This memorable historical drama concerns rebellion against King Henry led by Harry Percy ('Hotspur') and other nobles, complicated by the king's difficulties with his wayward son, Prince Hal. It features a superb blend of courtly intrigue, battlefield action, and low comedy featuring Sir John Falstaff, all expressed in fine blank verse and stirring prose.

Cynthia Nixon delivers a triumphant performance as Emily Dickinson as she personifies the wit, intellectual independence and pathos of the poet whose genius only came to be recognized after her death. Acclaimed British director Terence Davies (*House of Mirth, The Deep Blue Sea*) exquisitely evokes Dickinson’s deep attachment to her close knit family along with the manners, mores and spiritual convictions of her time that she struggled with and...

Richard III belongs to Shakespeare's folio of King Richard plays, and is the longest of his plays after Hamlet. It is classified variously as a tragedy and a history, showing the reign of Richard III in an unflattering light. The play's length springs in part from its reference to the other Richard plays, with which Shakespeare assumed his audience would be familiar. These references and characters are often edited out to create an abridged

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Tom Cruise stars as the leader of a group of German officers who hatched a plot to assassinate Hitler. The operation was code-named VALKYRIE, for the emergency plan that was meant to be used in case of a revolt against the Nazi government. This plan had been modified by the conspirators to ensure their success, but for various reasons the plot failed when finally carried out on 20 July 1944. The conspirators were shot after a kangaroo trial or sentenced...

After marrying a successful Parisian writer known commonly as “Willy” (Dominic West), Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (Keira Knightley) is transplanted from her childhood home in rural France to the intellectual and artistic splendor of Paris. Soon after, Willy convinces Colette to ghostwrite for him. She pens a semi-autobiographical novel about a witty and brazen country girl named Claudine, sparking a bestseller and a cultural sensation. After its...

Tale about the Puritan witch trials in the late 1600's Salem (Massachusetts), and how this historical play's lessons apply to contemporary society.

The real-life story of Mary Shelley, and the creation of her immortal monster, is nearly as fantastical as her fiction. Raised by a renowned philosopher father in eighteenth-century London, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin is a teenage dreamer determined to make her mark on the world, when she meets the dashing and brilliant poet Percy Shelley. So begins a torrid, bohemian love affair marked by both passion and personal tragedy that will transform Mary...

Daisy Fuller Williams is on her deathbed in a New Orleans hospital the day that Hurricane Katrina hits. At her side is her adult daughter, Caroline. Daisy asks Caroline to read to her aloud from the diary of Daisy's lifelong friend, Benjamin Button. Benjamin's diary recounts his entire extraordinary life. The unusual aspect of his life is that he is ages backwards, being born an old man. He is diagnosed with several aged diseases at birth and thus...

The acclaimed Pelican Shakespeare series, now in a dazzling new series design. The Pelican Shakespeare series features authoritative and meticulously researched texts paired with scholarship by renowned Shakespeareans. Each book includes an essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare's time, an introduction to the individual play, and a detailed note on the text used. Updated by general editors Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller, these easy-to-read...

Legendary director Martin Scorsese’s SILENCE tells the story of two Christian missionaries (Adam Driver and Oscar® nominee Andrew Garfield) who travel to Japan in search of their missing mentor (Academy Award® nominee Liam Neeson) at a time when Christianity was outlawed. When they are captured and imprisoned, both men are plunged into an odyssey that will test their faith, challenge their sanity and, perhaps, risk their very lives.