Captain Cook

The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon

The English Utilitarians Volume II

History of Norway

The Ottoman Empire

Arabian Society in the Middle Ages

Comentarios reales de los Incas

　　《哈姆雷特》由英国剧作家威廉•莎士比亚创作，是莎士比亚所有戏剧中篇幅非常长、非常负盛名的剧本。戏剧讲述了叔叔克劳狄斯谋害了哈姆雷特的父亲，篡取了王位，并娶了国王的遗孀乔特鲁德，哈姆雷特王子因此为父王向叔叔复仇的故事。《哈姆雷特》同《麦克白》《李尔王》《奥赛罗》被公认为莎士比亚“四大悲剧”。

　　《仲夏夜之梦》是威廉•莎士比亚创作的一部富有浪漫色彩的喜剧作品。故事发生在古希腊的雅典，年轻的赫米娅与拉山德相爱，可是赫米娅的父亲却希望她嫁给狄米特律斯，为此赫米娅与拉山德逃到城外的一片森林里。此时，为了给雅典公爵提修斯和美丽的希波吕妲的盛大婚礼助兴，一群演员也在森株里排练一出喜剧。仙王还无意中得知海伦娜爱着狄米特律斯，就让浦克将一些花汁滴在狄米特律斯的眼里。这种花汁，拿来滴在他的眼睛里，那么他醒来就会狂热地爱上第1眼看到的人或动物。结果，拉山德醒来看到的是海伦娜，便不停地向她求爱，而把赫米娅忘掉了。仙王发现后。赶忙把花汁滴正在熟睡的狄米特律斯的眼中。狄米特律斯醒来，看到正被拉山德追赶的海伦娜，于是两人争先恐后地向海伦娜求爱。看到这样的情景，海伦娜和赫米娅都很生气。与此同时，仙后也中了计，爱上了一个排戏的演员波顿。*后，仙王给所有人解除了魔法，大家如愿以偿都得到了属于自己的一份爱情。

　　《奥赛罗》是莎士比亚的四大悲剧之一。奥赛罗是威尼斯公国一员勇将。他与元老的女儿苔丝狄梦娜相爱。但由于他是黑人，婚事未被允许。两人只好私下成婚。奥赛罗手下有一个阴险的旗官伊阿古，一心想除掉奥赛罗。他先是向元老告密，不料却促成了两人的婚事。他又挑拨奥赛罗与苔丝狄梦娜的感情，说另一名副将凯西奥与苔丝狄梦娜关系不同寻常，并伪造了所谓定情信物等。奥赛罗信以为真，在愤怒中掐死了自己的妻子。当他得知真相后，悔恨之余拔剑自刎，倒在了苔丝狄梦娜身边。 伊阿古*后阴谋败露，也得到了应有的惩罚。

　　《第十二夜》由英国剧作家威廉•莎士比亚创作，以抒情的笔调、浪漫喜剧的形式，讴歌了人文主义对爱情和友谊的美好理想。戏剧讲述了塞巴斯蒂安和薇奥拉这一对孪生兄妹，在一次海上航行途中不幸遇难后各自侥幸脱险，流落到伊利里亚后发生的一番有趣的波折。*终，薇奥拉与奥西诺、奥丽维娅与西巴斯辛双双结成良缘。

Algernon Charles Swinburne was born on April 5th, 1837, in London, into a wealthy Northumbrian family. He was educated at Eton and at Balliol College, Oxford, but did not complete a degree. In 1860 Swinburne published two verse dramas but achieved his first literary success in 1865 with Atalanta in Calydon, written in the form of classical Greek tragedy. The following year "e;Poems and Ballads"e; brought him instant notoriety. He was now identified with "e;indecent"e; themes and the precept of art for art's sake. Although he produced much after this success in general his popularity and critical reputation declined. The most important qualities of Swinburne's work are an intense lyricism, his intricately extended and evocative imagery, metrical virtuosity, rich use of assonance and alliteration, and bold, complex rhythms. Swinburne's physical appearance was small, frail, and plagued by several other oddities of physique and temperament. Throughout the 1860s and 1870s he drank excessively and was prone to accidents that often left him bruised, bloody, or unconscious. Until his forties he suffered intermittent physical collapses that necessitated removal to his parents' home while he recovered. Throughout his career Swinburne also published literary criticism of great worth. His deep knowledge of world literatures contributed to a critical style rich in quotation, allusion, and comparison. He is particularly noted for discerning studies of Elizabethan dramatists and of many English and French poets and novelists. As well he was a noted essayist and wrote two novels. In 1879, Swinburne's friend and literary agent, Theodore Watts-Dunton, intervened during a time when Swinburne was dangerously ill. Watts-Dunton isolated Swinburne at a suburban home in Putney and gradually weaned him from alcohol, former companions and many other habits as well. Much of his poetry in this period may be inferior but some individual poems are exceptional; "e;By the North Sea,"e; "e;Evening on the Broads,"e; "e;A Nympholept,"e; "e;The Lake of Gaube,"e; and "e;Neap-Tide."e; Swinburne lived another thirty years with Watts-Dunton. He denied Swinburne's friends access to him, controlled the poet's money, and restricted his activities. It is often quoted that 'he saved the man but killed the poet'. Algernon Charles Swinburne died on April 10th, 1909 at the age of seventy-two.

