Shakespeare's comedy of mistaken romance, in which a shipwrecked woman disguises herself as a man in order to help woo a lover for a Duke, but with unexpected results. This edition includes a selection from Shakespeare's original source, dramatic criticism from past and present, and a comprehensive stage and screen history of notable actors, directors, and productions of the play.

"I believe that the reader will discover here the essential nature of one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history, " Arthur Miller wrote in an introduction to The Crucible, his classic play about the witch-hunts and trials in seventeenth-century Salem, Massachusetts. Based on historical people and real events, Miller's drama is a searing portrait of a community engulfed by hysteria. In the rigid theocracy of Salem, rumors that women...

William Shakespeare's shortest-but one of his most popular, tragedies features a man, who will do anything to fulfill a prophecy that will lead him to become the King of Scotland. Fresh from battle, Macbeth and his companion Banquo come across three witches who tell of great power that is in store for Macbeth. Driven by their prophecy and aided by his wife, Macbeth sets out on a journey that is, wrought with deceit, murder, and suffering to acquire...

Amanda, a faded southern belle, abandoned wife, and dominating mother, hopes to match her daughter Laura with an eligible "gentleman caller" while her son Tom supports the family. Laura, lame and painfully shy, evades her mother's schemes and reality by retreating to the make-believe world of her glass animal collection. Tom eventually leaves home to become a writer but is forever haunted by the memory of Laura.

Brutus, best friend of the Roman ruler Caesar, reluctantly joins a successful plot to murder Caesar and subsequently destroys himself. Includes notes and an introduction.

"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...

The place is Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, an enclave of rigid piety huddled on the edge of a wilderness. Its inhabitants believe unquestioningly in their own sanctity. But in Arthur Miller's edgy masterpiece, that very belief will have poisonous consequences when a vengeful teenager accuses a rival of witchcraft - and then when those accusations multiply to consume the entire village. About this author: Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright...

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark." Brooding Hamlet, the son of the recently deceased king, is about to discover the royal family's corruption firsthand. Taken by the castle watchman to meet the apparition they see at night, Hamlet is surprised to find it is his father's ghost. Hamlet seeks to avenge his father's dishonorable death, but the casualties along the way may prove to be just as tragic. Enter William Shakespeare's famous world...

A three-act play concerned with the tensions in a middle-class African American family living on Chicago's Southside in the 1950s.

"After encountering three witches, the warrior Macbeth waits to see if their predictions come true. Stung by ambition, Macbeth is persuaded by his conniving wife that the fastest way to fulfill the prophecy is to murder the king, which sets off a disastrous chain of events. As the tragedy unfolds, Macbeth's decisions lead to more ruin. He returns to the witches and believes that his future is secure--but is he interpreting the premonitions correctly?"--P....