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Penguin Books Ltd Coriolanus (New Penguin Shakespeare S.)
After the exotic eroticism of <I>Antony and Cleopatra</I>, Shakespeare returned to Rome for one of his final tragedies, and the change could not have been more dramatic. <I>Coriolanus</I> is one of Shakespeare's harshest and most challenging studies of power, politics and masculinity, based around the life of Caius Marcius. <p> Based on the Roman chronicles of Plutarch's <I>Lives</I> and Livy's <I>History of Rome</I>, the play is set in the early years of the Roman Republic. Its famous opening scene, particularly admired by Bertolt Brecht, portrays its citizens as starving and rebellious, and horrified by the arrogant and dismissive attitude of Caius Marcius, one of Rome's most valiant but also political naive soldiers. Spurred on by his ambitious mother Volumnia, Caius takes the city of Corioles, is renamed Coriolanus in honour of his victory, and is encouraged to run for senate. However, his contempt for the citizens, who he calls scabs and musty superfluity ultimately leads to his exile and destructive alliance with his deadly foe, Aufidius. Despite its relative unpopularity, <I>Coriolanus</I> is a fascinating study of both public and personal life. Its language is dense and complex, as its representation of the tensions built into the fabric of Roman political life. Yet it also contains extraordinarily intimate scenes between Coriolanus and both his mother, who ultimately proves most mortal to her own son, and his enemy Aufidius, whose rapt heart is happier to see Coriolanus than his own wife. One of Shakespeare's darker and more disturbing plays. --<I>Jerry Brotton</I>
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Penguin Books Ltd King Richard II (New Penguin Shakespeare S.)
One of Shakespeare's finest history plays, <I>Richard II</I> deals with one of the most sensitive and politically explosive issues of its day--the rights and wrongs of deposing a legitimately appointed king. Forerunner to the two parts of <I>Henry IV</I>, the play deals with the abdication of King Richard II in 1399, the subsequent succession of Bolingbroke, the future King Henry IV, and Richard's death in the spring of 1400. But the play has been celebrated above and beyond its stature as historical drama. <I>Richard II</I> begins with a portrait of Richard as a pompous, arrogant and self-regarding sovereign, with little sense of his people or his political responsibilities. As he consistently miscalculates in his attempts to destroy Bolingbroke, and watches his own power wane, he becomes a far more appealing, Hamlet-like figure, more interested in talk of graves, of worms and epitaphs, and sad stories of the death of kings. Richard's speeches become increasingly lyrical and poetic as his supporters desert him, until he finally takes on the stature of the pilloried Christ in the climax of the play, the deposition scene, one of the most politically risky scenes in all of Shakespeare. The play remains most famous for John of Gaunt's This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle speech, but historians believe that the play was also performed in the streets of London in 1601 in support of the Earl of Essex's attempt to depose Elizabeth I. Whilst the plot failed, it showed the power of the theatre of the time, and the politically controversial nature of Shakespeare's play. --<I>Jerry Brotton</I>
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Penguin Books Ltd The Taming of the Shrew (New Penguin Shakespeare S.)
