A tale of family secrets and the damaging corruption of the British legal system from the author of Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. In Bleak House, Charles Dickens not only pries apart the stultifying and ponderous conduct and contracts of British moneyed society, but also takes specific aim at an English judicial system in desperate need of modernization and reform. Featuring the voice of Esther Summerson-Dickens's only female narrator-the story...

Critical and historical notes accompany Shakespeare's play about the life of an ambitious military leader.

King John tells the story of John's struggle to retain the crown in the face of alternative claims to the throne from France and is one of the earlier history plays. This book offers students a comprehensive introduction exploring the play's relationship to its source and to later plays in the history cycle, as well as giving a full account of its critical and performance history, including key productions in 2015 which marked the anniversary of Magna...

"Timon of Athens has struck many readers as rough and unpolished, perhaps even unfinished, though to others it has appeared as Shakespeare's most profound tragic allegory. Described by Coleridge as 'the stillborn twin of King Lear', the play has nevertheless proved brilliantly effective in performance over the past thirty or forty years." "This edition accepts and contributes to the growing scholarly consensus that the play is not Shakespeare's solo...

"Macbeth tells the story of a brave Scottish general named Macbeth who receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia, and he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler as he is forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion....

"SIGNATURE SHAKESPEARE SERIES Featuring remarkable laser-cut paper designs throughout, this new series offers stunning presentations of Shakespeare's plays, complete with scholarship, commentary, notes, and illustrated essays about Shakespeare's language and performances of the play. It's a keepsake package worthy of the greatest, and most loved, playwright in the English language. Each volume in the Signature Shakespeare series includes: - Illustration:...

"Arden Performance Editions are ideal for anyone engaging with a Shakespeare play in performance. With clear facing-page notes giving definitions of words, easily accessible information about key textual variants, lineation, metrical ambiguities and pronunciation, each edition has been developed to open the play's possibilities and meanings to actors and students. Designed to be used and to be useful, each edition has plenty of space for personal...

"The world's leading center for Shakespeare studies. Each edition includes: - Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play -Scene-by-scene plot summaries -A key to the play&;s famous lines and phrases -An introduction to reading Shakespeare&;s language -An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective -An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play -Fresh images...

"Much of the action takes place on an almost clinically bare stage, and the fear and violence in the usurping Duke's court, where everyone wears formal black Elizabethan dress, is chilling. With his lame eye and air of festering resentment, Sandy Neilson's Duke Frederick has a touch of the psychotic about him ... Boyd ... shows us the bloody reality of rural life as the shepherd Corin (excellent Geoffrey Freshwater) slowly skins and beheads a dead...

William Shakespeare (/ˈʃeɪkspɪər/; 26 April 1564 (baptised) – 23 April 1616)[nb 1] was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet, and the "Bard of Avon".[3][nb 2] His extant works, including collaborations, consist of approximately 38 plays,154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses,...