Compare prices for everyman shakespeare
 |
Phoenix Press Romeo and Juliet (Everyman Shakespeare S.)
This is undoubtedly the greatest love story ever written, spawning a host of imitators on stage and screen, including Leonard Bernstein's smash musical <I>West Side Story</I>, Franco Zeffirelli's <I>Romeo and Juliet</I> filmed in 1968, and Baz Luhrmann's postmodern film version <I>Romeo + Juliet</I>. The tragic feud between Two households, both alike in dignity/In fair Verona, the Montagues and Capulets, which ultimately kills the two young star-crossed lovers and their death-marked love creates issues which have fascinated subsequent generations. The play deals with issues of intergenerational and familial conflict, as well as the power of language and the compelling relationship between sex and death, all of which makes it an incredibly modern play. It is also an early example of Shakespeare fusing poetry with dramatic action, as he moves from Romeo's lyrical account of Juliet--she doth teach the torches to burn bright! to the bustle and action of a 16th-century household (the play contains more scenes of ordinary working people than any of Shakespeare's other works). It also represents an experimental attempt to fuse comedy with tragedy. Up to the third act, the play proceeds along the lines of a classic romantic comedy. The turning point comes with the death of one of Shakespeare's finest early dramatic creations--Romeo's sexually ambivalent friend Mercutio, whose plague o' both your houses begins the play's descent into tragedy, For never was a story of more woe/Than this of Juliet and her Romeo. --<I>Jerry Brotton</I>
 |
|
Availability: Usually dispatched within 4 to 6 weeks
Shipping: refer to store website
|
|
£3.50
at Amazon.co.uk
|
 |
Phoenix Press King Lear (Everyman Shakespeare S.)
<I>King Lear</I> stands alongside <I>Hamlet</I> as one of the most profound expressions of tragic drama in literature. Written between 1604 and 1605, it represents Shakespeare at the height of his dramatic power. Drawing on ancient British history, Shakespeare constructs a plot that reads like a fable in its clear-sighted but terrifying simplicity. The ageing King Lear calls his daughters, Goneril, Regan and Cordelia to witness that he wishes to shake all cares and business from our age and divide his kingdom between his three children. When Cordelia refuses to flatter her father with sycophantic words of love, her banishment leads to chaos and civil war as Lear's disastrous division of the kingdom gives free reign to the greed and ambition of his two remaining daughters. <p> As Lear sinks into rage and madness he is deserted by everyone except his bitter Fool, the loyal Kent and the exiled Cordelia. The play descends into a nighmarish theatre of cruelty and absurdity as Lear realises he has ta'en / Too little care of the poverty and corruption of his kingdom, and his loyal but foolish friend Gloucester has his eyes gouged out. Metaphors of monstrosity and perversions of nature structure the dramatic action, and the play's ending remains one of the most harrowing in all of Shakespeare. Many see a profound despair and nihilism in <I>King Lear</I>, and would agree with Kent's conclusion that All's cheerless, dark and deadly. Other writers have identified a radical but pessimistic critique of contemporary conceptions of kingship and absolutist authority, yet it remains a remarkable tragedy of public misjudgement and intensely private grief and anguish. --<I>Jerry Brotton</I>
|
|
Availability: Usually dispatched within 4 to 6 weeks
Shipping: refer to store website
|
|
£3.99
at Amazon.co.uk
|
 |
Phoenix Press As You Like It (Everyman Shakespeare S.)
<I>As You Like It</I> has long been admired as one of Shakespeare's most exuberant early comedies, complete with one of the Bard's funniest and toughest heroines, Rosalind. Based on Thomas Lodge's Elizabethan novel <I>Rosalynde</I>, <I>As You Like It</I> follows the discontented Orlando as he is exiled from the tyrannical French court of Duke Frederick. By chance Frederick also banishes Rosalind, daughter of the usurped Duke Senior. The play then moves to the Forest of Arden, where chaos and misrule ensue, as Rosalind cross dresses all points like a man, disguised as the saucy Ganymede and encourages the naive Orlando to woo me, woo me, for now I am in a holiday humour. Meanwhile her clown Touchstone causes hilarity and havoc amongst the exiled lords and the pastoral inhabitants of the forest. The play concludes with Rosalind's extraordinary unmasking Epilogue addressed to the audience, where she offers to kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me.<p> <I>As You Like It</I> remains one of Shakespeare's most popular comedies, yet it is also appreciated by critics for its complex exploration of cross dressing and sexual politics, and its interest in relations between the country and the city. --<I>Jerry Brotton</I>
|
|
Availability: Usually dispatched within 4 to 6 weeks
Shipping: refer to store website
|
|
£2.99
at Amazon.co.uk
|
|
|
|
|
|
