No dramatist has ever seen with more frightening clarity into the heart and mind of a murderer than has Shakespeare in this compelling tragedy of evil. Taunted into asserting his “masculinity” by his ambitious wife, Macbeth chooses to embrace the Weird Sisters’ prophecy and kill his king–and thus, seals his own doom. Fast-moving and bloody, this drama has the extraordinary energy that derives from a brilliant plot replete with...

Eminent Shakespearean scholars Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen provide a fresh new edition of this powerful play that explores sexual hypocrisy and questions morality at all levels of society. This volume also includes more than a hundred pages of exclusive features, including:
 
• an original Introduction to Measure for Measure
• incisive scene-by-scene synopsis and analysis with vital facts about the work
• commentary...

"Aeschylus' Oresteia is a tragedy of inescapable killing within one family, such that each generation must avenge it in kind. Right and wrong are ambiguous in this harsh system. Their conflict is resolved, and the family saved from extinction, in the case of Orestes the matricidal killer. The gods' wisdom and human process together inaugarate a way of just conduct which will ensure stable families and community; and the exemplary setting for this...

"SIGNATURE SHAKESPEARE SERIES Featuring remarkable laser-cut paper designs throughout, this new series offers stunning presentations of Shakespeare's plays, complete with scholarship, commentary, notes, and illustrated essays about Shakespeare's language and performances of the play. It's a keepsake package worthy of the greatest, and most loved, playwright in the English language. Each volume in the Signature Shakespeare series includes: - Illustration:...

It's nearing midnight in Wyoming, where four young conservatives have gathered at a backyard after-party. They've returned home to toast their mentor Gina, newly inducted as president of a tiny Catholic college. But as their reunion spirals into spiritual chaos and clashing generational politics, it becomes less a celebration than a vicious fight to be understood. On a chilly night in the middle of America, Will Arbery's haunting play offers grace...

The Comedy of Errors is one of Shakespeare's most popular short comedy plays. The plot is driven by two cases of mistaken identity and witty pun-drenched dialogue. Antipholus of Syracuse and his servant of Dromio of Syraceuse visit the town of Ephesus, not realizing that this is the home of Antipholus of Ephesus and Dromio of Ephesus, their twin brothers lost to them at sea years before. Before reuniting, the doppelgangers cause chaos amongst

...

“A young man married is a man that’s marr’d.”
—All’s Well That Ends Well
 
Eminent Shakespearean scholars Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen provide a fresh new edition of this classic play about gender, desire, and sexual love.
 
THIS VOLUME ALSO INCLUDES MORE THAN A HUNDRED PAGES OF EXCLUSIVE FEATURES:
 
• an original Introduction to All’s...

An annotated edition of Shakespeare's comedy in which young lovers enter a world of sprites and fairies, and an amateur play production entertains all; also includes essays on Shakespeare's theatrical world and his texts, and a scholarly introduction.

One of the last plays Shakespeare penned on his own, The Winter’s Tale is a transcendent work of death and rebirth, exploring irrational sexual jealousy, the redemptive world of nature, and the magical power of art.
Under the editorial supervision of Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, two of today’s most accomplished Shakespearean scholars, this Modern Library series incorporates definitive texts and authoritative notes from William...

This wisely funny comedy, which contains some of Shakespeare’s loveliest poetry, contrasts a court’s world of envy and rivalry with a forest’s world of compassion and harmony. In the Forest of Arden, the banished young heroine, Rosalind, disguised as a gentleman farmer, encounters an extraordinary assemblage of characters, including a fool, a malcontent traveler, her own banished father, and the banished young man she loves. Romantic...