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All's Well That Ends Well (1607) is a comedy by William Shakespeare. All's Well That Ends Well was likely inspired by the tale of Giletta di Narbona from Boccaccio's Decameron. Unpopular during Shakespeare's lifetime, the play remains one of his least staged works to this day. Despite this, scholars praise All's Well That Ends Well for its moral ambiguity. "The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together, our virtues would be proud...
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"Benedick and Beatrice are engaged in a "merry war"; they both talk a mile a minute and proclaim their scorn for love, marriage, and each other. In contrast, Claudio and Hero are sweet young people who are rendered practically speechless by their love for one another. By means of "noting" (which sounds the same as "nothing," and which is gossip, rumour, and overhearing), Benedick and Beatrice are tricked into confessing their love for each other,...
4) Hamlet
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"One of the most frequently read and performed of all stage works, Shakespeare's Hamlet is unsurpassed in its complexity and richness. Now the most extensively annotated version of Hamlet to date makes the play completely accessible to readers in the twenty-first century. It has been carefully assembled with students, teachers, and the general reader in mind." "Eminent linguist and translator Burton Raffel offers generous help with vocabulary and...
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This drama is about love and marriage. But the path to marriage in this play is unusually hazardous. ... To win Portia's hand, Bassanio must put his future at risk in an attempt to choose correctly among three caskets or chests of gold, silver, and lead. If he chooses rightly, he wins, in marriage, the beautiful, intelligent, and supremely resourceful Portia and her great wealth. If he chooses wrongly, he must forever abandon Portia and may never...
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Close friends Valentine and Proteus become rivals for the hand of Silvia, daughter of the Duke of Milan, who has promised her to the foolish coward Thurio. Proteus has Valentine banished, but Silvia escapes to the forest to join him. Proteus follows with Julia, who dotes on him. After a confrontation, the Duke eventually allows Valentine and Silvia to wed, and Proteus marries Julia.
10) Twelfth night
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Presents the original text of Shakespeare's play side by side with a modern version, with marginal notes and explanations and full descriptions of each character.
11) Othello
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Othello, a high-ranking Moorish soldier, marries Desdemona, daughter of a Venetian senator who opposes the marriage. Othello wins over her family, but a frustrated ensign, Iago, sabotages his happiness by insinuating that Desdemona is having an affair with Cassio, another officer. Jealousy, racial overtones, confusion, fear, and lies eventually destroy love, honor, friendship, and respect.
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Troilus, a Trojan prince (son of Priam), woos Cressida, another Trojan. They profess their undying love, before Cressida is exchanged for a Trojan prisoner of war. As he attempts to visit her in the Greek camp, Troilus glimpses Diomedes flirting with his beloved Cressida, and decides to avenge her perfidy. The majority of the play revolves around the leaders of the Greek and Trojan forces, Agamemnon and Priam respectively. Agamemnon and his cohorts...
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Drawing room comedy exposing quirks and foibles of Victorian society with plot revolving around amorous pursuits of two men who face social obstacles when they woo young ladies of quality. This play's noted for its witty lines, its clever situations, and its satire on the British nobility and clergy.
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One of William Shakespeare's most farcical comedies, "The Comedy of Errors" is notable for its use of mistaken identity to achieve a slapstick comedic effect. Ripe with the bard's characteristic word play, the comedy concerns the lives of two sets of identical twins that were accidentally separated shortly after their birth. The play begins by the elderly Syracusian trader Egeon relating the back-story of his family. When Egeon was young, he married...
15) Henry V
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Presents the original text of Shakespeare's play side by side with a modern version, with marginal notes and explanations and full descriptions of each character.
16) Romeo and Juliet
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Romeo and Juliet are young lovers separated by the ancient and enduring hatred between their families. This text includes an essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare, an introduction to the play, and a note on the text used.
17) A doll's house
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Ibsen's best-known play displays his genius for realistic prose drama. An expression of women's rights, the play climaxes when the central character, Nora, rejects a smothering marriage and life in "a doll's house."
18) Macbeth
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Presents the original text of Shakespeare's play side by side with a modern version, with marginal notes and explanations and full descriptions of each character.
19) Lysistrata
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Along with Sophocles and Euripides, Aristophanes is considered one of the three great Greek playwrights. Only eleven of his nearly forty plays survive in their entirety to this day. Of his extant works Aristophanes's "Lysistrata" is considered one of his finest and one of the truly great comedies from classical antiquity. Central to the work is the vow by the women of Greece to withhold sex from their husbands until they end the brutal war between...
20) The misanthrope
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Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known popularly by his stage name Molière, is regarded as one of the masters of French comedic drama. When Molière began acting in Paris there were two well-established theatrical companies, those of the Hôtel de Bourgogne and the Marais. Joining these theatrical companies would have been impossible for a new member of the acting profession like Molière and thus he performed with traveling troupes of actors in the French...
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