Drama Editions

  • The Merchant of Venice

    The Merchant of Venice

    The Merchant of Venice is best known for its complex and ambiguous portrait of the Jewish moneylender Shylock—and of European anti-Semitism. Fascinating in its engagement…

  • The Winter's Tale

    The Winter’s Tale

    Neither comedy nor tragedy, The Winter’s Tale contains elements of each genre, and defies easy classification. It experiments, like many of Shakespeare’s late plays, with…

  • Twelfth Night - ISE - Ed. Carnegie & Houlahan

    Twelfth Night – ISE – Ed. Carnegie & Houlahan

    Twelfth Night has seldom been off the stage since Shakespeare’s day. It has been performed for its romantic high comedy and its boisterous low comedy;…

  • The Octoroon

    The Octoroon

    Regarded by Bernard Shaw as a master of the theatre, Dion Boucicault was arguably the most important figure in drama in North America and in…

  • Henry V

    Henry V

    Upon opening their expensive new book in 1623, buyers of the folio collection of William Shakespeare’s plays were promised The Life of Henry the Fift.…

  • Tamburlaine the Great

    Tamburlaine the Great

    Tamburlaine the Great, Part One and Part Two are the first plays that Christopher Marlowe wrote for London’s then new freestanding, open-air public playhouses. They…

  • Henry IV - Part One

    Henry IV – Part One

    Henry IV, Part One has been one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays since it was first produced, and was reprinted several times during the playwright’s…

  • Doctor Faustus: The B Text

    Doctor Faustus: The B Text

    Doctor Faustus is one of early modern English drama’s most fascinating characters, and Doctor Faustus one of its most problematic plays. Selling his soul to…

  • Lady Audley's Secret - A Drama in Two Acts

    Lady Audley’s Secret – A Drama in Two Acts

    Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s shocking and suspenseful novel Lady Audley’s Secret was one of the most popular examples of the “sensation fiction” craze of the 1860s.…

  • The Tragedy of Tragedies

    The Tragedy of Tragedies

    Best known today for the novels Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, Henry Fielding was just as renowned in his own time as a prolific and…

  • Julius Caesar

    Julius Caesar

    Julius Caesar is a key link between Shakespeare’s histories and his tragedies. Unlike the Caesar drawn by Plutarch in a source text, Shakespeare’s Caesar is…

  • The Rivals and Polly Honeycombe

    The Rivals and Polly Honeycombe

    The Rivals and Polly Honeycombe revolve around young women who wish the world would conform to novelistic convention. Unlike most eighteenth-century heroines keen on novel…

  • As You Like It

    As You Like It

    Both a witty satire of literary cliché and a tender meditation on the varieties of love, As You Like It continues to be one of…

  • The Jew of Malta

    The Jew of Malta

    First performed by Shakespeare’s rivals in the 1590s, Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta was a trend-setting, innovative play whose black comedy and final tragic…

  • Peter Pan

    Peter Pan

    For twenty-six years after his first mention of the character, J.M. Barrie worked on the story of Peter Pan as he appeared through different incarnations:…

  • Twelfth Night - Ed. Swain

    Twelfth Night – Ed. Swain

    This volume includes the text of Twelfth Night as prepared and annotated by David Swain for The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, and is accompanied…

  • Edward the Second

    Edward the Second

    Depicting with shocking openness the sexual and political violence of its central characters’ fates, Edward the Second broke new dramatic ground in English theatre. The…

  • King Lear

    King Lear

    The text of the play included here, prepared by Craig Walker for The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, has been acclaimed for its outstanding introductory…

  • The Importance of Being Earnest

    The Importance of Being Earnest

    The Importance of Being Earnest marks a central moment in late-Victorian literature, not only for its wit but also for its role in the shift…

  • The Basset Table

    The Basset Table

    The Basset Table follows the fortunes of Lady Reveller, who runs a table where her friends play the card game basset, and her struggle to…

  • The Second Mrs Tanqueray

    The Second Mrs Tanqueray

    The Second Mrs. Tanqueray was the theatrical sensation of the London stage in 1893. It established Pinero as the leading English dramatist of serious social…

  • Doctor Faustus - Second Edition

    Doctor Faustus – Second Edition

    Doctor Faustus is a classic; its imaginative boldness and vertiginous ironies have fascinated readers and playgoers alike. But the fact that this play exists in…

  • Mrs Warren's Profession

    Mrs Warren’s Profession

    One of Bernard Shaw’s early plays of social protest, Mrs Warren’s Profession places the protagonist’s decision to become a prostitute in the context of the…

  • The Wonder

    The Wonder

    Susanna Centlivre’s play The Wonder (1714) was one of the most popular works on the eighteenth-century English stage. Set in Lisbon, the plot interweaves two…