Rediscover the enchanting world of Maurice Maeterlinck's "The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts," a timeless classic of French drama. This meticulously prepared edition brings to life a beloved fairy tale, perfect for readers of all ages. As a cornerstone of children's literature, "The Blue Bird" explores themes of fantasy and symbolism within a compelling narrative structure. This play, a significant work in translated French drama, offers a captivating journey into a world of imagination and wonder. Its enduring appeal lies in its ability to resonate with audiences through its allegorical exploration of happiness and the human condition. A classic of European drama, "The Blue Bird" remains a cherished example of fairy tale plays, offering a rich and rewarding experience for anyone who appreciates classic storytelling. Ideal for those interested in adaptations and the enduring power of juvenile fiction. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

"The Threepenny Opera" is Bertolt Brecht's savage satire on the bourgeois Weimar Republic, and his most performed and studied play. Edited and translated by Ralph Manheim and John Willett, this student edition contains commentary, analysis and context, as well as the full text of the play. One of the major dramatists of the twentieth century, Bertolt Brecht's plays include "The Life of Galileo," "Mother Courage and her Children" and "The Caucasian Chalk Circle," He died in 1956.

“As far as the education of children is concerned,” states Natalia Ginzburg in this collection of her finest and best-known short essays, “I think they should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones. Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to money; not caution but courage and a contempt for danger; not shrewdness but frankness and a love of truth; not tact but a love of one’s neighbor and self-denial; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know.” Whether she writes of the loss of a friend, Cesare Pavese; or what is inexpugnable of World War II; or the Abruzzi, where she and her first husband lived in forced residence under Fascist rule; or the importance of silence in our society; or her vocation as a writer; or even a pair of worn-out shoes, Ginzburg brings to her reflections the wisdom of a survivor and the spare, wry, and poetically resonant style her readers have come to recognize. “A glowing light of modern Italian literature . . . Ginzburg’s magic is the utter simplicity of her prose, suddenly illuminated by one word that makes a lightning streak of a plain phrase. . . . As direct and clean as if it were carved in stone, it yet speaks thoughts of the heart.” — The New York Times Book Review

"Here are all the poems, two hundred and seventy-two of them, gathered in one book from four little volumes. In addition are twenty selected Farjeon poems never before published in this country" --Dust jacket.

In POT BOUILLE, the well-known French novelist Émile Zola and dramatist William Busnach combine their talents to unmask the hypocrisy that hides behind the façade of a respectable and fashionable Parisian apartment house. The Josserands are struggling to make ends meet, and at the same time to marry off their two daughters to prosperous businessmen. At the heart of this broken family is a weak husband and domineering, spendthrift wife, who between them create two willful children who are doomed to unhappy lives. The sly and adulterous Berthe seduces a shop owner into marriage, and Hortense eventually runs off with the man she loves--knowing he'll never marry her. The result is an unflattering portrayal of a corrupt, immoral society at the heart of French life in the late nineteenth century. Based on one of the great novels of modern literature!

Donald Freed's stage version of HAMLET (IN REHEARSAL) unearths a buried play within the play within the play in which a guilt-imprisoned, state-imprisoned, cosmically-imprisoned Hamlet lunges for and ultimately grasps the quietus of freedom. It is an explosively original, marvelously creative feat of Nabokovian intellectual acrobatics. Wonderful! Leon Katz, Leon Katz' Edition of the Notebooks of Gertrude Stein, Emeritus Professor, Yale University If Shakespeare had reawakened in the oppressed theater of the 21st century, read Beckett, watched C N N and had a stiff drink, this is the play he would have written. Adam Leipzig, producer & dramaturg Donald Freed has brought us a completely new concept of Hamlet and a brilliant one. Setting up a rehearsal play to take its place with Buckingham and Michael Frayn, he engineers a high level debate/conflict, funny and active enough to hold any audience tight. The central impression is of a director beset like Hamlet, and a Hamlet with a great deal of the director. They share a predicament, fight it out and the audience wins. Edward Pearce, Machiavelli's Children, The Great Man, The Guardian No actor with a pulse could read this play without wanting to get up and do it. Freed takes us into dark corridors between the lines of Shakespeare's play, creating a brilliant met-drama full of theatrical joy, startling epiphany and crackling-good language. Unique as can be. Ron Marasco, PhD, author of Notes to an Actor Donald Freed's HAMLET (IN REHEARSAL) is a revelation that rings so true, you will wonder why you never thought of it. Freed has trumped his own genius. Amazing! Lorinne Vozoff, Artistic Director, Theatre Group Studio

The first landings in the Atlantic World generated striking and terrifying impressions of unknown peoples who were entirely foreign to anything in European explorers experience. From the first recorded encounters with the native inhabitants of the Canary Islands in 1341 to Columbus's explorations in 1492 and Cabral's discovery of Brazil in 1500, western Europeans struggled to make sense of the existence of the peoples they met. Were they Adam's children, of a common lineage with the peoples of the Old World, or were they a separate creation, the monstrous races of medieval legend? Should they govern themselves? Did they have the right to be free? Did they know God? Could they know God? Emphasizing contact between peoples rather than the discovery of lands, and using archaeological findings as well as eyewitness accounts, David Abulafia explores the social lives of the New World inhabitants, the motivations and tensions of the first transactions with Europeans, and the swift transmutation of wonder to vicious exploitation. Lucid, readable, and scrupulously researched, this is a work of humane engagement with a period in which a tragically violent standard was set for European conquest across the world.

THE STORY: Take Charlene, a suburban mother who writes erotic screenplays for women in order to support her children; add Clyde, her funny, dangerously obsessive and estranged husband; toss in hormonally overcharged teenagers; and layer it all with

"You could do insane twenty-hour shifts in theatre. You could be mother of ten children. You could be toughest whore on the block. You contain all possibilities. You are the ultimate cliche of a young woman's incredible potential." "Promiscuous, pitiless and bored, six sexually entangled medical students restlessly wander in and out of a boarding house, cramming, drinking, taunting, spying. Freder sets about savagely experimenting with the young, pretty maid with half an eye on his former lover Desiree, a wild, disillusioned aristocrat. Petrell abandons Marie for the ruthless underdog Irene. Marie doesn't waste any time weeping - Desiree wants her." "Bourgeois existence or suicide. There are no other choices." "Vienna, 1923. A discontented post-war generation diagnose youth to be their sickness and do their best to destroy it." "Ferdinand Bruckner's Pains of Youth, in a version by Martin Crimp, premiered at the National Theatre, London, in November 2009." --Book Jacket.

“No scars at all. Which, when you think about it, is maybe not such a good sign” Catherine is fifteen years old, and was discovered in a state of almost total neglect. No one is even sure if she's ever left the room she was found in. She can't walk and can't speak. Her recovery seems impossible. But children can be shockingly resilient, especially with inspired medical care. Sponsored by a fundraising drive led by a tabloid newspaper, her only surviving relative has been able to get Catherine the best private medical care that money can buy. She responds well to the experimental treatment. But she seems to be getting more violent, and remains stubbornly resistant to language. Or is she? Soon, Catherine's doctors and great-aunt begin to discover what it is, exactly, that they've uncovered... Inspired by true events, Stone Face is Eve Leigh’s second full-length play at the Finborough Theatre.