Other books that might interest you

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  Great Speeches & Soliloquies of...

  William Shakespeare

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  To be or not to be… Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow… O for a Muse of Fire… The quality of mercy is not strained… This sceptred isle… Once more unto the breach dear friends… Many of Shakespeare’s greatest and best-loved speeches are brought together in this superb collection, performed by outstanding artists who bring to vivid life words which are an integral part of our language, our culture and our everyday lives.

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  Hedda Tesman (NHB Modern Plays)

  Henrik Ibsen, Cordelia Lynn

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  A doting husband. A troubled writer. A loaded gun. It's 2019 and Hedda Tesman returns to a life she can't seem to escape from.
  After thirty years of playing wife, Hedda is bitter and bored. When her estranged daughter, Thea, suddenly reappears asking for help, the present begins to echo the past and Hedda embarks on a path of destruction.
  Hedda Tesman, by Cordelia Lynn, breathes new life into Henrik Ibsen's classic, asking what we inherit, what we endure and how we carry our history. A vital exploration of motherhood, power and sabotage, the play was produced by Headlong and premiered at Chichester Festival Theatre in 2019, before transferring to The Lowry, Salford.

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  Troilus and Criseyde

  Geoffrey Chaucer

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  Troilus and Criseyde is a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer which re-tells in Middle English the tragic story of the lovers Troilus and Criseyde set against a backdrop of war in the Siege of Troy. It was composed using rime royale and probably completed during the mid 1380s. Many Chaucer scholars regard it as the poet's finest work. As a finished long poem it is certainly more self-contained than the better known but ultimately uncompleted Canterbury Tales. Criseyde, the daughter of the seer Calchas, lives alone in Troy after her father abandons the Trojans to help the Greeks. Eventually she catches the eye of Troilus, a man who had previously scoffed at love, and becomes the object of his overwhelming desire. With the help of Criseyde’s uncle Pandarus he wins her love but soon loses it when the Greeks and the Trojans conduct an exchange of prisoners. Calchas, who knows of Troy’s imminent destruction, persuades the Greeks to exchange Antenor for his daughter and thus saves her from the doomed city. Criseyde promises Troilus that she’ll return to him after ten days but once she’s back in the care of her father she realizes the impossibility of her promise. Resigned to her fate, Criseyde yields to the flirtations of Diomedes, and her love for Troilus fades. When Deiphobus wins the armor of Diomedes, Troilus discovers a brooch he gave Criseyde upon her departure pinned to it. Heartbroken, he tries to find Diomedes and take his revenge during battle but after slaying many is in his turn killed by Achilles. As his spirit goes to heaven he reflects on the absurdity of all life itself. (Summary by Wikipedia)

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  Fidget

  Kenneth Goldsmith

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  Fidget is writer Kenneth Goldsmith's transcription of every movement made by his body during 13 hours on Bloomsday (June 16) 1997. It is a hypnotic work, strangely compelling and disorienting at the same time; you'll never think about your body in the same way again.
   
  Originally commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art as a collaboration with vocalist Theo Bleckmann, Fidget attempts to reduce the body to a catalogue of mechanical movements by a strict act of observation. The stress of this rigorous exercise creates a condition of shifting reference points and multiple levels of observation that inevitably undermines the author's objective approach, and the trajectory of the work begins to change.
   
  The text of Fidget is followed by an afterword written by Marjorie Perloff, which both explains the circumstances of the project's creation (including the important role Jack Daniel's plays in the latter part of the text) and explores its results.

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  The Higher Pantheism

  Alfred Tennyson

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  LibriVox volunteers bring you 13 recordings of The Higher Pantheism by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. This was the Weekly Poetry project for September 18, 2011.Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular poets in the English language. ( Summary by Wikipedia )

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  [boxhead]

  Darren O'Donnell

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  Dr. Actions: What do you think it all means? Dr. Thinking: I think it means that our collaboration is destined for great heights and the basking glory of inter-planetary fame and fortune. Dr. Actions: But you said your dream was terrifying. Dr. Thinking: Well, I’ve always been afraid of success. Dr. Actions: Well, get over it, Blockbrain. Now that we’ve invented the echoless yell, nothing is going to getin our way. Lay it on me.
     
  Dr. Thoughtless Actions, a young geneticist, awakes one morning to find a cardboard box secured to his head. Unable to wrench it off, he attempts suicide, not only failing but also, unbeknownst to himself, cloning himself, creating Dr. Wishful Thinking. The two losers fall madly in love, fall in science and fail to make a baby.
     
  The cast consists of the two boxheads, who also play two disembodied narrators. The conversationbetween the four voices, an intricately woven semantic circus, traverses boxedness, love and the more ridiculous areas of metaphysical speculation. Through a series of rapid exchanges, verbal games and musical numbers, they discover that all their thoughts come from God, all their words come from the devil, and their desire for love is a habit acquired from the cinema. Sound familiar? Don’t be so hard on yourself.
     
  ‘Audacious, thought-provoking and frequently hilarious …a tightly wound complex of existential postulations, metaphysical ruminations and poop jokes.’
     
  – Eye Weekly

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