John Galsworthy was born at Kingston Upon Thames in Surrey, England, on August 14th 1867 to a wealthy and well established family. His schooling was at Harrow and New College, Oxford before training as a barrister and being called to the bar in 1890. However, Law was not attractive to him and he travelled abroad becoming great friends with the novelist Joseph Conrad, then a first mate on a sailing ship. Galsworthy first published in 1897 with a collection of short stories entitled "e;The Four Winds"e;. For the next 7 years he published these and all works under his pen name John Sinjohn. It was only upon the death of his father and the publication of "e;The Island Pharisees"e; in 1904 that he published as John Galsworthy. His first play, The Silver Box in 1906 was a success and was followed by "e;The Man of Property"e; later that same year and was the first in the Forsyte trilogy. Whilst today he is far more well know as a Nobel Prize winning novelist then he was considered a playwright dealing with social issues and the class system. He is now far better known for his novels, particularly The Forsyte Saga, his trilogy about the eponymous family of the same name. These books, as with many of his other works, deal with social class, upper-middle class lives in particular. Although always sympathetic to his characters, he reveals their insular, snobbish, and somewhat greedy attitudes and suffocating moral codes. He is now viewed as one of the first from the Edwardian era to challenge some of the ideals of society depicted in the literature of Victorian England. He was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1929, after earlier turning down a knighthood, and awarded the Nobel Prize in 1932 though he was too ill to attend. John Galsworthy died from a brain tumour at his London home, Grove Lodge, Hampstead on January 31st 1933. In accordance with his will he was cremated at Woking with his ashes then being scattered over the South Downs from an aeroplane.

Thomas Dekker was a playwright, pamphleteer and poet who, perhaps, deserves greater recognition than he has so far gained. Despite the fact only perhaps twenty of his plays were published, and fewer still survive, he was far more prolific than that. Born around 1572 his peak years were the mid 1590's to the 1620's - seven of which he spent in a debtor's prison. His works span the late Elizabethan and Caroline eras and his numerous collaborations with Ford, Middleton, Webster and Jonson say much about his work. His pamphlets detail much of the life in these times, times of great change, of plague and of course that great capital city London a swirling mass of people, power, intrigue.

William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939) is best described as Ireland's national poet in addition to being one of the major twentieth-century literary figures of the English tongue. To many literary critics, Yeats represents the 'Romantic poet of modernism,' which is quite revealing about his extraordinary style that combines between the outward emphasis on the expression of emotions and the extensive use of symbolism, imagery and allusions. Yeats also wrote prose and drama and established himself as the spokesman of the Irish cause. His fame was greatly boosted mainly after he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923. His life was marked by his many love stories, by his great interest in oriental mysticism and occultism as well as by political engagement since he served as an Irish senator for two terms. Today, although William Butler Yeats's contribution to literary modernism and to Irish nationalism remains incontestable. Here we publish one of his very fine plays that show just why his works are held in such esteem.

Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM, was born in Kirriemuir, Angus the ninth of ten children on May 9th, 1860. From early formative experiences, Barrie knew that he wished to follow a career as an author. His family wished otherwise and sought to persuade him to choose a profession, such as the ministry. The compromise was that he would attend university to study literature at the University of Edinburgh. He graduated with an M.A. on April 21st, 1882. His first job was as a staff journalist for the Nottingham Journal. The London editor of the St. James's Gazette "e;liked that Scotch thing"e; in Barrie's short stories about his mother's early life. They also served as the basis for his first novels. Barrie though was increasingly drawn to working in the theatre. His first play, a biography of Richard Savage, was only performed once and critically panned. Undaunted he immediately followed this with Ibsen's Ghost in 1891, a parody of Ibsen's plays Hedda Gabler and Ghosts. Barrie's third play, Walker, London, in 1892 led to an introduction to his future wife, a young actress by the name of Mary Ansell. The two became friends, and she helped his family to care for him when he fell very ill in 1893 and 1894. Barrie proposed and they were married, in Kirriemuir, on July 9th, 1894. By some accounts the relationship was unconsummated and indeed the couple had no children. The story of Peter Pan had begun to formulate when Barrie became acquainted with the Llewelyn Davis family in 1897, meeting George, Jack and baby Peter with their nanny in London's Kensington Gardens. In 1901 and 1902, Barrie had back-to-back theatre successes with Quality Street and The Admirable Crichton. The character of "e;Peter Pan"e; first appeared in The Little White Bird in 1902. This most famous and enduring of his works; Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up had its first stage performance on December 27th, 1904. Peter Pan would overshadow everything written during his career. He continued to write for the rest of his life contributing many other fine and important works. Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM, died of pneumonia on June 19th,1937 and was buried at Kirriemuir next to his parents and two of his siblings.

George Peele was born in July 1556 and baptised on the 25th at St James Garlickhythe in the City of London.A completely accurate record of his life is not possible but enough accounts and records exist to provide some background. His father, James was a clerk at Christ's Hospital, then a central London school, and authored two treatises on bookkeeping. Peele himself was initially educated at Christ's Hospital before entering Broadgates Hall, Oxford, in 1571. Three years after in 1574 he moved to Christ Church and took his B.A. there in 1577, and then his M.A. in 1579. Something appears to have so upset the Governors that they requested their clerk to 'discharge his house of his son, George Peele.' His mother, Anne, died on July 1st, 1580, and his father remarried to Christian Widers, a nurse at the hospital a few months later. Peele himself appears to have married, around this time, Ann Cooke, a heiress. He appears to have been rather reckless with her assets and they were soon gone.What he did appear to be hard at work on was his writing. His pastoral comedy 'The Arraignment of Paris' was presented by the Children of the Chapel Royal before Queen Elizabeth perhaps by 1581, and was printed anonymously in 1584. He was praised in 1585 for his translation from the Greek of one of the 'Iphigenias of Euripides'. That same year, 1585, he was employed to write the 'Device of the Pageant', and in 1591 he devised a pageant in honour of another Lord Mayor, Sir William Webbe. This was the 'Descensus Astraeae', in which Queen Elizabeth is honoured as Astraea.Much of the rest of his life is not certain and various facts, accounts and information is in dispute.He may have married for a second time but what happened to Ann is not recorded. He was also awarded the authorship of several plays many of which have now fallen away although modern research methods. However, knowing the collaboration between many of the dramatists of that time his hand has been detected and confirmed in some other plays.Perhaps the most famous of these is Shakespeare's 'Titus Andronicus'. It is now thought that Peele wrote the first act as well as the first two scenes in Act II, with Shakespeare responsible for the rest. The exact measure of each is difficult to ascertain any further. As a writer he is acknowledged to be one of the era's finest and ranked alongside Marlowe, Spenser, and Shakespeare.The other plays for which Peele can reliably be given authorship are 'Edward I', (printed 1593) 'The Old Wives' Tale', 'The Battle of Alcazar' (printed 1594) and David and Bethsabe (printed 1599). 'The Troublesome Reign of John, King of England', the immediate source for Shakespeare's King John, has been published under Peele's name.George Peel died, accounts say of the pox, and was buried on the 9th November 1596 in St James's Church, Clerkenwell.