One of the most controversial and problematic of all of Shakespeare's plays, <I>The Taming of the Shrew</I> is a typical Elizabethan domestic comedy written around 1592. Petruchio, a gentleman of Verona, arrives in Padua and announces to his friends that I come to wive it wealthily in Padua; / If wealthily, then happily in Padua. He soon finds that a group of men keen to marry Bianca, the younger daughter of rich old Baptista, are frustrated by her elder, shrewish sister, Katherine. There is much subsequent hilarity as Bianca's suitors make a bet with Petruchio that he cannot tame and marry Katherine. Despite Katherine's protestations, Petruchio goes ahead with the match, using deliberately unorthodox behaviour to confuse Katherine (including a scene where he starves her), claiming that this is the way to kill a wife with kindness. The play culminates with a scene of Katherine's apparently spontaneous subjection to her husband's will, where she places her hand beneath her husband's foot, and tells the other wives present that thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper. The play's gratuitous scenes of women being abused and vilified in the name of comedy has made many directors and critics very uncomfortable with the play, and many feminist critics have condemned contemporary productions of the play as reproducing certain 16th-century stereotypes concerning women who speak out against male authority. --<I>Jerry Brotton</I>
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Penguin Books Ltd King Lear (Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Pages: 368, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd The Comedy of Errors (Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Pages: 208, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd A Midsummer Night's Dream (Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Pages: 224, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd Henry V (The New Penguin Shakespeare)
Pages: 240, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd As You Like It (Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Pages: 224, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd Julius Caesar (Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Pages: 272, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd Much Ado About Nothing (The New Penguin Shakespeare)
Like <I>Love's Labour's Lost</I>, <I>Much Ado about Nothing</I> shows Shakespeare moving into a more complex and darker terrain through his exploration of an apparently harmless comical romance. The play revolves around the adventures of the two gallants Claudio and Benedick at the court of Sicily. Claudio falls in love with the governor's daughter Hero, and is eager for his more misanthropic friend Benedick to also find love. Benedick is introduced to the fiery, independent Beatrice, and sparks soon fly as they banter with each other in a more wittier version of Kate and Petruchio in <I>The Taming of the Shrew</I>. Beatrice has some wonderful ripostes to marriage asking why should a woman marry a clod of wayward marl, whilst Benedick grumbles that She speaks poniards and every word stabs. Meanwhile, the jealous Don John convinces Claudio that Hero has in fact been unfaithful to him. When Claudio rejects Hero on their wedding day, she faints and is taken for dead. In the hectic final scenes the play moves towards reconciliation between Claudio and Hero, and the tentative admission of the love between Benedick and Beatrice. Famously filmed by Kenneth Branagh in the Tuscan countryside with a cast that included Keanu Reeves, <I>Much Ado about Nothing</I> remains one of Shakespeare's most successful comedies. --<I>Jerry Brotton</I>.
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Penguin Books Ltd The Merchant of Venice (Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Pages: 240, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd Romeo and Juliet (Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Pages: 320, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd Much Ado About Nothing (Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Pages: 224, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd The Merry Wives of Windsor (Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Pages: 224, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd The Taming of the Shrew (Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Pages: 288, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd Shakespearean Tragedy (New Penguin Shakespeare Library)
Pages: 480, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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£8.57
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Penguin Books Ltd Henry VI Part One (Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Pages: 304, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd Timon of Athens (Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Pages: 288, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd Measure for Measure (Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Pages: 224, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd Macbeth (Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Pages: 256, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd Richard III (3rd)
Pages: 272, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd Othello (Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Pages: 272, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd Twelfth Night (Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Pages: 240, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd All's Well That Ends Well (Penguin Shakespeare S.)
<I>All's Well That Ends Well</I> has generally been considered one of Shakespeare's most difficult and unpopular plays. Labelled a Problem Comedy, editors believe that the play was written between 1604 and 1605, and exhibits a darkening of Shakespeare's interest in comedy. The play deals with the complicated relationship between Helena, the daughter of a famous physician, and Bertram, the arrogant son of the Countess of Roussillon. Helena is secretly in love with Bertram, and when she miraculously cures the ailing King, she asks for Bertram's hand in marriage, to which the grateful sovereign happily agrees. Bertram bitterly opposes marriage to Helena, who he regards as a social inferior. After reluctantly agreeing to the marriage, Bertram flees to the wars in Italy with his companion Parolles. <p> What ensues is Helena's increasingly desperate and complex attempts to retrieve her errant husband, which involves various machinations and a piece of mistaken identity and an infamous bed-trick which has never fully convinced audiences or critics. More recently critics have been kinder to the play, seeing its cynical disillusionment with romance as reflecting contemporary social and political anxieties about warfare and commerce, and feminist critics have been keen to celebrate Helena as a particularly complex heroine. The play is also fascinated by language, encapsulated in the character of Parolles (or words), and his memorable line for which the play is chiefly remembered: Simply the thing I am / Shall make me live. --<I>Jerry Brotton</I>
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Penguin Books Ltd Coriolanus (Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Pages: 288, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd Henry IV Part One (Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Pages: 288, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd Henry IV: Part Two: pt. II (Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Pages: 352, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Pages: 240, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd The Winter's Tale (Penguin Shakespeare S.)
