William Shakespeare

Love's Labours Lost - William Shakespeare - Love's Labour's Lost is one of William Shakespeare's early comedies, believed to have been written in the mid-1590s for a performance at the Inns of Court before Queen Elizabeth I. It follows the King of Navarre and his three companions as they attempt to forswear the company of women for three years of study and fasting, and their subsequent infatuation with the Princess of Aquitaine and her ladies. In...

Like most of Shakespeare's history plays, King John presents a struggle for the English crown. The struggle this time, however, is strikingly cold-blooded and brutal. John, the younger brother of the late Richard I, is the king, and a savage one. His opponent is a boy, his nephew Arthur, supported by the King of France and the Duke of Austria. After Arthur falls into John's hands, John plots to torture him. Arthur's capture gives Louis, the Dauphin...

Shakespeare's "merry wives" are Mistress Ford and Mistress Page of the town of Windsor. The two play practical jokes on Mistress Ford's jealous husband and a visiting knight, Sir John Falstaff. Merry wives, jealous husbands, and predatory knights were common in a kind of play called "citizen comedy" or "city comedy." In such plays, courtiers, gentlemen, or knights use social superiority to seduce citizens' wives. The Windsor wives, though, do not...

"Measure for Measure," while listed among William Shakespeare's comedies, is doubtless among the darkest of his lighter works and remains one of the Bard's most popular plays. When the Duke of Vienna decides to go undercover in his own city, he leaves Angelo, his deputy, in charge and disguises himself as a monk to see how things progress in his absence. Angelo, who purports to be a man of honor and a stickler for the rules, arrests young Claudio...

"Othello" by William Shakespeare is a captivating tale of love, jealousy, and the destructive power of deceit. Set against the backdrop of Venice, this timeless tragedy follows the noble Moorish general Othello as he falls deeply in love with the beautiful Desdemona. However, their happiness is short-lived as the ensign Iago, consumed by jealousy and ambition, begins to manipulate Othello into believing that Desdemona has been unfaithful. What unfolds...

Themes: Adapted Classics, Low Level Classics, William Shakespeare, Fiction, Tween, Teen, Young Adult, Hi-Lo, Hi-Lo Books, Hi-Lo Solutions, High-Low Books, Hi-Low Books, ELL, EL, ESL, Struggling Learner, Struggling Reader, Special Education, SPED, Newcomers, Reading, Learning, Education, Educational, Educational Books. Timeless Shakespeare-designed for the struggling reader and adapted to retain the integrity of the original play. These classic plays...

The real Timon of Athens lived there in the fifth century BCE, making him a contemporary of Socrates and Pericles. Shakespeare presents Timon as a figure who suffers such profound disillusionment that he becomes a misanthrope, or man-hater. This makes him a more interesting character than the caricature he had become to Shakespeare's contemporaries, for whom "Timonist" was a slang term for an unsociable man. Shakespeare's play includes the wealthy,...

Henry VIII - William Shakespeare - King Henry VIII has one of the fullest theatrical histories of any play in the Shakespeare canon, yet has been consistently misrepresented, both in performance and in criticism. This edition offers a new perspective on this ironic, multi-layered, collaborative play, revealing it as a complex meditation on the progress of Reformation which sees English life since Henry VIII's day as a series of bewildering changes...

Shakespeare's tragic drama about a Roman general tested by rioting, war, rejection-and his own all-consuming anger. Enraged by the withholding of food, the common people of the Roman Republic are rebelling against the elite. In this battle between plebeians and patricians, Caius Marcius has little patience for those he considers beneath him and his family. After his military victory in the city of Corioli, Marcius is given the nickname Coriolanus...

Although one of his lesser known plays, Shakespeare's considerable abilities as a playwright are readily apparent in "Troilus and Cressida." This historical and tragic 'problem play', thought to be inspired by Chaucer, Homer, and some of Shakespeare's history-recording contemporaries, is initially a tale of a man and woman in love during the Trojan War. When Cressida is given to the Greeks in exchange for a prisoner of war, Troilus is determined to...