The Duchess of Padua is a play by the world famous wit Oscar Wilde. A five-act melodramatic tragedy set in Padua and written in blank verse. It was written for the actress Mary Anderson in early 1883 while in Paris. Alas she turned it down and it was abandoned until a run on Broadway re-titled Guido Ferranti. It ran for three weeks. It is rarely seen but on account of the immense talents of its author we thought it deserved a wider audience. We hope that includes you.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky was born on 11th November 1821.He was introduced to literature very early. At age three, it was heroic sagas, fairy tales and legends. At four his mother used the Bible to teach him to read and write. His immersion in literature was wide and varied. His imagination, he later recalled, was brought to life by his parents' nightly readings.On 27th September 1837 tragedy struck. Dostoyevsky's mother died of tuberculosis.Dostoyevsky and his brother were now enrolled at the Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute, their academic studies abandoned for military careers. Dostoyevsky disliked the academy, his interests were drawing and architecture.His father died on 16th June 1839 and perhaps triggered Dostoyevsky's epilepsy. However, he continued his studies, passed his exams and obtained the rank of engineer cadet.Dostoyevsky's first completed work was a translation of Honore de Balzac's novel Eugenie Grandet, published in 1843. It was not successful. He believed his financial difficulties could be overcome by writing his own novel. The result was 'Poor Folk', published in 1846, and a commercial success.His next novel, 'The Double', appeared in January 1846. Dostoyevsky now became immersed in socialism. However, 'The Double' received bad reviews and he now had more frequent seizures. With debts mounting he joined the utopian socialist Betekov circle, which helped him to survive. When that dissolved he joined the Petrashevsky Circle, which proposed social reforms. The Petrashevsky Circle was then denounced and Dostoyevsky accused of reading and distributing banned works. Arrests took place in late April 1849 and its members sentenced to death by firing squad. The Tsar commuted the sentence to four years of exile with hard labour in Siberia.His writings on these prison experiences, 'The House of the Dead' were published in 1861.In Saint Petersburg that September he promised his editor he would deliver 'The Gambler', a novella on gambling addiction, by November, although work had yet to begin. It was completed in a mere 26 days.Other works followed but a different approach helped immensely. In 1873 'Demons' was published by the "e;Dostoyevsky Publishing Company"e;. Only payment in cash was accepted and the bookshop was the family apartment. It sold around 3,000 copies.However, Dostoyevsky's health continued to decline, and in March 1877 he had four epileptic seizures. In August 1879 he was diagnosed with early-stage pulmonary emphysema. He was told it could be managed, but not cured.On 26th January 1881 Dostoyevsky suffered a pulmonary haemorrhage. After the second the doctors gave a poor prognosis. A third haemorrhage followed shortly afterwards.Fyodor Dostoyevsky died on 9th February, 1881.

Nicholas Rowe was born in Little Barford, Bedfordshire, England, on June 20th, 1674. He was educated at Highgate School, and then at Westminster School under the tutelage of Dr. Busby.In 1688, Rowe became a King's Scholar, and then in 1691 gained entrance into Middle Temple. This was his father's decision (he was a barrister) who felt that his son had made sufficient progress to study law. While at Middle Temple, he decided that studying law was easier if seen as a system of rational government and impartial justice and not as a series of precedents, or collection of positive precepts.On his father's death, when he was nineteen, he became the master of a large estate and an independent fortune. His future path now was to ignore law and write poetry with a view to eventually writing plays.The Ambitious Stepmother, Rowe's first play, produced in 1700 at Lincoln's Inn Fields by Thomas Betterton and set in Persepolis, was well received. This was followed in 1701 by Tamerlane. In this play the conqueror Timur represented William III, and Louis XIV is denounced as Bajazet. It was for many years regularly acted on the anniversary of William's landing at Torbay. In 1704, he tried his hand at comedy, with The Biter at Lincoln's Inn Fields. The play is said to have amused no one except the author, and Rowe returned to tragedy in Ulysses (1706). For Johnson, this play was to share the fate of many such plays based on mythological heroes, as, "e;We have been too early acquainted with the poetical heroes to expect any pleasure from their revival"e;The Royal Convert (1707) dealt with the persecutions endured by Aribert, son of Hengist and the Christian maiden Ethelinda. The story was set in England in an obscure and barbarous age. Rodogune was a tragic character, of high spirit and violent passions, yet with a wicked with a soul that would have been heroic if it had been virtuous.Rowe is however well known for his work on Shakespeare's plays. He published the first 18th century edition of Shakespeare in six volumes in 1709. His practical knowledge of the stage helped him divide the plays into scenes and acts, with entrances and exits of the players noted. The spelling of names was normalized and each play prefixed with a dramatis personae. This 1709 edition was also the first to be illustrated, a frontispiece engraving being provided for each play. Unfortunately, Rowe based his text on the discredited Fourth Folio, a failing which many succeeding him also followed.Rowe also wrote a short biography of William Shakespeare, entitled, Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespeare.In Dublin in 1712 a revival of his earlier play, Tamerlane, at a time when political passions were running high, the performance provoked a serious riot.The Tragedy of Jane Shore, played at Drury Lane with Mrs Oldfield in the title role in 1714. It ran for nineteen nights, and kept the stage longer than any other of Rowe's works. In the play, which consists chiefly of domestic scenes and private distress, the wife is forgiven because she repents, and the husband is honoured because he forgives.Whilst his plays met with little success at the time his poems were received extremely well. Although he was not prolific nor his output large the quality was high. With the accession to the throne of George I he was made a surveyor of customs, and then, in 1715, he succeeded Nahum Tate as poet laureate. It was the high point of his artistic life.He was also appointed clerk of the council to the Prince of Wales, and in 1718 was nominated by Lord Chancellor Parker as clerk of the presentations in Chancery. Nicholas Rowe died on December 6th, 1718, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.Rowe married first a daughter of a Mr Parsons and left a son John. By his second wife Anne, nee Devenish, he had a daughter Charlotte.