Henry Fielding was born at Sharpham Park, near Glastonbury, in Somerset on April 22nd 1707. His early years were spent on his parents' farm in Dorset before being educated at Eton. An early romance ended disastrously and with it his removal to London and the beginnings of a glittering literary career; he published his first play, at age 21, in 1728. He was prolific, sometimes writing six plays a year, but he did like to poke fun at the authorities. His plays were thought to be the final straw for the authorities in their attempts to bring in a new law. In 1737 The Theatrical Licensing Act was passed. At a stroke political satire was almost impossible. Fielding was rendered mute. Any playwright who was viewed with suspicion by the Government now found an audience difficult to find and therefore Theatre owners now toed the Government line. Fielding was practical with the circumstances and ironically stopped writing to once again take up his career in the practice of law and became a barrister after studying at Middle Temple. By this time he had married Charlotte Craddock, his first wife, and they would go on to have five children. Charlotte died in 1744 but was immortalised as the heroine in both Tom Jones and Amelia. Fielding was put out by the success of Samuel Richardson's Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded. His reaction was to spur him into writing a novel. In 1741 his first novel was published; the successful Shamela, an anonymous parody of Richardson's novel. Undoubtedly the masterpiece of Fielding's career was the novel Tom Jones, published in 1749. It is a wonderfully and carefully constructed picaresque novel following the convoluted and hilarious tale of how a foundling came into a fortune. Fielding was a consistent anti-Jacobite and a keen supporter of the Church of England. This led to him now being richly rewarded with the position of London's Chief Magistrate. Fielding continued to write and his career both literary and professional continued to climb. In 1749 he joined with his younger half-brother John, to help found what was the nascent forerunner to a London police force, the Bow Street Runners. Fielding's ardent commitment to the cause of justice in the 1750s unfortunately coincided with a rapid deterioration in his health. Such was his decline that in the summer of 1754 he travelled, with Mary and his daughter, to Portugal in search of a cure. Gout, asthma, dropsy and other afflictions forced him to use crutches. His health continued to fail alarmingly. Henry Fielding died in Lisbon two months later on October 8th, 1754.

The Professor is Charlotte Bronte's first novel, even though it was only published posthumously. The novel's protagonist and first-person narrator is the orphan William Crimsworth, a young educated man who rejects the career of a clergyman proposed by his adoptive uncle. He first decides to work as a clerk for his wealthy brother who owns a mill in the north of the country. However, his brother's jealousy of his superior education and intelligence eventually pushes him to quit the job and travel to Brussels where he is hired as a professor of English at a girls' school. In Brussels, he falls in love with a younger colleague, Frances Henri, yet he has to endure the wickedness of the Catholic headmistress, Mr. Reuter. Coveting their nascent love, the latter ends up dismissing Frances from her school and hiding her whereabouts from William. The professor leaves the establishment and luckily comes across her beloved in a graveyard. Thanks to a new job with a very high wage, the couple are eventually allowed to open their own school, marry and have a child. The narrative closes as they succeed in making a little fortune and decide to settle in the English countryside.

The partnership between William Schwenck Gilbert and Arthur Seymour Sullivan and their canon of Savoy Operas is rightly lauded by all lovers of comic opera the world over. Gilbert's sharp, funny words and Sullivan's deliciously lively and hummable tunes create a world that is distinctly British in view but has the world as its audience. Both men were exceptionally talented and gifted in their own right and wrote much, often with other partners, that still stands the test of time. However, together as a team they created Light or Comic Operas of a standard that have had no rivals equal to their standard, before or since. That's quite an achievement. To be recognised by the critics is one thing but their commercial success was incredible. The profits were astronomical, allowing for the building of their own purpose built theatre - The Savoy Theatre. Beginning with the first of their fourteen collaborations, Thespis in 1871 and travelling through many classics including The Sorcerer (1877), H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), The Pirates of Penzance (1879), The Mikado (1885), The Gondoliers (1889) to their finale in 1896 with The Grand Duke, Gilbert & Sullivan created a legacy that is constantly revived and admired in theatres and other media to this very day.

William Congreve was born on January 24th, 1670 in Bardsey, West Yorkshire. Congreve's childhood was spent in Ireland (his father, a Lieutenant in the British Army had received a posting there). He was educated at Kilkenny College and then Trinity College in Dublin. After graduating he returned to London to study law at Middle Temple. However his interest in studying law soon lessened as the attraction of literature, drama, and the fashionable life began to exert its pull. This first play, The Old Bachelor, was written, to amuse himself during convalescence, and was produced at the Drury Lane Theatre in 1693. It was an enormous success. Although his playwrighting career was successful it was also very brief. Five plays authored from 1693 to 1700 would prove the entirety of his output. Although no further plays were to flow from his pen Congreve did write librettos for two operas and to begin translating the works of Moliere as well as Homer, Ovid and Horace and to write poetry. He also took an interest in politics and obtained various minor political posts, including being named Secretary of the Island of Jamaica by George I in 1714. Congreve suffered a carriage accident in late September 1728, from which he never recovered (having probably received an internal injury); William Congreve died in London on January 19th, 1729, and was buried in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.