Literary studies: plays & playwrights

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 your mind? Shakespeare's world is never too far different from our own, permeated with the same tragedies, the same existential questions and domestic wo...

During his illustrious career, Greg Doran has directed or produced all of the plays within Shakespeare's First Folio - a milestone reached in the same year that the world celebrates the 400th anniversary of its original publication. Each chapter looks at a different play, considering the choices ...

Taking a curtain call with a live snake in her wig. Cavorting naked through the Warwickshire countryside painted green. Acting opposite a child with a pumpkin on his head. These are just a few of the things Dame Judi Dench has done in the name of Shakespeare. Here, Judi opens up about every Shake...

Bill Bryson's biography of William Shakespeare unravels the superstitions, academic discoveries and myths surrounding the life of our greatest poet and playwright.

Throughout her life, Shelagh Delaney told the stories of unfamiliar lives: working-class women and men - often those peopling Britain's northern towns and cities - living on the margins of what polite society deemed acceptable, but who chose their own way in the world. She wrote the play, 'A Tast...

These penguin texts have clear, easy-to-read typefaces making them convenient and easy to use. Each volume has extensive footnotes showing the variations between folios, quartos and modern texts. His extraordinarily gory and spectacularly violent revenge tragedy, William Shakespeare's Titus Andro...