Recommendations based on "Is This a Dagger Which I See Before Me? (Penguin Little Black Classics)"

Presents the three classic plays "Salome," "Lady Windermere's Fan," and "The Importance of Being Earnest"

This is a biography of a book: the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays printed in 1623 and known as the First Folio. It begins with the story of its first purchaser in London in December 1623, and goes on to explore the ways people have interacted with this iconic book over the four hundred years of its history. Throughout the stress is on what we can learn from individual copies now spread around the world about their eventful lives. From ink blots to pet paws, from annotations to wineglass rings, First Folios teem with evidence of their place in different contexts with different priorities. This study offers new ways to understand Shakespeare's reception and the history of the book. Unlike previous scholarly investigations of the First Folio, it is not concerned with the discussions of how the book came into being, the provenance of its texts, or the technicalities of its production. Instead, it reanimates, in narrative style, the histories of this book, paying close attention to the details of individual copies now located around the world - their bindings, marginalia, general condition, sales history, and location - to discuss five major themes: owning, reading, decoding, performing, and perfecting. This is a history of the book that consolidated Shakespeare's posthumous reputation: a reception history and a study of interactions between owners, readers, forgers, collectors, actors, scholars, booksellers, and the book through which we understand and recognize Shakespeare.

Pygmalion, Heartbreak House, and Saint Joan are widely considered to be three of the most important in the canon of modern British theatre

This text is part of a series of selected Shakepeare texts designed for student use. The introduction provides criticsim, covering themes, characters and dramatic structure, and helpful notes are provided at the right level on every page, facing the text.

Henry V of England, the princely hero of Shakespeare's play, who successfully defeated the French at the Battle of Agincourt and came close to becoming crowned King of France, is one of the best known and most compelling monarchs in English history. This new biography takes a fresh look at his entire life and nine year reign, and gives a balanced view of Henry, who is traditionally seen as a great hero but has been more recently depicted as an obsessive egotist or, worse, a ruthless warlord. The book locates Henry's style of kingship in the context of the time, and looks at often neglected other figures who influenced and helped him, such as his father and his uncles, Henry and Thomas Beaufort. John Matusiak shows that the situation confronting Henry at the outset of his reign was far more favourable than is often supposed but that he was nonetheless a man of prodigious gifts whose extraordinary achievements in battle left the deepest possible impression upon his contemporaries.

From the earliest days of radio to the golden age of television and beyond, Orson Welles has occupied a unique place in American culture. In Orson Welles, Shakespeare, and Popular Culture, Michael Anderegg considers Welles's influence as an interpreter of Shakespeare for twentieth-century American popular audiences. Exploring his works on stage, radio, and in film, Anderegg reveals Welles's unique position as an artist of both high and popular culture. At once intellectually respected and commercially viable, the Shakespeare Welles gave the American public reflects his unique genius as a writer, director, and actor. From early plays in school to the Everybody's Shakespeare books and the Mercury Text Records adaptations, Anderegg illustrates how Welles tried to transcend the barriers between the classical and the popular. He argues that "Welles the Shakespearean" sought to be a restorer as well as an innovator by drawing on his knowledge of the abundant, lowbrow popularity of Shakespeare in nineteenth-century America. Welles's three film adaptations of Shakespeare, Macbeth, Othello, and Chimes at Midnight, are examined. From his peculiarly "Scottish" version of Macbeth, to his postmodern reading of the history plays in Chimes at Midnight, Welles's interpretive strategies--and the public's reception of them--are considered. In the final chapter, Anderegg surveys Welles's work as an actor--his legacy and myth--and reexamines the common view that he squandered his talents in the era after Citizen Kane. Taking into account his non-Shakespearean roles, Anderegg shows Welles to have been a markedly "Shakespearean" actor and, in his versions of the Bard's plays, a key arbiter of culture.

