Perhaps some day I'll disappear forever,' muses the master-builder Psymmachus in Cyprian Kamil Norwid's Cleopatra and Caesar, 'Becoming one with my work...' Today, exactly two hundred years from the poet's birth, it is difficult not to hear Norwid speaking through the lips of his character. The greatest poet of the second phase of Polish Romanticism, Norwid, like Gerard Manley Hopkins in England, created a new poetic idiom so ahead of his time, that...

The crypt of Wawel Cathedral in Kraków is the Polish nation's greatest pantheon. Here lie the earthly remains of its storied kings and queens, and two of its greatest poets, Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Słowacki. At the conclusion of his speech at Słowacki's reburial in 1927, Marshal Józef Piłsudski commanded the guard of honour: "In the name of the Republic, I direct you, gentlemen, to carry this sarcophagus into the royal crypt, for he who rests...

In brilliant rhymed couplets, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Richard Wilbur renders two of seventeenth-century French playwright Moliere's comic masterpieces into English, capturing not only the form and spirit of the language but also its substance. The Misanthrope is a searching comic study of falsity, shallowness, and self-righteousness through the character of Alceste, a man whose conscience and and sincerity are too rigorous for his time. In...

Because the poetry of Adam Mickiewicz is so closely identified with the history of the Polish nation, one often reads him as an institution, rather than a real person. In the Crimean and Erotic Sonnets of the national bard, we are presented with the fresh, real, and striking poetry of a living, breathing man of flesh and blood. Mickiewicz proved to be a master of Petrarchan form. His Erotic Sonnets chronicle the development of a love affair from its...

The death of Pedro Calderon de la Barca near the end of the 17th century marked the end of Spain's Golden Age of literary and artistic excellence. Pedro Calderon de la Barca immense popularity and mastery of Spanish drama has earned him notoriety as the national dramatist of Spain. Although he came from a family of lower nobility, his theater is often associated with the royal court, as he presented many plays in the palace of Philip IV. His best...

Thought to be Sophocles' earliest surviving play, Ajax is a study in archaic values. After the death of Achilles, Telamonian Ajax stands above the other Greeks as the greatest warrior, but the Greek chiefs award Achilles' armour to the wily Odysseus. Stung by this dishonour, Ajax, "our dread lord of rugged might, now lies stricken with a storm that darkens the soul," and the play moves to its gut-wrenching climax with all the fatalism of the best...

Une édition de référence du Malade Imaginaire de Molière, spécialement conçue pour la lecture sur les supports numériques. « Argan. Mais toujours faut-il demeurer d'accord que, sur cette matière, les médecins en savent plus que les autres. Béralde. Ils savent, mon frère, ce que je vous ai dit, qui ne guérit pas de grand'chose : et toute l'excellence de leur art consiste en un pompeux galimatias, en un spécieux babil, qui vous donne...

"Marion De Lorme" is a five-act play written by Victor Hugo in 1828 about a well-known French courtesan of the same name, who was famous for her relationships with important contemporary figures. Delorme's later life has seemingly been imbued with significant legend, having died in 1650 but being often claimed to have lived until as late as 1741 and to have had a litany of wonderful adventures around the world. "Marion De Lorme" is highly recommended...

This book contains Victor Hugo's 1869 play, "Esmeralda". It is based on Esméralda, a fictional character in Hugo's 1831 novel "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame". Hugo originally wrote "La Esmeralda" as an opera libretto and adaptation of "Notre Dame de Paris". However, there are notable differences between the two, the most obvious of which is the representation of the character Phoebus-in "La Esmeralda", he is noble and righteous, but in "Notre Dame...

Alongside his many major plays, Tom Stoppard has written several highly acclaimed translations and adaptations of works by other writers, which are collected together here for the first time, together with a new introduction by Stoppard. Five European Plays includes adaptations of plays by four major European dramatists-Johann Nestroy, Arthur Schnitzler, Ferenc Molnár, and Václav Havel-Stoppard transports us to settings as diverse as nineteenth-century...