Series: World Classics

This fifth volume in the Collected Plays series brings together two of Brecht's plays, The Life of Galileo and Mother Courage and her Children. Galileo examines the conflict between free enquiry and official ideology, through the story of the great astronomer and his persecution by the Inquisition. It contains one of Brecht's most human and complex central characters. The eponymous...

"There was no writer like him... prophetic assurance mixed with surrealistic humour and hard-edged social satire: a unique combination" (Arthur Miller) Capek Four Plays brings together fresh new translations of four of his most popular plays, more than ever relevant today. In R. U. R., the Robot - an idea Čapek was the first to invent - gradually takes over...

Meyer's translations of Ibsen are a major fact in one's general sense of post-war drama. Their vital pace, their unforced insistence on the poetic centre of Ibsen's genius, have beaten academic versions from the field (George Steiner). The plays shine freshly from the pages ... This will be our definitive Ibsen. (JC Trewin) Ibsen Plays: 4 contains Ibsen's first great...

This volume includes The Seagull, a play about the battle for power between a mother and her son, which ends in tragedy. Uncle Vanya tells of two obsessive love affairs that lead nowhere, and a flirtation that brings disaster. In Three Sisters, three siblings wrestle with their futures, and The Cherry Orchard portrays how the old must inevitably give way...

"I suppose I'm a believer in Original Sin. People are profoundly bad but irresistibly funny," Joe Orton. This volume contains everything that Orton wrote for the theatre, radio, and television from his first play in 1964, The Ruffian on the Stair, up to his violent death in 1967 at the age of 34. It includes his major successes: Entertaining Mr...