One of Shakespeare's most haunting and enigmatic late plays, <I>The Winter's Tale</I> is a fine example of Shakespeare's fascination with the dramatic genre of romance--the portrayal of magical lands, familial conflict and exile, and final reunion and reconciliation. Drawing on Robert Greens story <I>Pandosto</I>, Shakespeare's play tells the story of the middle-aged Leontes, king of Sicilia, and his childhood friend Polixenes, the king of Bohemia. Leontes mistakenly believes that his friend is having an affair with his wife, Hermione. In his jealousy, and consumed by tremor cordis, he tries to murder Polixenes, who flees, and accuses his wife of adultery. Hermione gives birth to a baby girl, Perdita, who Leontes denounces as illegitimate, and casts her out into the wilderness. Hermione is ultimately proved innocent, but her son, Mamillius, dies of grief. Hermione collapses, apparently dead, and Leontes is left to pick up the tragic consequences of his actions. Time passes, and the action moves to Bohemia, where the lost child Perdita has grown up a shepherdess in the midst of great creating nature. The final scenes of the play draw towards resolution and reconciliation between Leontes, Hermione and their lost daughter, culminating in one of Shakespeare's most moving final scenes. One of Shakespeare's most consummate plays, <I>The Winters Tale</I> is a fascinating study of male insecurity and the relations between art and nature. --<I>Jerry Brotton</I>.
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Penguin Books Ltd All's Well That Ends Well (New Penguin Shakespeare S.)
<I>All's Well That Ends Well</I> has generally been considered one of Shakespeare's most difficult and unpopular plays. Labelled a Problem Comedy, editors believe that the play was written between 1604 and 1605, and exhibits a darkening of Shakespeare's interest in comedy. The play deals with the complicated relationship between Helena, the daughter of a famous physician, and Bertram, the arrogant son of the Countess of Roussillon. Helena is secretly in love with Bertram, and when she miraculously cures the ailing King, she asks for Bertram's hand in marriage, to which the grateful sovereign happily agrees. Bertram bitterly opposes marriage to Helena, who he regards as a social inferior. After reluctantly agreeing to the marriage, Bertram flees to the wars in Italy with his companion Parolles. <p> What ensues is Helena's increasingly desperate and complex attempts to retrieve her errant husband, which involves various machinations and a piece of mistaken identity and an infamous bed-trick which has never fully convinced audiences or critics. More recently critics have been kinder to the play, seeing its cynical disillusionment with romance as reflecting contemporary social and political anxieties about warfare and commerce, and feminist critics have been keen to celebrate Helena as a particularly complex heroine. The play is also fascinated by language, encapsulated in the character of Parolles (or words), and his memorable line for which the play is chiefly remembered: Simply the thing I am / Shall make me live. --<I>Jerry Brotton</I>
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£4.79
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Penguin Books Ltd The Comedy of Errors (New Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Generally believed to be Shakespeare's first comedy, <I>The Comedy of Errors</I> was first performed at the London Inns of Court in 1594, and has been unfairly dismissed as a piece of knockabout farce from Shakespeare's apprentice years. The play's action is very funny, especially in performance. Shipwrecked many years before the start of the play, Egeon of Syracuse searches vainly for his lost wife, one of his twin sons and one of their twin servants. Landing in Ephesus he falls foul of an obscure law condemning him to death unless he pays an enormous fine within 24 hours. The clock starts ticking and the action of the play begins to unfold. Egeon is not aware that his son Antipholus of Syracuse and his servant Dromio have also landed in Ephesus, but even worse, it soon becomes clear to the audience that Ephesus is also the home of the lost twin and servant, Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus. <p> So begins the comedy of errors, as the pairs of twins are repeatedly and hilariously mistaken for each other, much to the consternation of their friends, creditors and lovers. Yet the play is also shot through with more serious issues. The sentence of death hangs over the father from the very beginning of the play, strange things happen to time as the play progresses, and the space of trade and the marketplace are never far away. The laughter of mistaken identity also gives way to more profound questions of identity, as when Antipholus of Syracuse says of himself that I to the world am like a drop of water/That in the ocean seeks another drop. <I>The Comedy of Errors</I> is a much neglected play which is only now achieving the critical and theatrical attention it deserves. --<I>Jerry Brotton</I>
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Penguin Books Ltd The Two Gentlemen of Verona (New Penguin Shakespeare S.)
