Wilde's drama combines epigrammatic brilliance and shrewd social observation. This collection of his plays includes 'Lady Windermere's Fan', 'Salome', 'A Woman of No Importance', 'An Ideal Husband' and 'The Importance of Being Earnest'.

In all of Pinter's plays, seemingly ordinary events become charged with profound, if elusive, meaning, haunting pathos, and wild comedy. In The Caretaker, a tramp finds lodging in the derelict house of two brothers; in The Dumb Waiter, a pair of gunmen wait for the kill in a decayed lodging house.

This book delves into the author's longtime fascination with the ghost of Hamlet's father, and his daring and ultimately gratifying journey takes him through surprising intellectual territory. It yields an extraordinary account of the rise and fall of Purgatory as both a belief and a lucrative institution as well as a capacious new reading of the power of Hamlet. In the mid-sixteenth century, English authorities abruptly changed the relationship between...