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 treachery and murder, and from Shakespeare’s compelling portrai...

‘Enlightening, moving’ SIR IAN MCKELLENFrom the acclaimed and bestselling biographer Jonathan Bate, a luminous new exploration of Shakespeare and how his themes can untangle comedy and tragedy, learning and loving in our modern lives.‘The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.’How does one survive the death of a loved one, the mess of war, the experience of being schooled, of falling in love, of growing old, of losing ...

The newly revised, wonderfully authoritative First Folio of Shakespeare’s Complete Works, edited by acclaimed Shakespearean scholars Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen and endorsed by the world-famous Royal Shakespeare CompanyCombining cutting-edge textual editing, superb annotations and commentary, a readable design, and bonus features for students, theater professionals, and general readers, this landmark edition sets a new standard in Shakespearean literature for ...

The newly revised, wonderfully authoritative First Folio of Shakespeare’s Complete Works, edited by acclaimed Shakespearean scholars Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen and endorsed by the world-famous Royal Shakespeare CompanyCombining cutting-edge textual editing, superb annotations and commentary, a readable design, and bonus features for students, theater professionals, and general readers, this landmark edition sets a new standard in Shakespearean literature for ...

A dazzling biography of two interwoven, tragic lives: John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald.‘Highly engaging … Go now, read this book’ THE TIMES‘For awhile after you quit Keats,’ Fitzgerald once wrote, ‘All other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.’John Keats died two hundred years ago, in February 1821. F. Scott Fitzgerald defined a decade that began one hundred years ago, the Jazz Age.In this biography, prizewinning author ...

Though this great tragedy of unsurpassed intensity and emotion is played out against Renaissance splendor, its story of the doomed marriage of a Venetian senator’s daughter, Desdemona, to a Moorish general, Othello, is especially relevant to modern audiences. The differences in race and background create an initial tension that allows the horrifyingly envious villain Iago methodically to promote the “green-eyed monster” jealousy, until, in one of the most deeply moving scenes in theatrical...

William Shakespeare’s dramatic tragedy that explores corruption, family, politics, madness, and redemptionA king foolishly divides his kingdom between his scheming two oldest daughters and estranges himself from the daughter who loves him. So begins this profoundly moving and disturbing tragedy that, perhaps more than any other work in literature, challenges the notion of a coherent and just universe. The king and others pay dearly for their shortcomings—as madness...

Can you be re-lit by poetry? This little book offers everyone one of the oldest of all remedies for stress: the reading of poetry.Intended to help you endure some of your stressful moments and painful experiences, these poems tell us we are not alone. Returned again and again over the centuries by great imaginations are love and death and memory – remembrance of childhood joy, of happy days and beautiful places, of loved ones we have lost or feeling at peace and at...

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 happiness triumphs, even as we laugh at the excesses of ...

The life and times of the celebrated Romantic poet is revealed in this "magnificent biography . . . Both erudite and utterly absorbing" ( Daily Mail ).This is the biography of a great poetic genius, a revolutionary who changed the world. William Wordsworth rejoiced in the French Revolution and played a central role in the cultural upheaval that we call the Romantic Revolution. He and his fellow Romantics changed forever th...

Shakespeare became famous as a dazzling poet before most people even knew that he wrote plays. His sonnets are the English language’s most extraordinary anatomy of love in all its dimensions–desire and despair, longing and loss, adoration and disgust. To read them is to confront morality and eternity in the same breath. Produced under the editorial supervision of Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, two of today’s most accomplished Shakespearean scholars, The Sonnets and Other Poems

Set in a courtly world of masked revels and dances, this play turns on the archetypal story of a lady falsely accused of unfaithfulness, spurned by her bridegroom, and finally vindicated and reunited with him. Villainy, schemes, and deceits threaten to darken the brilliant humor and sparkling wordplay–but the hilarious counterplot of a warring couple, Beatrice and Benedick, steals the scene as the two are finally tricked into admitting their love for each other in Shakespeare’s superb come...