Cranston Public Library

The great Elizabethan tragedy based on the classic German legend of worldly ambition, black magic, and surrender to the devil. Christopher Marlowe's dramatic interpretation of the Faust legend remains one of the most famous plays of the English Renaissance. It tells the tragic tale of Dr. John Faustus, a brilliant but dissatisfied scholar who conjures the demon Mephistopheles in pursuit of limitless knowledge and power. Through this satanic messenger,...

Three Sisters (1900) is a drama in four acts by Russian playwright and short story writer Anton Chekhov. It was first performed at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1901, directed by acclaimed actor Konstantin Stanislavski-who also played the role of Aleksandr Ignatyevich Vershinin, a philosophizing artillery officer in love with middle Prozorov sister Masha. Reviews were mixed at first, but as the play continued to run, Three Sisters became a popular success,...

This series presents students with a library of outstanding plays, many of which are otherwise unobtainable, or available only in out-of-date or unannotated editions. The texts are newly edited, with modernized spelling and punctuation where appropriate; and there are scholarly introductions and annotation. Oscar Wilde was already one of the best-known literary figures in Britain when he was persuaded to turn his extraordinary talents to the theatre....

"The three plays collected in this volume demonstrate Sheridan's unerring ability to create ingenious plots, witty repartee, farcical situations and flamboyant characters. And while he never overtly moralizes, Sheridan uses brilliant comedy to deflate hypocrisy and satirize the manners of his age. In The Rivals, Captain Absolute becomes his own rival for the hand of Lydia Languish - wooing her under another name, while her aunt, the verbally inept...

In the twentieth century, Russia has produced more notable drama than at any other time in its history; yet the results of this period of burgeoning creativity have been only sporadically available, and many plays have never been translated at all. In Eight Twentieth-Century Russian Plays, Timothy Langen and Justin Weir present the first collection of translated plays from this period. This volume introduces the classics of twentieth-century Russian...