Frank Carlson Library

Planning a school or amateur Shakespeare production? The best way to experience the plays is to perform them, but getting started can be a challenge: The complete plays are too long and complex, while scene selections or simplified language are too limited. "The 30-Minute Shakespeare" is a new series of abridgements that tell the "story" of each play from start to finish while keeping the beauty of Shakespeare's language intact. Specific stage directions...

Narrative of the Hawks-Ravenal family on the Mississippi, in "Cotton Blossom", their floating palace theater.

When Hermia's father promises her hand in marriage to a man she doesn't want, she runs away to the forest with her true love, Lysander. But their escape gets turned upside down by the fairy king Oberon and the mischievous Puck, whose magic turns love into hate and men into beasts!

Presents Mark Twain's authentic and unsuppressed voice, brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions, and speaking clearly from the grave as he intended.

Themes: Adapted Classics, Low Level Classics, William Shakespeare, Fiction, Tween, Teen, Young Adult, Hi-Lo, Hi-Lo Books, Hi-Lo Solutions, High-Low Books, Hi-Low Books, ELL, EL, ESL, Struggling Learner, Struggling Reader, Special Education, SPED, Newcomers, Reading, Learning, Education, Educational, Educational Books. Timeless Shakespeare-designed for the struggling reader and adapted to retain the integrity of the original play. These classic plays...

Unique features include an extensive overview of Shakespeare's life, world, and theater by the general editor of Signet Classic Shakespeare series, plus a special introduction to the play by the editor Sylvan Barnet, Tufts University. This book contains information on the source from which Shakespeare derived "Othello"--Selections from Giraldi Cinthio's "Hecatommithi". Special introduction by Alvin Kernan, Princeton University.

Utopia (1516) is a work of political satire by Thomas More. Published in Latin while More was serving as Privy Counsellor under King Henry VIII, the text is stylized as a true account of a new civilization discovered in the New World by traveler Raphael Hythlodaeus. While there have been varying interpretations of Utopia over the centuries, it is most consistently regarded as a work of political philosophy in the tradition of Plato's Republic that...

The Taming of the Shrew (1592) is a comedy by William Shakespeare. Written between 1590 and 1592, The Taming of the Shrew is one of Shakespeare's earliest works. Frequently critiqued by scholars for its demeaning portrayal of Katherina and for Petruchio's violence, the play has also been considered as an ironic treatment of the inequality experienced by women in marriage. The Taming of the Shrew has served as source material for countless film and...

First performed in 1882, "Ghosts" is the controversial and tragic play by the famed Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It is the story of Helen Alving, a wealthy widow who was unhappily married to her unfaithful husband. Helen has tried to shelter her son, Oswald, from the corrupting influence of his father's immoral behavior and has sent him away only to discover that he is suffering from syphilis inherited from his father. Oswald has also unfortunately...

A hybrid of Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience that brings poetry, philosophy and spirituality into an all-inclusive text that's both accessible and enlightening. These selections have an easy-to-follow format that allows readers to smoothly transition from one book to the next. Blake's writing consists of two parts: one focusing on "innocence" and the other on "experience." They each feature a group of poems that fit their respective themes....