A noble family's descent into madness, mayhem, and murder - the first play in Sophocles' great Theban trilogy. This Enriched Classic edition includes: a concise introduction that gives readers important background information; timelines of significant events in Greek history and theater that provide the book's historical context; an outline of key themes and plot points to help readers form their own interpretations; detailed explanatory notes; and,...

"Hercule Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac, a cadet (nobleman serving as a soldier) in the French Army, is a brash, strong-willed man of many talents. In addition to being a remarkable duelist, he is a gifted, joyful poet and is also a musician. However, he has an extremely large nose, which causes him to doubt himself. This doubt prevents him from expressing his love for his distant cousin, the beautiful and intellectual Roxane, as he believes that his...

Enduring legend of the old philosopher who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and power.

"A blistering character study and an examination of the American melting pot and the judicial system that keeps it in check, Twelve Angry Men holds at its core a deeply patriotic belief in the U.S. legal system. The story's focal point, known only as Juror Eight, is at first the sole holdout in an 11-1 guilty vote. Eight sets his sights not on proving the other jurors wrong but rather on getting them to look at the situation in a clear-eyed way not...

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is one of the most enduring and frequently performed plays of contemporary theater and has firmly established itself in the dramatic canon. Acclaimed as a modern masterpiece, it is the fabulously inventive tale of Hamlet as told from the worm's-eye view of the bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters in Shakespeare's play. In Tom Stoppard's best-known work, this Shakespearean Laurel and Hardy...

Algernon pretends to be Jack's troublesome younger brother, in Wilde's satirical assault on nineteenth-century fashions, manners, and morality.

Richard the Third takes up the action from Henry VI, Part Three. Edward IV has grown ill, and will not live much longer.... Richard III (the Duke of Gloucester) still has his eye on the throne even though his brother, Edward IV occcupies it. The Duke of Gloucester plans on setting Edward IV and his other brother George (Duke of Clarence) against one another so he can eventually seize the throne. Betraying his brother George, The Duke of Gloucester...

This Pulitzer Prize-winner is a deeply touching and funny play about three eccentric sisters from a small Southern town rocked by scandal when Babe, the youngest, shoots her husband. Humor and pathos abound as the sisters unite with an intense young lawyer to save Babe from a murder charge, and overcome their familys painful past. The scene is Hazlehurst, Mississippi, where the three Magrath sisters have gathered to await news of the family patriarch,...

When it was first produced in 1959, A Raisin in the Sun was awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for that season and hailed as a watershed in American drama. A pioneering work by an African-American playwright, the play was a radically new representation of black life. "A play that changed American theater forever." The story tells of a Black family's experiences in south Chicago, as they attempt to improve their financial circumstances...

Based on Ernest J. Gaines' National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novel, A Lesson Before Dying is set in a small Louisiana Cajun community in the late 1940's. Jefferson, a young illiterate black man, is falsely convicted of murder and is sentenced to death. Grant Wiggins, the plantation schoolteacher, agrees to talk with the condemned man. The disheartened Wiggins had once harbored dreams of escaping from his impoverished youth, yet he returned...