When Julius Caesar arrives in Egypt and finds Cleopatra in hiding, he encourages her to return to the palace and embrace her role as queen. Shaw depicts an unlikely pair that bond over a common goal. As Roman forces invade Egypt, Julius Caesar stumbles across a young Cleopatra hiding amongst the statues. He initially conceals his identity, as the queen expresses concern over Caesar and his impending army. When he convinces her to return to the...

Seeing Things (1991), as Edward Hirsch wrote in The New York Times Book Review, "is a book of thresholds and crossings, of losses balanced by marvels, of casting and gathering and the hushed, contrary air between water and sky, earth and heaven." Along with translations from the Aeneid and the Inferno, this book offers several poems about Seamus Heaney's late father.

Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats is considered one of the most important figures in the second generation of English Romantic poets. Born on Halloween in 1795, John Keats lived a very short life, dying at the age of twenty-five from tuberculosis. In 1814 John Keats began an apprenticeship with Thomas Hammond, a surgeon and apothecary and by 1816 had achieved his apothecary's license, which allowed him to practice medicine....

George Bernard Shaw, one of Britain's most acclaimed playwrights, produced a large wealth of dramatic and comedic plays during his lifetime. In "Man and Superman and Three Other Plays," four of his most famous works are presented. In 1903's "Man and Superman," we find a play that on the surface is a mere comedy of manners but upon deeper examination delves into the philosophic themes outlined by Nietzsche's "Ubermensch," or more distinctly man's journey...

Ian Pople is a man of the world. He has travelled and taught in the UK, Greece, Sudan and Saudi Arabia. His poems explore England, the larger world, and how changing perspectives readjust the sense of England and of home. They deal with borders, crossings, closing boundaries. They are about transitions in space and time, the ways life and relationships change and adapt to illness, love, estrangement and loss. The traveler changes identities as he...

From the last twenty years, here, for the first time, is a body of poetry from the artist known as Calactus. From romantic poetry, to dreams translated into Surrealist writing, to everyday reflections, Calactus includes all of his pondering upon the bizarre to the wonderful in this collection. Lyrics from the extensive output of the band Calactus covering the genres of alternative rock, ambient, experimental and electronica; is covered here, pushing...

Great story, great characters.' Young Sam Taverner is desperate to fulfil the promise he made to his dying father to keep the family deckchair rental business going. Everyone told him he'd never make it, and he's beginning to think they were right. The beach is as empty as his cash box, and the future looks bleak. Then his sheltered life in Whistle Bay comes to a dramatic end when he meets Lindsay, a larger-than-life artist from London. When she...

The wedding day of Henry of Navarre, a Protestant from a noble family, and Margaret of Valois, the sister of the Catholic king, has arrived, though there are few aside from the bride and groom that are happy about it. Set during a time of political and social unrest in 16th century Paris, the Catholics and the Protestants, also known as Huguenots, hold grudges and extreme distrust against each other. When it becomes apparent that the mother of the...

The NHB Drama Classics series presents the world's greatest plays in affordable, highly readable editions for students, actors and theatregoers. The hallmarks of the series are accessible introductions (focussing on the play's theatrical and historical background, together with an author biography, key dates and suggestions for further reading) and the complete text, uncluttered with footnotes. The translations, by leading experts in the field, are...

Angels look down from on high. Watching carefully over those they are appointed to protect, they silently lead us through times of trial, shaping us into the people we are destined to be. Their words soothe, comfort, guide and cajole us. Elephants store the memories of a lifetime, wordlessly documenting all that has been, never forgetting the smallest detail or emotion. They are the great record-keepers, remembering everything exactly as it was....