Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams

$19.99 AUD

Category: Plays | Series: Penguin Modern Classics Ser.

A Southern family meet to celebrate 'Big Daddy' Pollit's birthday- Gooper with his wife and children, his brother Brick - an ageing, broken football star - and his wife Maggie. But as the party unfolds the facade of a happy family gathering is fractured by sexual frustration, repressed love, and greed i n the light of their father's impending death. This Student Edition provides an extensive introduction and notes by Philip Kolin, a world authority on Williams. The introduction includes a chronology of Williams' life and times, a summary of the plot, commentary on the characters, themes, language and context, and a production history of the play. Together with questions for further study and notes on words and phrases from the text, this is the essential edition of the play for students of literature and drama. Since being made into a classic Hollywood film starring Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof has become one of Tennessee Williams' most celebrated plays. ...Show more

This Is Shakespeare by Emma Smith

$45.00 AUD

Category: Plays | Series: Pelican Bks.

'I admire the freshness and attack of her writing, the passion and curiosity that light up the page. The book does something very important - it makes you impatient to see or re-read the plays at once' Hilary Mantel A genius and prophet whose timeless works encapsulate the human condition like no other s. A writer who surpassed his contemporaries in vision, originality and literary mastery. Who wrote like an angel, putting it all so much better than anyone else. Is this Shakespeare? Well, sort of. But it doesn't really tell us the whole truth. So much of what we say about Shakespeare is either not true, or just not relevant, deflecting us from investigating the challenges of his inconsistencies and flaws. This electrifying new book thrives on revealing, not resolving, the ambiguities of Shakespeare's plays and their changing topicality. It introduces an intellectually, theatrically and ethically exciting writer who engages with intersectionality as much as with Ovid, with economics as much as poetry: who writes in strikingly modern ways about individual agency, privacy, politics, celebrity and sex. It takes us into a world of politicking and copy-catting, as we watch him emulating the blockbusters of Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd, the Spielberg and Tarantino of their day; flirting with and skirting round the cut-throat issues of succession politics, religious upheaval and technological change. The Shakespeare in this book poses awkward questions rather than offering bland answers, always implicating us in working out what it might mean. This is Shakespeare. And he needs your attention. ...Show more

The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides by W. Stanford (Editor); Robert Fagles (Translator); Aeschylus; W. B. Stanford (Contribution by, Introduction by, Notes by)

$16.99 AUD

Category: Plays | Series: Classics Ser.

In the Oresteia Aeschylus addressed the bloody chain of murder and revenge within the royal family of Argos. As they move from darkness to light, from rage to self-governance, from primitive ritual to civilized institution, their spirit of struggle and regeneration becomes an everlasting song of celebra tion. In Agamemnon, a king's decision to sacrifice his daughter and turn the tide of war inflicts lasting damage on his family, culminating in a terrible act of retribution; The Libation Bearers deals with the aftermath of Clytemnestra's regicide, as her son Orestes sets out to avenge his father's death; and in The Eumenides, Orestes is tormented by supernatural powers that can never be appeased. Forming an elegant and subtle discourse on the emergence of Athenian democracy out of a period of chaos and destruction, The Oresteia is a compelling tragedy of the tensions between our obligations to our families and the laws that bind us together as a society.   The only trilogy in Greek drama that survives from antiquity, Aeschylus' The Oresteia is translated by Robert Fagles with an introduction, notes and glossary written in collaboration with W.B. Stanford in Penguin Classics.   For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. ...Show more

Cleopatra - I Am Fire and Air by Harold Bloom

$24.99 AUD

Category: Plays | Series: Shakespeare's Personalities Ser.

Cleopatra is one of the most famous women in history-and thanks to Shakespeare, one of the most intriguing personalities in literature. She is the lover of Marc Antony, defender of Egypt, and, perhaps most enduringly, a champion of life. Cleopatra is supremely vexing, tragic, and complex. She has fascin ated readers and audiences for centuries and has been played by the greatest actresses of their time, from Elizabeth Taylor to Vivien Leigh to Janet Suzman to Judi Dench. Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom writes about Cleopatra with wisdom, joy, exuberance, and compassion. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character: Just as we encounter one Anna Karenina or Jay Gatsby when we are in high school and college and another when we are adults, Bloom explains his shifting understanding of Cleopatra over the course of his own lifetime. The book becomes an extraordinarily moving argument for literature as a path to and a measure of our own humanity. Bloom is mesmerizing in the classroom, wrestling with the often tragic choices Shakespeare's characters make. With Cleopatra, he delivers exhilarating clarity and invites us to look at this character as a flawed human who might be living in our world. The result is an invaluable resource from our greatest literary critic. ...Show more

Shakespeare - The Theatre of Our World by Peter Conrad

$35.00 AUD

Category: Plays | Series: The\Landmark Library

In 1623 the actors John Heminges and Henry Condell assembled and published one of the most influential books ever published in the English language: Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies- better known to posterity as The First Folio. In doing so they preserved literature's most dramatically vital and poetically rich account of our human world. Shakespeare's legacy is endlessly renewed as his work is staged, adapted or critically interpreted. His characters have shaped the way we think about consciousness and morality, love and death, politics and war. Peter Conrad explores the phenomenon of Shakespeare; the world-view of his plays, their generic originality, and their astonishing language; and goes on to assess his global legacy across every continent and across every genre of the creative arts in the four hundred years that have elapsed since his death. ...Show more

The Oresteia - Agamemnon, Women at the Graveside, Orestes in Athens by Aeschylus; Oliver Taplin (Translator)

