Josh Verbae

Planning a school or amateur Shakespeare production? The best way to experience the plays is to perform them, but getting started can be a challenge: The complete plays are too long and complex, while scene selections or simplified language are too limited. "The 30-Minute Shakespeare" is a new series of abridgements that tell the "story" of each play from start to finish while keeping the beauty of Shakespeare's language intact. Specific stage directions...

Critical commentary accompanies the story of Antonio, who risks his life to borrow money from his enemy, Shylock, and is saved by Portia, an heiress posing as a lawyer.

Valentine and Proteus are devoted comrades ― until they travel to Milan and meet Silvia, the Duke's ravishing daughter. Torn between the bonds of friendship and the lure of romance, the two gentlemen are further bedeviled by Proteus's prior commitment to Julia, his hometown sweetheart, and the Duke's disdain for Valentine. Thus the stage is set for a comic spree involving a daring escape into a forest, capture by outlaws, and the antics of a clown...

"This book presents a historical overview of The Tempest in performance, recommends film versions, takes a detailed look at specific productions and includes interviews with three leading directors - Peter Brook, Sam Mendes and Rupert Goold - so that we may get a sense of the extraordinary variety of interpretations that are possible, a variety that gives Shakespeare his unique capacity to be reinvented and made 'our contemporary' four centuries after...

Likely written around 1607 or 1608 and attributed at least in part to Shakespeare, "Pericles, Prince of Tyre" is an adventure-filled play that follows the extended sailing journeys of a young prince. Pericles, a young prince from Phoenicia, is forced to flee Antioch when he correctly guesses a riddle that reveals the incestuous activity of King Antiochus. Unable to stay at home in Tyre because of Antiochus' vengeance, he sails away and ends up shipwrecked...

Measure for Measure - William Shakespeare - Measure for Measure is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1603 or 1604. Originally published in the First Folio of 1623, where it was listed as a comedy, the play's first recorded performance occurred in 1604. The play's main themes include justice, "mortality and mercy in Vienna," and the dichotomy between corruption and purity: "some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall." Mercy...

Includes the play as well as much additional information concerning the life and times surrounding Shakespeare.

Presents the unabridged text of Shakespeare's classic tragedy in which Othello, a Moorish general, is led by a jealous and evil ensign to believe his wife, Desdemona, has been unfaithful.

As You Like It (1599) is a comedy by William Shakespeare. As You Like It was probably inspired by Thomas Lodge's Rosalynd, Euphues Golden Legacie (1587), a story based on "The Tale of Gamelyn," a Middle English romance. For its deconstruction of traditional gender roles and depiction of homoeroticism, As You Like It remains an important and frequently performed play in Shakespeare's oeuvre. "All the world's a stage, / And all the men and women merely...

A once selfish giant welcomes the children to his previously forbidden garden and is eventually rewarded by an unusual tiny child.