Ancient, Classical & Medieval Books

George Chapman was probably born in the year after Elizabeth's accession. Anthony Wood gives 1557 as the date, but the inscription on his portrait, prefixed to the edition of The Whole Works of Homer in 1616, points to 1559. He was a native of Hitchin in Hertfordshire, as we learn from an allusion in his poem Euthymiæ Raptus or The Teares of Peace, and from W. Browne's reference to him in... more...

PALACE OF THE KREMLIN (FEBRUARY 20th, A.D. 1598) PRINCE SHUISKY and VOROTINSKY VOROTINSKY. To keep the city's peace, that is the taskEntrusted to us twain, but you forsoothHave little need to watch; Moscow is empty;The people to the Monastery have flockedAfter the patriarch. What thinkest thou?How will this trouble end? SHUISKY. How will it end?That is not hard to tell. A little moreThe multitude... more...

SCENE ICromwell'shouse at Ely, about the year 1639. An early summer evening. The window of the room opens on to a smooth lawn, used for bowling, and a garden full of flowers.Oliver'swife,Elizabeth Cromwell, is sitting at the table, sewing. In a chair by the open windowMrs. Cromwell, his mother, is reading. She is eighty years of age.Mrs. Cromwell:Oliver troubles me, persuading everywhere.... more...

ACT I An October night on the Syrian border of Egypt towards the end of the XXXIII Dynasty, in the year 706 by Roman computation, afterwards reckoned by Christian computation as 48 B.C. A great radiance of silver fire, the dawn of a moonlit night, is rising in the east. The stars and the cloudless sky are our own contemporaries, nineteen and a half centuries younger than we know them; but you would not... more...

INTRODUCTION This is the first of the series of three Comedies—'The Acharnians,' 'Peace' and 'Lysistrata'—produced at intervals of years, the sixth, tenth and twenty-first of the Peloponnesian War, and impressing on the Athenian people the miseries and disasters due to it and to the scoundrels who by their selfish and reckless policy had provoked it, the consequent... more...

The Spectacle here presented in the likeness of a Drama is concerned with the Great Historical Calamity, or Clash of Peoples, artificially brought about some hundred years ago. The choice of such a subject was mainly due to three accidents of locality. It chanced that the writer was familiar with a part of England that lay within hail of the watering-place in which King George the Third had his... more...

THE TROJAN WOMEN In his clear preface, Gilbert Murray says with truth that The Trojan Women, valued by the usage of the stage, is not a perfect play. "It is only the crying of one of the great wrongs of the world wrought into music." Yet it is one of the greater dramas of the elder world. In one situation, with little movement, with few figures, it flashes out a great dramatic lesson, the... more...

EDWARD THE SECOND By Christopher Marlowe DRAMATIS PERSONAE KING EDWARD THE SECOND.PRINCE EDWARD, his son, afterwards KING EDWARD THE THIRD.KENT, brother to KING EDWARD THE SECOND.GAVESTON.ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.BISHOP OF COVENTRY.BISHOP OF WINCHESTER.WARWICK.LANCASTER.PEMBROKE.ARUNDER.LEICESTER.BERKELEY.MORTIMER the elder. MORTIMER the younger, his nephew. SPENSER the elder. SPENSER the younger, his... more...

ALCESTIS CHARACTERS OF THE PLAY ADMÊTUS, King of Pherae in Thessaly.ALCESTIS, daughter of Pelias, his wife.PHERÊS, his father, formerly King but now in retirement.TWO CHILDREN, his son and daughter.A MANSERVANT in his house.A HANDMAID. The Hero HERACLES.The God APOLLO.THANÁTOS or DEATH.CHORUS, consisting of Elders of Pherae. "The play was first performed when Glaukînos was Archon, in the 2nd... more...

ACT I. [Enter William the Conqueror; Marques Lubeck, with a picture;Mountney; Manville; Valingford; and Duke Dirot.] MARQUES.What means fair Britain's mighty ConquerorSo suddenly to cast away his staff,And all in passion to forsake the tylt? D. DIROT.My Lord, this triumph we solemnise hereIs of mere love to your increasing joys,Only expecting cheerful looks for all;What sudden pangs than moves... more...