One of Shakespeare's earliest comedies, and unjustly neglected over the years, <I>The Two Gentlemen of Verona</I> has deserved its growing critical reputation over recent years. The play dramatises the entangled relations between the two gentlemen of the play's title, Valentine and Proteus. Valentine leaves Verona for Milan to seek his fortune, whilst Proteus stays to be near his love, Julia. Spurned by Julia, Proteus heads for Milan, where he finds himself a rival of Valentine for the hand of Silvia, the Duke's daughter. Julia the reappears, disguised in boy's clothes as Proteus' page. As in many of Shakespeare's later comedies, the lovers flee to the forest, where confusion and conflict is finally resolved, and the two gentlemen are reunited not only with their correct lovers, but also with each other.<p>The play is particularly interesting for its dramatisation of the intense friendship between Valentine and Proteus, which it often characterises as more intimate and meaningful than relations with women. Proteus complains that Julia hast metamorphosed me into something he cannot understand, and the play suggests that social and sexual relations between men are often more satisfying than the dangerous instability involved in wooing women. --<I>Jerry Brotton</I>
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£3.12
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Penguin Books Ltd King Henry VIII (New Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Believed to be Shakespeare's very last play, <I>Henry VIII</I> is probably best remembered as the play that, when performed in June 1613, led to the Globe Theatre burning down due to the fireworks and cannon fire listed in the stage directions. However, the play has puzzled critics, who can see little more in it than a nostalgic account of Henry's reign, and the prophetic birth and christening of Elizabeth, Shakespeare's future Queen, that takes place at the end of the play. <p> <I>Henry VIII</I> deals with the intrigue that surrounds Henry's court, and in particular the controversial figure of Cardinal Wolsey, and Henry's separation from his wife Katherine and infatuation with Anne Bullen. However, there is little sense of the psychological complexity created by Shakespeare in earlier history plays such as <I>Henry V</I>. Henry VIII himself is a grand but distant figure, and the virulent anti-Catholicism lacks complexity. Within an increasingly troubled political period, the final hopeful invocation of peace, plenty, love, truth seems rather flat, as does the play as a whole. This has led many critics to argue that Shakespeare was just one of many collaborators in the writing of the play. --<I>Jerry Brotton</I>
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Penguin Books Ltd Pericles Prince of Tyre (New Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Controversy has surrounded <I>Pericles</I> for centuries, due to the fact that critics and editors have argued that much of the play was written between 1607 and 1608 by one of Shakespeare's inferior collaborators, and that it shows in both its style and content. However, Shakespeare was clearly the driving force behind the play, and it is important to remember that it was one of the most popular plays of its time.<p> Famous for its resurrection of John Gower, the 14th-century English writer, who acts as the play's chorus, <I>Pericles</I> is a play which is obsessed with incest. The dramatic action begins in Antioch, where Pericles travels to solve the riddle of King Antiochus, who to incest did provoke his daughter. When Pericles realises Antiochus' terrible secret, he flees, wandering the seas, where he meets his wife Thaisa, who apparently dies whilst giving birth to her daughter Marina during a terrible storm. Pericles' grief is compounded by the apparent death of his daughter whilst staying at Tarsus some months later. She has in fact been sold into sexual slavery, and as Pericles resumes his wanderings, 16 years later Marina battles to retain her peevish chastity. As with many of Shakespeare's later plays, or romances, recognition and reunion occurs in the most unlikely of circumstances. Despite questions of authorship and textual corruption, <I>Pericles</I> continues to fascinate audiences and critics with its dark and ambivalent account of the relations between fathers and daughters. --<I>Jerry Brotton</I>
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Penguin Books Ltd Cymbeline (New Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Pages: 256, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd The Tempest (New Penguin Shakespeare S.)
