FICTION

A beautiful deluxe gift edition of the beloved classic of girlhood with foiled covers, marbled endpapers, sprayed edges, beautiful paper and finished with a silk ribbon.

Love sonnets are for romantics, starry-eyed lovers and ardent hearts. And Shakespeare's sonnets are the best ever written. But this is why they are also for cynics, for star-crossed lovers and for those who know the anguish of unrequited love.

Dramatic and powerful in its scope, Othello explores the perils of suspicion and jealousy and the ensuing breakdown of relationships and disaster that can arise from such emotions. Othello, a revered soldier, secretly marries Desdemona, the daughter of a Venetian senator, but is led to believe that she has been unfaithful to him by his ensign, Iago, leading to tragic events.

Arguably the greatest love story ever told, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet continues to touch modern audiences with its passionate depiction of the tragic romance between two young lovers. With a bitter feud between their respective families, Romeo and Juliet’s love is troubled from the start, and through their relationship, Shakespeare shows the fine line between love, hatred, comedy and tragedy.

The Tempest is the most lyrical, profound and fascinating of Shakespeare's late comedies. Prospero, long exiled from Italy with his daughter Miranda, seeks to use his magical powers to defeat his former enemies. Eventually, having proved merciful, he divests himself of that magic, his ‘art’, and prepares to return to the mainland. The Tempest has often been regarded as Shakespeare's ‘farewell to the stage’ before his retirement.

First performed around 1600, this a gripping and exuberant drama of revenge, rich in contrasts and conflicts. Its violence alternates with introspection, its melancholy with humour, and its subtlety with spectacle. The Prince, Hamlet himself, is depicted as a complex, divided, introspective character. His reflections on death, morality and the very status of human beings make him ‘the first modern man’.

Epic and tragic in its scope, King Lear explores a king’s demise into madness and insanity when he is betrayed by two of his manipulative and scheming daughters. It is Cordelia, the third and only daughter who refuses to flatter her father to deceive, who is banished from the kingdom, leading to dramatic and tumultuous events.

One of Shakespeare's darkest and most violent tragedies, Macbeth's struggle between his own ambition and his loyalty to the King is dramatically compelling. As those he kills return to haunt him, Macbeth is plagued by the prophecy of three sinister witches and the power hungry desires of his wife.

Hamlet is not only one of Shakespeare's greatest plays, but also the most fascinatingly problematical tragedy in world literature. First performed around 1600, this a gripping and exuberant drama of revenge, rich in contrasts and conflicts. Its violence alternates with introspection, its melancholy with humour, and its subtlety with spectacle.
The Prince, Hamlet himself, is depicted as a complex, divided, introspective character. His reflections on death, morality and the very status of human beings make him ‘the first modern man’. Countless stage productions and numerous adaptations for the cinema and television have demonstrated the continuing cultural relevance of this vivid, enigmatic, profound and engrossing drama.

Romeo and Juliet is the world's most famous drama of tragic young love. Defying the feud which divides their families, Romeo and Juliet enjoy the fleeting rapture of courtship, marriage and sexual fulfilment; but a combination of old animosities and new coincidences brings them to suicidal deaths. This play offers a rich mixture of romantic lyricism, bawdy comedy, intimate harmony and sudden violence. Long successful in the theatre, it has also generated numerous operas, ballets and films; and these have helped to make Romeo and Juliet perennially topical.

Arm yourself with this volume from the Knickerbocker Classics series, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, including 16 comedies, 10 histories, 12 tragedies, and all the poems and sonnets of the world's most influential writer. This collection includes poems and plays that were not included in Shakespeare's First Folio of 1623 to make one complete, authentic collection. For Shakespeare and poetry fans worldwide, this stunning hardcover edition with its elegant cover is perfect for gift giving.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare contains essential reading like Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, King Lear, Othello, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and Henry V alongside many lesser-known gems for a complete Shakespearean education.

Universally admired and quoted, Shakespeare's Sonnets have love, beauty and the passing of time at their heart. Featuring some of the best-known and best-loved lines in the history of poetry ('Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?', 'Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds'), these evocative sonnets explore passion, the fleeting nature of beauty and the essence of true and everlasting love.
Enticing lovers and scholars alike, these 154 beautiful and sensual sonnets are as relevant and important today as when they were written 400 years ago.

King Lear has been widely acclaimed as Shakespeare's most powerful tragedy.
Elemental and passionate, it encompasses the horrific and the heart-rending. Love and hate, loyalty and treachery, cruelty and self-sacrifice: all these contend in a tempestuous drama which has become an enduring classic of the world's literature.
In the theatre and on screen King Lear continues to challenge and enthral.

Bring on the merriment whenever you open this collection of Shakespeare's entertaining comedies.
The comedies of William Shakespeare--including The Tempest, The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and As You Like It--have entertained readers and theatergoers for centuries. This elegant Word Cloud edition of William Shakespeare Comedies includes all fourteen of the Bard's comedies in a single volume so readers can revisit their favorite plays and passages with ease.

One of Shakespeare's most famous but also enigmatic plays, for many years the story of Prospero's exile from his native Milan, and life with his daughter Miranda on an unnamed island in the Mediterranean, was seen as an autobiographical dramatisation of Shakespeare's departure from the London stage. The Epilogue, spoken by Prospero, claims that "now my charms are all o'erthrown", appeared to reflect Shakespeare's own renunciation of his magical dramatic powers as he retired to Stratford. But The Tempest is far more than this, as recent commentators have pointed out. The dramatic action observes the classical unities of time, place and action, as Prospero uses his "rough magic" to lure his wicked usurping brother, Antonio, and King Alonso of Naples to his island retreat to torment them before engineering his return to Milan.

Love, sex and death are the components of Shakespeare's classic story of the love of two young people which reaches across the barriers of family and convention. It encompasses great love, high drama, low comedy and a tragic ending. Romeo and Juliet is a pure tragedy of youth told in verse that is both youthful and intense. The loveliness and the music of the poetry make believable the otherwise commonplace afflictions of blighted love.

The Merchant of Venice is one of Shakespeare's most popular comedies, but it remains deeply controversial. The text may well seem anti-Semitic; yet repeatedly, in performance, it has revealed a contrasting nature. Shylock, though vanquished in the law-court, often triumphs in the theatre. He is a character so intense that he can dominate the play, challenging abrasively its romantic and lyrical affirmations.

Undoubtedly the most famous of all of Shakespeare's plays, Hamlet remains one of the most enduring but also enigmatic pieces of western literature. The story of Hamlet, the young Prince of Denmark, his tortured relationship with his mother, and his quest to avenge his father's murder at the hand of his brother Claudius has fascinated writers and audiences ever since it was written around 1600.