Macbeth and his friend Banquo meet some witches on their way home from a war and say he will be King of Scotland. Encouraged by his wife, Macbeth kills King Duncan, and becomes the new king. Macbeth kills more people out of paranoia. Civil war erupts to overthrow Macbeth.

In the woods outside Athens, two young men and two young women sort themselves out into couples but not before they form first one love triangle, and then another. Also in the woods, the king and queen of fairyland, Oberon and Titania, battle over custody of an orphan boy; Oberon uses magic to make Titania fall in love with a weaver named Bottom, whose head is temporarily transformed into that of a donkey by a hobgoblin or "puck," Robin Goodfellow. Finally, Bottom and his companions ineptly stage the tragedy of "Pyramus and Thisbe."

The play tells us about families struggling between greed and cruelty, on the one hand, and support and consolation, on the other. Emotions are extreme, magnified to gigantic proportions. We also see old age portrayed in all its vulnerability, pride, and, perhaps, wisdom--one reason this most devastating of Shakespeare's tragedies is also perhaps his most moving.

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.

Shakespeare creates a violent world, in which two young people fall in love. It is not simply that their families disapprove; the Montagues and the Capulets are engaged in a blood feud. In this death-filled setting, the movement from love at first sight to the lovers' final union in death seems almost inevitable. And yet, this play set in an extraordinary world has become the quintessential story of young love. In part because of its exquisite language, it is easy to respond as if it were about all young lovers.

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.

The Countess Olivia, a woman with her own household, attracts Duke Orsino. Two other would-be suitors are her pretentious steward, Malvolio, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Onto this scene arrive the twins Viola and Sebastian; previously caught in a shipwreck, each thinks the other has drowned. Viola disguises herself as a male page and enters Orsino's service. Orsino sends her as his envoy to Olivia--only to have Olivia fall in love with the messenger. The play complicates, then wonderfully untangles, these relationships.

Envious conspirators convince Caesar's friend Brutus to join their assassination plot against Caesar. To stop Caesar from gaining too much power, Brutus and the conspirators kill him on the Ides of March. Mark Antony drives the conspirators out of Rome and fights them in a battle. Brutus and his friend Cassius lose and kill themselves, leaving Antony to rule in Rome.

In Othello, Shakespeare creates powerful drama from a marriage between the Moor Othello and the Venetian lady Desdemona that begins with elopement and mutual devotion and ends with jealous rage and death. Shakespeare builds many differences into his hero and heroine, including race, age, and cultural background. Yet most readers and audiences believe the couple's strong love would overcome these differences were it not for Iago, who sets out to destroy Othello. Iago's false insinuations about Desdemona's infidelity draw Othello into his schemes, and Desdemona is subjected to Othello's horrifying verbal and physical assaults.

Jealous and crippled, Richard of Gloucester wants to be King of England and uses manipulation and deceit to achieve his goal. He murders his brothers, nephews, and any opposition to become King Richard III. In the end, Henry of Richmond raises an army, kills Richard in battle, and becomes King Henry VII.

Full explanatory notes conveniently linked to the text of each sonnet and poem. A brief introduction to each sonnet and poem, providing insight into its possible meaning. An index of first lines, Illustrations from the Folger Shakespeare Library's vast holdings of rare books. An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the sonnets.

Sit back as the curtain goes up on the dramas, sonnets, and life of one of the greatest writers in the English language. Shakespeare wrote or contributed to more than 40 plays, ranging from romantic comedies to the profound tragedy King Lear, as well as 154 sonnets.The Shakespeare Book has visual plot summaries of each one, with diagrams to show the intricate web of relationships in plays such as: A Midsummer's Night Dream. Commentaries explain Shakespeare's sources and set each drama in context, revealing, for instance, how the warring Protestants and Catholics of his day are mirrored in Romeo and Juliet's Montagues and Capulets. Written in plain English and packed with graphics and illustrations. The Shakespeare Book illumines the Bard's world - his marriage, businesses, and friends - and explains how his works became an enduring phenomenon. Whether you need a guide through complex plots and unfamiliar language, or you're looking for a fresh perspective on his well-loved plays and sonnets, this indispensable guide will help you fully appreciate Shakespeare, the man, and the writer.