Richard II is one of the most enigmatic of English kings. Shakespeare depicted him as a tragic figure, an irresponsible, cruel monarch who nevertheless rose in stature as the substance of power slipped from him. By later writers he has been variously portrayed as a half-crazed autocrat or a conventional ruler whose principal errors were the mismanagement of his nobility and disregard for the political conventions of his age. This book--the first full-length biography of Richard in more than fifty years--offers a radical reinterpretation of the king. Nigel Saul paints a picture of Richard as a highly assertive and determined ruler, one whose key aim was to exalt and dignify the crown. In Richard's view, the crown was threatened by the factiousness of the nobility and the assertiveness of the common people. The king met these challenges by exacting obedience, encouraging lofty new forms of address, and constructing an elaborate system of rule by bonds and oaths. Saul traces the sources of Richard's political ideas and finds that he was influenced by a deeply felt orthodox piety and by the ideas of the civil lawyers. He shows that, although Richard's kingship resembled that of other rulers of the period, unlike theirs, his reign ended in failure because of tactical errors and contradictions in his policies. For all that he promoted the image of a distant, all-powerful monarch, Richard II's rule was in practice characterized by faction and feud. The king was obsessed by the search for personal security: in his subjects, however, he bred only insecurity and fear. A revealing portrait of a complex and fascinating figure, the book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the politics and culture of the English middle ages.

The author of Powers and Thrones and presenter of Netflix’s Secrets of Great British Castles offers a vivid account of the events that inspired Game of Thrones and Shakespeare’s Henry IV and Richard III Discover the real history behind The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses, the PBS Great Performance series of Shakespeare's plays, starring Judi Dench, Benedict Cumberbatch, Sofie Okenedo and Hugh Bonneville. The crown of England changed hands five times over the course of the fifteenth century, as two branches of the Plantagenet dynasty fought to the death for the right to rule. In this riveting follow-up to The Plantagenets, celebrated historian Dan Jones describes how the longest-reigning British royal family tore itself apart until it was finally replaced by the Tudors. Some of the greatest heroes and villains of history were thrown together in these turbulent times, from Joan of Arc and Henry V, whose victory at Agincourt marked the high point of the medieval monarchy, to Richard III, who murdered his own nephews in a desperate bid to secure his stolen crown. This was a period when headstrong queens and consorts seized power and bent men to their will. With vivid descriptions of the battles of Towton and Bosworth, where the last Plantagenet king was slain, this dramatic narrative history revels in bedlam and intrigue. It also offers a long-overdue corrective to Tudor propaganda, dismantling their self-serving account of what they called the Wars of the Roses. “If you’re a fan of Game of Thrones or The Tudors then Dan Jones’ swashbucklingly entertaining slice of medieval history will be right up your alley… Every bit as entertaining and readable as his previous blockbuster The Plantagenets.” – Daily Express

This is a biography of a book: the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays printed in 1623 and known as the First Folio. It begins with the story of its first purchaser in London in December 1623, and goes on to explore the ways people have interacted with this iconic book over the four hundred years of its history. Throughout the stress is on what we can learn from individual copies now spread around the world about their eventful lives. From ink blots to pet paws, from annotations to wineglass rings, First Folios teem with evidence of its place in different contexts with different priorities. This study offers new ways to understand Shakespeare's reception and the history of the book. Unlike previous scholarly investigations of the First Folio, it is not concerned with the discussions of how the book came into being, the provenance of its texts, or the technicalities of its production. Instead, it reanimates, in narrative style, the histories of this book, paying close attention to the details of individual copies now located around the world - their bindings, marginalia, general condition, sales history, and location - to discuss five major themes: owning, reading, decoding, performing, and perfecting. This is a history of the book that consolidated Shakespeare's posthumous reputation: a reception history and a study of interactions between owners, readers, forgers, collectors, actors, scholars, booksellers, and the book through which we understand and recognise Shakespeare.

With a foreword by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, author of Ace of Spades‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’The King of Denmark is dead. When Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, meets the King’s ghost and discovers he was murdered, he swears vengeance against the killer: his father’s brother, Claudius, who has married Hamlet’s mother and taken the throne. Furious at this betrayal, Hamlet devises a complex plot to reveal the truth and enact his revenge. But Claudius has a devious plan of his own. Together, they will bring devastation to the entire court.Hamlet is Shakespeare’s timeless story of grief and a revenge so unrelenting that by curtain’s close, all the major players are dead.Discover STAGED, a limited collection of Shakespeare’s unabridged plays that celebrates the genius of the Bard and the tropes that continue to delight YA readers to this day.Explore the rest of the STAGED collection:As You Like It – With a foreword by Talia HibbertMacbeth – With a foreword by Kat DelacorteA Midsummer Night’s Dream – With a foreword by Becky AlbertalliMuch Ado About Nothing – With a foreword by Holly BourneRomeo and Juliet – With a foreword by Jennifer Niven