Most popular Shakespeare plays books

Encompasses witchcraft, bloody murder, and ghostly apparitions. This work tells the tragedy of a good, brave and honourable man turned into the personification of evil by the workings of unreasonable ambition.

Love, sex and death are the components in this story of the love of two young people which reaches across the barriers of family and convention. It encompasses great love, high drama, low comedy and a tragic ending.

Features one of Shakespeare's most popular comedies, but it remains deeply controversial. Here, the text may well seem anti-Semitic; yet repeatedly, in performance, it has revealed a contrasting nature. Shylock, though vanquished in the law-court, often triumphs in the theatre

A daily piece of Shakespeare to inspire and delight.

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.

Blends the supernatural and the mundane, the illusory and the substantial. This work treats love as tragic, poignant, absurd and farcical.

This book has long been celebrated as one of Shakespeare's popular comedies. It describes the central relationship, between Benedick and Beatrice, which is combative until love prevails.

Prospero, long exiled from Italy with his daughter Miranda, seeks to use his magical powers to defeat his former enemies. Eventually, having proved merciful, he divests himself of that magic, his 'art', and prepares to return to the mainland.

Desdemona's love for Othello, the Moor, transcends racial prejudice; but the envious Iago conspires to devastate their lives. This novel renders racism, sexism, contested identities, and the savagery lurking within civilisation.

Love and hate, loyalty and treachery, cruelty and self-sacrifice: all these contend in a tempestuous drama which has become an enduring classic of the world's literature.

Hamlet is not only one of Shakespeare's greatest plays, but also the most fascinatingly problematical tragedy in world literature

Although this play ends like a comedy, with reconciliations, forgiveness and marriages, it has often been regarded as one of Shakespeare's problem plays. It shows the difficulty of effecting an appropriate balance between judicial severity and mercy, between sexual repression and decadence, and between political vigilance and social manipulation.

Sir Toby Belch and his companion outwit the pretentious Malvolio, who despite suffering their most outrageous and insulting practical jokes, emerges as an almost noble figure.

This Arden edition of Hamlet, arguably Shakespeare's greatest tragedy, presents an authoritative, modernized text based on the Second Quarto text with a new introductory essay covering key productions and criticism in the decade since its first publication. A timely up-date in the 400th anniversary year of Shakespeare's death which will ensure the Arden edition continues to offer students a comprehensive and current critical account of the play, alongside the most reliable and fully-annotated text available.

Dealing with events surrounding the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C., the drama vividly illustrates the ways in which power and corruption are linked.

The 'riotous, insanely readable' (Observer) retelling of The Tempest from the bestselling author of THE HANDMAID'S TALE and upcoming sequel THE TESTAMENTS. Instead, after an act of unforeseen treachery, Felix is living in exile in a backwoods hovel, haunted by memories of his beloved lost daughter, Miranda.

It's 11th century Scotland. Macbeth, Thane of Glamis, is one of King Duncan's greatest war captains. Upon returning from a battle with the rebellious Thane of Cawdor, Macbeth and Banquo encounter three witches, who prophecy that Macbeth will become Thane of Cawdor and then King.

In this edition, R.A. Foakes brings to bear a number of historical perspectives and critically addresses recent explorations of "King Lear" as a play of redemption, a play of despair and a play that destabilises all commentary.

Richard III is one of the finest of Shakespeare's historical dramas. Although it has a huge cast, Richard himself, gleefully wicked, charismatically Machiavellian, always dominates the play.

Richard II is one of Shakespeare's finest works: lucid, eloquent, and boldly structured. It can be seen as a tragedy, or a historical play, or a political drama, or as one part of a vast dramatic cycle which helped to generate England's national identity.

The Taming of the Shrew is one of the most famous and controversial of Shakespeare's comedies.

Presents Shakespeare's "Macbeth" in modern English verse-for-verse.

Hamlet. Romeo and Juliet. Henry V. Macbeth. A Midsummer Night's Dream. King Lear. Lovers of literature will immediately recognise these as signature works of William Shakespeare. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare collects all thirty-seven of the immortal Bard's comedies, tragedies, and historical plays in a beautiful edition.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) excels in plot, poetry and wit, and his talent encompasses the tragedies of "Hamlet", "King Lear", "Othello", and "Macbeth" as well as history plays and the comedies such as "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and "As You Like It". This volume presents his plays in the chronological order in which they were written.

