn the Oresteia—the only trilogy in Greek drama which survives from antiquity—Aeschylus took as his subject the bloody chain of murder and revenge within the royal family of Argos.Moving from darkness to light, from rage to self-governance, from primitive ritual to civilized institution, their spirit of struggle and regeneration becomes an everlasting song of celebration.

    It was performed at the Lenaia, one of the Festivals of Dionysus in Athens, in 405 BC, receiving first place.

    Gilbert's verses for Sullivan's music are the most fastidiously turned and inventively rhymed in all lyric comedy. As the Savoy Operas enter their second century on a swell of renewed popularity, Gilbert's reputation as the supreme wordsmith of light opera remains secure. Complete and authentic, these are the librettos on which modern performances and recordings are based. Scattered among the songs are over seventy of the amusing, quirky pictures Gilbert drew to illustrate them. A chronology prepared for this edition sketches the authors' lives and careers. This is a book that no lover of Gilbert and Sullivan, musical comedy, or indeed the English theater will want to be without.

    While Gottfried adheres faithfully to the events as set down by Thomas, his chosen source, he is correct over questions of Chrisianity and religion, but no more.In fact his persona as narrator is oddly elusive and engaging. A virtuoso stylist, adept in irony and wit, he is subtle and almost unmedieval in putting across his own impressions of a love that transcends the bounds advocated by Church or society.

    The thorough introduction discusses the tragicomedy as a genre, the writers thought to have collaborated on this play and the question of its authorship, and the significance of collaboration and censorship in the era when the play was written, as well as other notes on historical context. The editor goes on to address the public, literary, and theatrical contexts within and surrounding the play; the play's afterlife in theatrical adaptation and academia; and technical notes on editing the drama. Six appendices follow the text of The Two Noble Kinsmen. They are: "John Fletcher, 'Upon An Honest Man's Fortune'"; "The Portrait--Frontispiece of John Fletcher, 1647"; "Francis Beaumont, The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn"; "Beaumont's 1613 Masque and The Two Noble Kinsmen"; "The Morris"; and "The Music." Finally, a reference section provides a list of abbreviations and references, a catalog of Shakespeare's works and works partly by Shakespeare, and citations for the modern productions mentioned in the text, other collated editions of The Two Noble Kinsmen, and other related reading.The Arden Shakespeare has developed a reputation as the pre-eminent critical edition of Shakespeare for its exceptional scholarship, reflected in the thoroughness of each volume. An introduction comprehensively contextualizes the play, chronicling the history and culture that surrounded and influenced Shakespeare at the time of its writing and performance, and closely surveying critical approaches to the work. Detailed appendices address problems like dating and casting, and analyze the differing Quarto and Folio sources. A full commentary by one or more of the play's foremost contemporary scholars illuminates the text, glossing unfamiliar terms and drawing from an abundance of research and expertise to explain allusions and significant background information. Highly informative and accessible, Arden offers the fullest experience of Shakespeare available to a reader.

    Inspired by the Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus, Shelley's play serves as a sort of sequel, matching its Greek predecessor in stature and pure poetic power. It depicts its philanthropist hero's ultimate triumph over the superstition and bigotry of the gods. As Shelley himself stated in his Defence of Poetry, Prometheus Unbound awakens and enlarges the mind.