One of Shakespeare's most famous but also enigmatic plays, for many years the story of Prospero's exile from his native Milan, and life with his daughter Miranda on an unnamed island in the Mediterranean, was seen as an autobiographical dramatisation of Shakespeare's departure from the London stage. The Epilogue, spoken by Prospero, claims that now my charms are all o'erthrown, appeared to reflect Shakespeare's own renunciation of his magical dramatic powers as he retired to Stratford. But <I>The Tempest</I> is far more than this, as recent commentators have pointed out. The dramatic action observes the classical unities of time, place and action, as Prospero uses his rough magic to lure his wicked usurping brother, Antonio, and King Alonso of Naples to his island retreat to torment them before engineering his return to Milan.<p> However, the play is full of extraordinary anomalies and fantastic interludes, including Gonzalo's fantasy of a utopian commonwealth, Prospero's magical servant Ariel, and the poisonous slave Caliban. The creation of Caliban has particularly fascinated critics, who have noticed in his creation a colonial dimension to the play. In this respect Caliban can be seen as an American Indian or African slave, who articulates a particularly powerful strain of anti-colonial sentiment, telling Prospero that this island's mine, by Sycorax my mother,/ Which thou tak'st from me. This has led to an intense reassessment of the play from a post-colonial perspective, as critics and historians have debated the extent to which the play endorses or criticises early English colonial expansion. --<I>Jerry Brotton</I>
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Penguin Books Ltd The Winter's Tale (The New Penguin Shakespeare)
One of Shakespeare's most haunting and enigmatic late plays, <I>The Winter's Tale</I> is a fine example of Shakespeare's fascination with the dramatic genre of romance: the portrayal of magical lands, familial conflict and exile, and final reunion and reconciliation. Drawing on Robert Green's story <I>Pandosto</I>, Shakespeare play tells the story of the middle-aged Leontes, king of Sicilia, and his childhood friend Polixenes, the king of Bohemia. Leontes mistakenly believes that his friend is having an affair with his wife, Hermione. In his jealousy, and consumed by tremor cordis, he tries to murder Polixenes, who flees, and accuses his wife of adultery. Hermione gives birth to a baby girl, Perdita, who Leontes denounces as illegitimate, and casts her out into the wilderness. Hermione is ultimately proved innocent, but her son, Mamillius, dies of grief. Hermione collapses, apparently dead, and Leontes is left to pick up the tragic consequences of his actions. Time passes, and the action moves to Bohemia, where the lost child Perdita has grown up a shepherdess in the midst of great creating nature. The final scenes of the play draw towards resolution and reconciliation between Leontes, Hermione and their lost daughter, culminating in one of Shakespeare's most moving final scenes. One of Shakespeare's most consummate plays, <I>The Winter's Tale</I> is a fascinating study of male insecurity and the relations between art and nature. --<I>Jerry Brotton</I>.
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Penguin Books Ltd Henry VI Part Two (Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Pages: 352, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd King Henry IV: Pt.1 (New Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Written in 1598, hard on the heels of the massive popular success of <I>Henry IV Part One</I>, <I>Henry IV Part Two</I> takes up where the first part finished, and completes Shakespeare's portrayal of the troubled reign of Henry IV. Rebellion has apparently been quelled, but dissension still permeates the country, and Henry is disillusioned, sick and dying. After the pace and comedy of <I>Part One</I>., <I>Part Two</I> is a much more subdued and gloomy affair. The tone is set by the early appearance of Falstaff, who relishes the possibilities of easy picking in the face of more civil unrest with his sinister quip that I will turn diseases to commodity. <p> The drama focuses on Henry IV's difficult relationship with his son Prince Hal, and the latter's gradual emergence as a charismatic sovereign. In the process he sheds his image as a prodigal wastrel dramatised in the first half of <I>Part One</I>, assuming the title of King Henry V in the closing scenes of <I>Part Two</I>. Perhaps the most poignant moment of the whole play remains Henry's cold-blooded rejection of Falstaff, his surrogate father for much of <I>Part One</I>. I know thee not, old man he tells the crushed Falstaff as he assumes the royal crown, preparing the audience for the type of monarch they will see in Shakeseare's subsequent dramatisation of English history, <I>Henry V</I>. --<I>Jerry Brotton</I>
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Penguin Books Ltd Antony and Cleopatra (Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Pages: 320, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd Hamlet (Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Pages: 400, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd King John (Penguin Shakespeare S.)
Pages: 384, Paperback, Penguin Books Ltd
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