$38.95 AUD

Category: Plays

The most renowned of Aeschylus' tragedies and one of the foundational texts of Western literature, the Oresteia trilogy is about cycles of deception and brutality within the ruling family of Argos. In Agamemnon, afflicted queen Clytemnestra awaits her husband's return from war to commit a terrible act o f retribution for the murder of her daughter. The next two plays, radically retitled here as The Women at the Graveside and Orestes in Athens, deal with the aftermath of the regicide, Orestes' search to avenge his father's death, and the ceaseless torment of the young prince. A powerful discourse on the formation of democracy after a period of violent chaos, The Oresteia has long illuminated the tensions between loyalty to one's family and to the greater community. Now, Oliver Taplin's "vivid and accessible translation" (Victoria Mohl) captures the lyricism of the original, in what is sure to be a classic for generations to come. ...Show more

Equus by Peter Shaffer

$24.95 AUD

Category: Plays

Self-consciously staging itself in the psychotherapy sessions of a disturbed young man, Peter Shaffer's Equus is a shocking exploration of the limits of faith, of the intersecting worlds of the sacred and profane, and of the paltry value of a 'mundane' life, published in Penguin Modern Classics.When a d eranged boy, Alan Strang, blinds six horses with a metal spike he is sentenced to psychiatric treatment. Dr Dysart is the man given the task of uncovering what happened the night Strang committed his crime, but in doing so will open up his own wounds. Dysart struggles in secret to define sanity, to justify his marriage, to account for his career, and finds himself questioning the 'normality' of his way of life. Ultimately, he must ask himself: is it patient or psychiatrist whose life is being laid bare? The most shocking play of its day, Equus uses an act of violence to explore faith, insanity and how the materialism of modern life can destroy humanity's capacity for pain and passion.Peter Shaffer (b. 1926), born in Liverpool, is an English playwright. Among his plays are The Salt Land (1954), Equus (1973) which won Shaffer the 1975 Tony Award for Best Play, as well as the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and Amadeus (1979) which won the Evening Standard Drama Award and the Theatre Critics Award for the London production, as well as being adapted into a 1984 film starring F. Murray Abraham and Simon Callow.If you enjoyed Equus, you might like Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.'Sensationally good'Guardian'A very important play'The New York Times ...Show more

The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht

$24.99 AUD

Category: Plays | Series: Modern Plays

The city burns in the heat of civil war and a servant girl sacrifices everything to protect an abandoned child. But when peace is finally restored, the boy's mother comes to claim him. Calling upon the ancient tradition of the Chalk Circle, a comical judge sets about resolving the dispute. But in a cult ure of corruption and deception, who wins? Written by the grand master of storytelling and peopled with vivid and amusing characters, this is one of the greatest plays of the last century. This Caucasian Chalk Circle is translated by award-winning writer Alistair Beaton, who also wrote the bitingly witty stage play Feelgood and the celebrated TV dramas The Trial of Tony Blair and A Very Social Secretary. The play was toured by Shared Experience in 2009. ...Show more

Medea by Robin (TRN) Euripides; Robertson

$18.95 AUD

Category: Plays

Richard II by William Shakespeare

$14.99 AUD

Category: Plays

This is the first part of the 'Henriad', continued with the two parts of Henry IV and concluded by Henry V. William Shakespeare's Richard II is a history play dramatizing the rebellion of Henry Bolingbroke, that would eventually see him made King of England. This Penguin Shakespeare edition is edited by Stanley Wells with an introduction by Paul Edmondson. 'Not all the water in the rough rude sea Can wash the balm off from an anointed king'. Banishing his cousin, Bolingbroke, King Richard II prevents a dispute from turning bloody. But Richard is an arrogant and despotic ruler, prone to tyranny and vanity, who listens only to his flatterers. As favour turns against him and Bolingbroke returns to reclaim his land, Richard is humbled and grieved to see that the throne given to him by God might be taken from him by men. This book contains a general introduction to Shakespeare's life and Elizabethan theatre, a separate introduction to Richard II, a chronology, suggestions for further reading, an essay discussing performance options on both stage and screen, and a commentary. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was born to John Shakespeare and Mary Arden some time in late April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon. He wrote about 38 plays (the precise number is uncertain), many of which are regarded as the most exceptional works of drama ever produced, including Romeo and Juliet (1595), Henry V (1599), Hamlet (1601), Othello (1604), King Lear (1606) and Macbeth (1606), as well as a collection of 154 sonnets, which number among the most profound and influential love-poetry in English. If you enjoyed Richard II, you might like Henry IV Part I, also available in Penguin Shakespeare. "We go to Shakespeare to find out about ourselves." (Jeanette Winterson). ...Show more

Troilus And Cressida: The Pelican Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

$16.99 AUD

Category: Plays

This legendary Shakespeare series features authoritative and meticulously researched texts paired with scholarship by renowned Shakespeareans. Updated for the 21st-century by editors Stephen Orgel of Stanford University and A. R. Braunmuller of UCLA, each book includes an essay on the theatrical world o f Shakespeare's time, an introduction to the individual play, and a detailed note on the text used. With all new cover designs, these affordable Shakespeares are perfect for students, teachers, scholars and theatre professionals alike. ...Show more

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

$19.99 AUD

Category: Plays | Series: Penguin Modern Classics

Abandoned by her husband, Amanda Wingfield comforts herself with recollections of her earlier, more gracious life in Blue Mountain when she was pursued by 'gentleman callers'. Her son Tom, a poet with a job in a warehouse, longs for adventure and escape from his mother's suffocating embrace, while Laura , her shy crippled daughter, has her glass menagerie and her memories. Amanda is desperate to find her daughter a husband, but when the long-awaited gentleman caller does arrive, Laura's romantic illusions are crushed. ...Show more