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One of George Bernard Shaw's most performed and studied plays, "Arms and the Man" is a classic example of Shaw's comedic wit. First produced in 1894, the play is set during the Serbo-Bulgarian war and tells the story of Raina Petkoff, a young Bulgarian woman, who is engaged to Sergius, a soldier away at war whom she idolizes. While both her father and fiancé are away fighting, Raina, at home with her mother, has a very innocent and romantic idea...
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Idylls of the King (1859-1885) is a cycle of narrative poems by British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Written while Tennyson was serving as Poet Laureate, Idylls of the King reworks the medieval Arthurian legend in blank verse and with an elegiac tone. Based on Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur and the early British Mabinogion manuscripts, Tennyson's work connects an ancient tradition to the reign and ideals of Queen Victoria.
"The Coming of Arthur"...
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Gerald Arbuthnot receives a promotion from Lord Illingworth, a worldly politician who has a sordid history of women, one of whom is Gerald's widowed mother. When their connection is revealed, the young man questions his past, present and future aspirations.
A Woman of No Importance opens with a high-class party featuring a group of society's most illustrious citizens. In the midst of the event, Gerald Arbuthnot enters and announces his new position...
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All's Well That Ends Well (1607) is a comedy by William Shakespeare. All's Well That Ends Well was likely inspired by the tale of Giletta di Narbona from Boccaccio's Decameron. Unpopular during Shakespeare's lifetime, the play remains one of his least staged works to this day. Despite this, scholars praise All's Well That Ends Well for its moral ambiguity. "The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together, our virtues would be proud...
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First performed in 1895, "An Ideal Husband" is Oscar Wilde's classic and much-loved comedic drama. The play tells the story of an up-and-coming politician, Sir Robert Chiltern, who tries to hide his secret past from his judgmental wife and the blackmail scheme he is forced to participate in to keep that secret quiet. Lady Chiltern has a very particular idea of what makes the "ideal husband" which leaves her with little tolerance for Sir Robert's all...
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Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812-1818) is a book length poem by British Romantic Lord Byron. Published in cantos, the narrative poem is arranged in four parts, each following the journey of Harold, a character based on Byron himself. Childe Harold's Pilgrimage established Byron's reputation as a leading poet of his era, laying the foundation for many of the elements of Romantic poetry-melancholy, sublime and beautiful landscapes, and a wandering hero-that...
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First performed in 1773, "She Stoops to Conquer" is the timeless comedic drama by Anglo-Irish author Oliver Goldsmith. The play depicts the story of Charles Marlow, a wealthy young man who is promised in marriage to a woman, Kate Hardcastle that he has never met. While he is eager to meet her and is travelling to her home with his friend, George Hastings, Charles is quite shy in the company of women of wealth. He prefers those of a lower class and...
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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...
10) A Shropshire lad
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The charms of the poems in A Shropshire Lad, published in 1896, continue to resonate today. Housman's first collection and his signature work, the poems here mix the styles of traditional English ballads and classical verse, and evoke the idyllic English countryside, explore the nature of friendship, bravery, and the passing of youth, among other themes.
11) Candida
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"Candida" is the story of its title character, a woman who is married to the Reverend Morell. Candida is a woman of many talents and her husband has his wife to thank for much of his success. When a young man by the name of Marchbanks professes his love for Candida, Morell must reexamine his relationship with his wife and ultimately discovers a side to her that he never knew existed. "Candida" is a play written during a time of great empowerment of...
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The Devil's Disciple is an 1897 play written by Irish dramatist George Bernard Shaw. The play is Shaw's eighth, and after Richard Mansfield's original 1897 American production it was his first financial success, which helped to affirm his career as a playwright. It was published in Shaw's 1901 collection Three Plays for Puritans together with Captain Brassbound's Conversion and Caesar and Cleopatra. Set in Colonial America during the Revolutionary...
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First staged in 1906, "The Doctor's Dilemma" is a play that revolves around a community of doctors, most specializing, unbeknownst to them, in different types of expensive, fraudulent treatments. Dr. Ridgeon, who has actually discovered a vaccine for tuberculosis, is conflicted about administering his limited remedy, for the husband of a woman he is in love with can pay, but his kind yet poverty-stricken colleague Dr. Blenkinsop cannot. Shaw's drama...
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Relatively unknown in his own lifetime, Gerard Manley Hopkins is the now accredited as the author of some of the finest and most complex poems in the English language. As a Victorian poet, Roman Catholic convert, and Jesuit priest, Hopkins pioneered a revolutionary form of meter he termed "sprung rhythm" in his first major work, "The Wreck of the Deutschland." This poem, like most of Hopkins' work, reflects both his belief in the doctrine that human...
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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...
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Master of gibberish Lewis Carroll brings his inventive style of writing to life once more in the collection "Jabberwocky and Other Poems." Though most famous for his creation of Wonderland and Alice's fall into the uncanny world of the nonsensical, Carroll used his wordsmithing ability to form inventive rhymes and lexicons in this collection. Words like "bandersnatch," "chortled," "tulgey," and even "Jabberwocky" are inventions of Carroll's mind....
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Lady Windermere misinterprets her husband's interest in an older woman, Mrs. Erlynne, causing a rift that could lead to both marital and societal ruin. Lady Windermere's Fan Is an intriguing tale that examines intention versus outcome in a world driven by perception.
Lady Windermere is a young wife who's concerned by her husband's connection to the mysterious, Mrs. Erlynne. She believes the woman is a threat to her marriage and livelihood. Despite...
18) Major Barbara
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First performed in 1905 and published in 1907, "Major Barbara" is a dramatic play by the famed Irish playwright and activist George Bernard Shaw. The story centers around its title character who, as an officer in the Salvation Army, becomes disenchanted by the increasing social problems that she sees and the willingness of her organization to accept money from armament manufacturers. Barbara is disillusioned about the good work the Salvation Army...
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In this representative collection of Christina Rossetti's poems we find a vast array of narrative tales, love lyrics, sonnets, hymns, ballads, and sprightly verses for children. Ranked among the finest English poets of the nineteenth century, Christina Rossetti is a widely read, though not widely imitated poet, recognized for her devotional poetry, influenced by the religious conservatism and asceticism of the Church of England. This collection of...
20) Don Juan
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First published in 1819, "Don Juan" is often acknowledged as one of Lord Byron's greatest poetic works. An epic poem, comprised of seventeen cantos that Byron continued to work on and expand until his death, "Don Juan" follows the adventures of the famous Spanish libertine and reflects upon many of the romantic and personal experiences that are universal to all mankind. From a forbidden love affair in Spain, to exile in Italy, from being shipwrecked...
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