Henry V is the most famous and influential of Shakespeare's history plays. Its powerful patriotic rhetoric has resounded down the ages.

The Shakespeare Made Easy series aims to take the fear out of Shakespeare. By having Shakespearean and Modern English facing each other, pupils will find it easier to comprehend the text. Through discussion of the life, work and theatre of Shakespeare pupils can gain a more rounded understanding of these classic works.

Presents the tragic tale of doomed love, set in Verona, Italy, where the Montagues and the Capulets constantly feud and bring unrest to the city.

No Fear Shakespeare gives you the complete text of A Midsummer Night's Dream on the left-hand page, side-by-side with an easy-to-understand translation on the right. Each No Fear Shakespeare containsThe complete text of the original playA line-by-line translation that puts Shakespeare into everyday languageA complete list of characters with descriptionsPlenty of helpful commentary

Antony and Cleopatra is one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies: a spectacular, widely-ranging drama of love and war, passion and politics

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) excels in plot, poetry and wit, and his talent encompasses the tragedies of "Hamlet", "King Lear", "Othello", and "Macbeth" as well as history plays and the comedies such as "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and "As You Like It". This volume presents his plays in the chronological order in which they were written.

Includes Shakespeare's best-loved tales, comic and tragic, rewritten for a younger audience. This title contains the delightful pen-and-ink drawings of Arthur Rackham.

This history play is lively in its interplay of political intrigue and boisterous comedy, subtle in the connections between high statecraft and low craftiness, exuberant in its range of vivid characters, and memorable in its thematic concern with honour, loyalty and the quest for power.

This second edition of Othello has a new, illustrated introduction by leading American scholar Ayanna Thompson, which addresses such key issues as race, religion and gender, as well as looking at ways in which the play has been adapted in more recent times. Othello is one of Shakespeare's great tragedies-written in the same five-year period as Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth. The new introduction attends to the play's different meanings throughout history, while articulating the historical context in which Othello was created, paying particular attention to Shakespeare's source materials and the evidence about early modern constructions of racial and religious difference., It also explores the life of the play in different historical moments, demonstrating how meanings and performances develop, accrue, and metamorphose over time. The volume provides a rich and current resource, making this best-selling play edition ideal for today's students at advanced school and undergraduate level.

A complete and illustrated edition of Shakespeare's late comedy with an introduction by actor, writer and director Simon Callow.

This text focuses on preparing students for A-Level. It has notes, end-of-act activities, tips from an A-Level Chief Examiner and space for students' own annotations.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.

This annotated edition of "King Richard II" takes a fresh look at the first part of Shakespeare's second tetralogy of history plays, showing how it relates to the other plays in the sequence.

Contains a general introduction to Shakespeare's life and Elizabethan theatre. This book provides a separate introduction to A Midsummer Night's Dream, a chronology, suggestions for further reading, an essay discussing performance options on both stage and screen, and a commentary.

The Tempest isone of Shakespeare's enduringly popular and much-studied later plays. The introduction has been extended to focus on new scholarship about the play's first production and to take account of major theatre and film versions since first publication in 1999, including Julie Taymor's 2010 film starring Helen Mirren.

The entire Shakespeare play in comic book form - unabridged!

This second edition of Macbeth offers a thorough reconsideration of one of Shakespeare's most popular plays. Edited and introduced by A. R. Braunmuller, this edition features a new introductory section on recent productions of the play, including cinematic versions by Kurosawa and Roman Polanski.

The perfect gift for the Shakespeare fan, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare is an elegant edition boasting the entire credited catalog of William Shakespeare including 16 comedies, 10 histories, 12 tragedies as well as all of his poems and sonnets.

No Fear Shakespeare gives you the complete text of Twelfth Night on the left-hand page, side-by-side with an easy-to-understand translation on the right.Each No Fear Shakespeare contains:The complete text of the original playA line-by-line translation that puts Shakespeare into everyday languageA complete list of characters with descriptionsPlenty of helpful commentary.Set in a topsy-turvy world like a holiday revel, this comedy devises a romantic plot around separated twins, misplaced passions, and mistaken identity.