With full coverage of the thirty-nine Shakespearian plays (including a synopsis, full character list, stage history, and a critical essay for each), this comprehensive guide is both a quick reference and an in-depth background guide for theatre goers, students, film buffs, and lovers of literature. Along with an exploration of the Bard's sonnets and narrative poems, The Globe Guide to Shakespeare features fascinating accounts of Shakespeare's life and the Globe Theater itself, with colorful details about each play's original performance. This comprehensive guide includes up-to-date reviews of the best films and audio recordings of each play, from Laurence Olivier to Baz Luhrmann, Kozintsev to Kurosawa. The Globe Guide to Shakespeare is the quintessential celebration of all things Shakespearian.

A foolproof, enormously fun method of teaching your children the classic works of William Shakespeare. William Shakespeare's plays are among the great bedrocks of Western civilization and contain the finest writing of the past 450 years. Many of the best novels, plays, poetry, and films in the English language produced since Shakespeare's death in 1616--from Jane Austen to The Godfather--are heavily influenced by Shakespeare's stories, characters, language, and themes.  In a sense, his works are a kind of Bible for the modern world, bringing us together intellectually and spiritually.  Hamlet, Juliet, Macbeth, Ophelia, and a vast array of other singular Shakespearean characters have become the archetypes of our consciousness. To know some Shakespeare provides a head start in life.  In How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare, acclaimed playwright Ken Ludwig provides the tools you need to instill an understanding, and a love, of Shakespeare's works in your children, and to have fun together along the way. Ken Ludwig devised his methods while teaching his own children, and his approach is friendly and easy to master. Beginning with  memorizing short specific passages from Shakespeare's plays, this method then instills children with cultural references they will utilize for years to come. Ludwig's approach includes understanding of the time period and implications of Shakespeare's diction as well as the invaluable lessons behind his words and stories.  Colorfully incorporating the history of Shakespearean theater and society, How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare guides readers on an informed and adventurous journey through the world in which the Bard wrote.   This book's simple process allows anyone to impart to children the wisdom of plays like A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet. And there's fun to be had along the way. Shakespeare novices and experts, and readers of all ages, will each find something delightfully irresistible in How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare.

In 1580's England, during the Black Plague a young Latin tutor falls in love with an extraordinary person. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family's land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever. A luminous portrait of a marriage, a shattering evocation of a family ravaged by grief and loss, and a tender and unforgettable re-imagining of a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, and whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays of all time.

In That Way Madness Lies, fifteen acclaimed YA writers put their modern spin on William Shakespeare's celebrated classics! West Side Story. 10 Things I Hate About You. Kiss Me, Kate. Contemporary audiences have always craved reimaginings of Shakespeare's most beloved works. Now, some of today's best writers for teens take on the Bard in these 15 whip-smart and original retellings! Contributors include Dahlia Adler (reimagining The Merchant of Venice), Kayla Ancrum (The Taming of the Shrew), Lily Anderson (All's Well That Ends Well), Melissa Bashardoust (A Winter's Tale), Patrice Caldwell (Hamlet), Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy (Much Ado About Nothing), Brittany Cavallaro (Sonnet 147), Joy McCullough (King Lear), Anna-Marie McLemore (Midsummer Night's Dream), Samantha Mabry (Macbeth), Tochi Onyebuchi (Coriolanus), Mark Oshiro (Twelfth Night), Lindsay Smith (Julius Caesar), Kiersten White (Romeo and Juliet), and Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka (The Tempest).

Peter Ackroyd's Shakespeare, he recreates 16th and 17th centuries filled with important events that shaped William Shakespeare. He takes us through Shakespeare’s London neighborhood and the fertile, competitive theater world where he worked as actor and writer. Ackroyd shows us Shakespeare as a businessman, and as a constant reviser of his writing. Readers will be thoroughly engaged.

"Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" Teenagers have been sighing an approximation of these words for centuries, ever since William Shakespeare had Juliet utter them from her balcony in one of the most popular plays of all time, Romeo and Juliet. Tales of love, loss, rebellion, rivalry--before there was Twilight and The Lion King, there was Shakespeare. The characters, language, imagery, and plot elements of many books and movies that appear on bookshelves and in cinemas today are directly influenced by the plays of the Bard. In Shakespeare: Investigate the Bard's Influence on Today's World, readers discover links between the books, movies, and music they listen to today and the words that were written and acted out more than 400 years ago. Readers deconstruct Shakespearean themes, imagery, language, and meaning by finding familiar ground on which to gain literary insight. Through hands-on projects such as coding a video game based on one of Shakespeare's plays to rewriting a scene in the text language of emoji, readers find compelling avenues into the dramatic, sometimes intimidating language, leaving them well-equipped to tackle any major text in the academic years to come.

Professor Peter Saccio, an award-winning Ivy League Professor of Shakespeare studies, is a guide for this marvelous exploration of fifteen of Shakespeare's greatest plays. Learn how the most abundant poet and dramatist have been moving, delighting, and enlightening readers and audiences for 400 years, with no end in sight.

The classic Shakespearean romantic tragedy is updated by director Baz Luhrmann to a post-modern Verona Beach where swords are merely a brand of gun and bored youths are easily spurred toward violence. Longtime rivals in religion and business, the Montagues and the Capulets share a page from the Jets and Sharks of West Side Story when they form rival gangs

Macbeth is the chef in a 3-star restaurant; Beatrice and Benedick are rival co-anchors; Titania and Bottom carouse in a tawdry theme resort; and Petruchio sets out to tame the conservative Kate in these four adaptations of classic plays.

Proposing to divide his vast kingdom amongst his three daughters, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia, Lear devises a test for his offspring to convince him of their suitability and compassion for rule. Goneril and Regan's true colors emerge as they unleash a vast conspiracy of greed and cruelty within the once loyal dynasty.

Director Michael Hoffman has assembled a cast of leading stage and screen actors for this whimsical film version of one of Shakespeare's most popular comedies

A comedy about the greatest love story almost never told. The world's greatest ever playwright, William Shakespeare, is young, out of ideas and short of cash, but meets his ideal woman and is inspired to write one of his most famous plays

A smart, hip look at dating in the nineties and the extremes some guys will go to just to get the girl they want. A retelling of Shakespeare's play, The Taming of the Shrew.

A simple case of assumed identity snowballs into a romantic mix-up of epic proportions in director Andy Fickman's contemporary teen take on William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

Tale of love and jealousy set in Italy.

The crowning achievement of Orson Welles's extraordinary film career that was the culmination of the filmmaker's lifelong obsession with Shakespeare's ultimate rapscallion, Sir John Falstaff. Usually a comic supporting figure, Falstaff; the loyal, often soused friend of King Henry IV's wayward son Prince Hal, here becomes the focus: a robustly funny and ultimately tragic screen antihero.

An adaptation of Shakespeare's immortal tale of lust, murder, treachery, and the ruthless pursuit of power.

An adaptation of the 1957 musical, it explores forbidden love and the rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks, two teenage street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds. Directed by Steven Spielberg with original music by Leonard Bernstein

Cole Porter's classic musical comes back to the Broadway stage in an updated production featuring Kelli O'Hara, Will Chase, Stephanie Styles, and Corbin Bleu. This is a musical interpretation of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew

Something Rotten! is a musical comedy set in 1595 about brothers Nick and Nigel Bottom striving to compete in a theater industry that includes William Shakespeare.

Along with a new score by Hans Zimmer, the soundtrack to the 2019 version of The Lion King features new versions of the classic songs.