Planning a school or amateur Shakespeare production? The best way to experience the plays is to perform them, but getting started can be a challenge: The complete plays are too long and complex, while scene selections or simplified language are too limited. "The 30-Minute Shakespeare" is a new series of abridgements that tell the "story" of each play from start to finish while keeping the beauty of Shakespeare's language intact. Specific stage directions...

A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of the most popular comedies of the legendary playwright, William Shakespeare. The play revolves around Hermia and her best friend, Helena. Hermia runs away into the woods with her lover, Lysander, and Demetrius, the man of her father's choice, follows them. Helena follows Demetrius, as she is in love with him and wishes she could win his love. In the woods, they come across Oberon and Titania, King and Queen of the...

Vengeance and War-- Rome is in turmoil, there is rioting in the streets and open warfare between the varying ruling factions. Coriolanus would bring peace and order to Rome, but will Rome let him? You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize As the dead carcasses of unburied men That do corrupt my air,-I banish you.

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.

Shakespeare's classic comedy depicting the romantic struggles of Rosalind and Orlando is accompanied by scene-by-scene analysis, text, plot, characters, and staging of the play

Presents the complete text to William Shakespeare's play "King Lear" with an easy-to-understand translation on facing pages, helping students better understand the work and its meaning.

One of Shakespeare s most robust comedies, The Taming of the Shrew, is about Katherine, the ill-tempered daughter of a wealthy merchant in Padua. Katherine is so petulant that her father always believed no man would ever want her as his wife. However, Petruchio, a rich young man, comes into Katherine s life and brings about a great change in her behaviour. This short narrative version of the play has been suitably adapted to help introduce the play...

"This book presents a historical overview of The Tempest in performance, recommends film versions, takes a detailed look at specific productions and includes interviews with three leading directors - Peter Brook, Sam Mendes and Rupert Goold - so that we may get a sense of the extraordinary variety of interpretations that are possible, a variety that gives Shakespeare his unique capacity to be reinvented and made 'our contemporary' four centuries after...