Paul Werstine

Named for the twelfth night after Christmas, the end of the Christmas season, Twelfth Night plays with love and power. The Countess Olivia, a woman with her own household, attracts Duke (or Count) Orsino. Two other would-be suitors are her pretentious steward, Malvolio, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek.

Much Ado About Nothing includes two quite different stories of romantic love. Hero and Claudio fall in love almost at first sight, but an outsider, Don John, strikes out at their happiness. Beatrice and Benedick are kept apart by pride and mutual antagonism until others decide to play Cupid.

Presents Shakespeare's dark comedy about young lovers and a Jewish money lender who demands a pound of flesh in payment for a debt. Includes explanatory notes on facing pages, scene-by-scene plot summaries, a key to famous lines and phrases, a modern perspective essay, and an introduction to the play and the language of Shakespeare.

"Join Bottom the Weaver, Oberon and Titania, and the confused lovers in a series of events so outrageous it must be a dream! Filled with interactive wheels and pull-tabs, and lavishly illustrated, Lit for Little Hands: A Midsummer Night's Dream is an unprecedented kid's introduction to William Shakespeare's beloved classic comedy. Unlike many board books that tackle the classics, Lit for Little Hands tells the actual story in simple prose?--here with...

The Winter’s Tale, one of Shakespeare’s very late plays, is filled with improbabilities. Before the conclusion, one character comments that what we are about to see, “Were it but told you, should be hooted at / Like an old tale.” It includes murderous passions, man-eating bears, princes and princesses in disguise, death by drowning and by grief, oracles, betrayal, and unexpected joy. Yet the play, which draws much of its power from Greek myth,...

Presents the original text of Shakespeare's play side by side with a modern version, with marginal notes and explanations and full descriptions of each character.

Hamlet is Shakespeare's most popular, and most puzzling, play. It follows the form of a "revenge tragedy," in which the hero, Hamlet, seeks vengeance against his father's murderer, his uncle Claudius, now the king of Denmark. Much of its fascination, however, lies in its uncertainties. Among them: What is the Ghost--Hamlet's father demanding justice, a tempting demon, an angelic messenger? Does Hamlet go mad, or merely pretend to? Once he is sure...

Shakespeare may have written Julius Caesar as the first of his plays to be performed at the Globe, in 1599. For it, he turned to a key event in Roman history: Caesar’s death at the hands of friends and fellow politicians. Renaissance writers disagreed over the assassination, seeing Brutus, a leading conspirator, as either hero or villain. Shakespeare’s play keeps this debate alive.

Provides the text of the play, accompanied by notes and an introduction.

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. Contains the text of the play, information about Shakespeare and his theatre, bibliography, key to famous lines, and explanatory notes.