King Lear is perhaps the most fierce and moving play ever written. And yet there is a curious puzzle at its center. The figure to whom Shakespeare gives more lines than anyone except the king—Edgar—has often seemed little more than a blank, ignored and unloved, a belated moralizer who, try as he may, can never truly speak to the play's savaged heart. He saves his blinded father from suicide, but even this act of care is shadowed by suspicions of evasiveness and bad faith.In...

"A miracle, an instant classic."-- Slavoj Žižek, philosopherThe tragedy is done, the tyrant Macbeth dead. The time is free. But for how long? As Macduff pursues dreams of national revival, smaller lives are seeding. In the ruins of Dunsinane, the Porter tries to keep his three young boys safe from the nightmare of history. In a nunnery deep in Birnam Wood, a girl attempts to forget what she lost in war. Flitting between them, a tortured clairvoyant trembles...

A thoroughly revised edition of the successful student text Doing Shakespeare, first published in 2005. The book's success lies in the close readings of speeches and scenes it gives students, demystifying the language of the plays and critical approaches to them.This new edition introduces a new way of approaching Shakespeare's text, through ideas of performance and the actor's role and restructures the content to make it easier to navigate, with clear signposting througho...

New methods are needed to do justice to Shakespeare. His work exceeds conventional models, past and present, for understanding playworlds. In this book, Simon Palfrey goes right to the heart of early modern popular drama, revealing both how it works and why it matters. Unlike his contemporaries, Shakespeare gives independent life to all his instruments, and to every fraction and fragment of the plays. Palfrey terms these particles 'formactions' - theatre-specific forms that move with their...

A truly groundbreaking collaboration of original theatre history with exciting literary criticism, Shakespeare in Parts is the first book fully to explore the original form in which Shakespeare's drama overwhelmingly circulated. This was not the full play-text; it was not the public performance. It was the actor's part, consisting of the bare cues and speeches of each individual role. With group rehearsals rare or non-existent, the cued part alone had to furnish the actor with his...

Enable students to achieve their best grade in AS/A-level English Literature with this year-round course companion; designed to instil in-depth textual understanding as students read, analyse and revise the AQA A Poetry Anthology throughout the course.This Study and Revise guide:- Increases students' knowledge of the AQA A Poetry Anthology as they progress through the detailed commentary and contextual information written by experienced te...

A novice knight of exceptional powers must flee his home and join in an ancient battle against another world in this epic fantasy series debut.The Book of Eador commands: Suffer ye not the life of a witch. For a thousand years, the Church Knights have obeyed, burning at the stake anyone who can hear the songs of the earth. And so the novice Knight Gair—who can hear beautiful, powerful music no one else can—is sentenced to die by fire.Even as Gair man...

Sharp Ends is the ultimate collection of award winning tales and exclusive new short stories from the master of grimdark fantasy, Joe Abercrombie.Violence explodes, treachery abounds, and the words are as deadly as the weapons in this rogue's gallery of side-shows, back-stories, and sharp endings from the world of the First Law.The Union army may be full of bastards, but there's only one who thinks he can save the day single-handed when the Gurkish...

Shakespeare's plays are usually studied by literary scholars and historians and the books about him from those perspectives are legion. It is most unusual for a trained philosopher to give us his insight, as Colin McGinn does here, into six of Shakespeare's greatest plays–A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, and The Tempest.In his brilliant commentary, McGinn explores Shakespeare's philosophy of life and illustrates how he was influenced, for example, by ...

It is an undeniable truth: give evil a name and everyone's happy. Give it two names and…why, they're even happier.Intrepid necromancers Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, scourges of civilization, raisers of the dead, reapers of the souls of the living, devourers of hope, betrayers of faith, slayers of the innocent, and modest personifications of evil, have a lot to answer for and answer they will. Known as the Nehemoth, they are pursued by countless self-professed defenders of decency,...

Dylan Thomas is known as Wales' greatest poet. He was popular for his innovative use of the English language. Sometimes his persona overshadowed his writing as he was known as a drinker when he lived in New York.Collected Poems contains nearly 100 poems written in under two decades (19341952), including perhaps his most famous work 'Do not go gentle into that good night'Expertly formatted with a linked table of contents. Look for more classic books from Green Light.Visit us at - GreenLight...

Playing Shakespeareis the premier guide to understanding and appreciating the mastery of the world’s greatest playwright.Together with Royal Shakespeare Company actors–among them Patrick Stewart, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Ben Kingsley, and David Suchet–John Barton demonstrates how to adapt Elizabethan theater for the modern stage. The director begins by explicating Shakespeare’s verse and prose, speeches and soliloquies, and naturalistic and heightened language to ...