If ever a writer needed an introduction Arthur Conan Doyle would not be considered that man. After all, Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the foremost literary detective of any age. Add to this canon his stories of science fiction and his poems, his historical novels, his plays, his political campaigning, his efforts in establishing a Court of Appeal and there is little room for anything else. Except he was also an exceptional writer of short stories of the horrific and macabre. Something very different from what you might expect. Born in Arthur Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 at 11 Picardy Place, Edinburgh, Scotland. From 1876 - 1881 he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh following which he was employed as a doctor on the Greenland whaler Hope of Peterhead in 1880 and, after his graduation, as a ship's surgeon on the SS Mayumba during a voyage to the West African coast in 1881. Arriving in Portsmouth in June of that year with less than GBP10 (GBP700 today) to his name, he set up a medical practice at 1 Bush Villas in Elm Grove, Southsea. The practice was initially not very successful. While waiting for patients, Conan Doyle again began writing stories and composed his first novel The Mystery of Cloomber. Although he continued to study and practice medicine his career was now firmly set as a writer. And thereafter great works continued to pour out of him.

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.

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was born on October 16, 1888 in a hotel bedroom in what is now Times Square, New York. Much of his childhood was spent in the comfort of books at boarding schools whilst his actor father was on the road and his Mother contended with her own demons. He spent only a year at University - Princeton - and various reasons have been given for his departure. However whatever his background and education denied or added to his development it is agreed amongst all that he was a playwright of the first rank and possibly America's greatest. His introduction of realism into American drama was instrumental in its development and paved a path for many talents thereafter. Of course his winning of both the Pulitzer Prize (4 times) and the Nobel Prize are indicative of his status. His more famous and later works do side with the disillusionment and personal tragedy of those on the fringes of society but continue to build upon ideas and structures he incorporated in his early one act plays. Eugene O'Neill suffered from various health problems, mainly depression and alcoholism. In the last decade he also faced a Parkinson's like tremor in his hands which made writing increasingly difficult. But out of such difficulties came plays of the calibre of The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey Into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten. Eugene O'Neill died in Room 401 of the Sheraton Hotel on Bay State Road in Boston, on November 27, 1953, at the age of 65. As he was dying, he whispered his last words: "e;I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room and died in a hotel room."e;

The village of Colonus, near Athens, was, in the year 495 BC, the birthplace of Sophocles. Sophocles place in Greek Tragedy is assured. His birth places him between the two other giants of Greek tragedy; schylus and Euripides. He was 30 years younger than schylus, the reigning master of drama and was fifteen years older than Euripides, who would, in turn, usurp Sophocles. Sophocles was a handsome and agile youth and selected, at the age of sixteen, to lead with dance and lyre the chorus which celebrated the triumph of Athens and its Allies over Persia at the battle at Salamis. Sophocles career as a dramatist was marked by a victory in competition with schylus, under exceptional circumstances. At the time the remains of the hero Theseus were being removed by Cimon from the isle of Scyros to Athens and, at the same time, a contest involving the two dramatists was being held. schylus was lauded at the time as the supreme dramatist but Sophocles was popular if inexperienced. The first prize was awarded to Sophocles, greatly to the disgust of the veteran schylus, who taking umbrage, soon afterward departed for Sicily. By all accounts Sophocles would now write and exhibit tragedies and satyric dramas for the next sixty years. The canon of his work varies to between 120 and 180 plays, naturally a number were fillers and not of his highest standard but the prodigious output is extraordinary. In the annual Dionysia, the number of first prizes he won is put at between eighteen and twenty-four, with many more second prizes. On this basis alone schylus and Euripides were left a long way behind. So far from being dulled with age and toil, his powers seem only to have assumed a mellower tone, a more touching pathos, a sweeter and gentler mode of thought and expression. Sophocles was spared the misery of witnessing the final overthrow of his country, dying, at the age or around 90 after a long life full of triumphs and honours, a few months before the defeat of Aegospotami brought the downfall of his beloved Athens. This naval Battle of Aegospotami took place in 405 BC and decisively determined the outcome of the Peloponnesian War. In the battle, a Spartan fleet under Lysander destroyed the Athenian navy. This effectively ended the war, since Athens could not import grain or communicate with its empire without control of the sea. There are only seven dramas of Sophocles that have survived. It can be argued that Sophocles and his works were the high-water mark of Athenian excellence. He is rightly lauded and we can only wonder at the splendours he wrote that are now lost to us.

James Shirley was born in London in September 1596. His education was through a collection of England's finest establishments: Merchant Taylors' School, London, St John's College, Oxford, and St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. degree in approximately 1618. He first published in 1618, a poem entitled Echo, or the Unfortunate Lovers. As with many artists of this period full details of his life and career are not recorded. Sources say that after graduating he became "e;a minister of God's word in or near St Albans."e; A conversion to the Catholic faith enabled him to become master of St Albans School from 1623-25. He wrote his first play, Love Tricks, or the School of Complement, which was licensed on February 10th, 1625. From the given date it would seem he wrote this whilst at St Albans but, after its production, he moved to London and to live in Gray's Inn. For the next two decades, he would write prolifically and with great quality, across a spectrum of thirty plays; through tragedies and comedies to tragicomedies as well as several books of poetry. Unfortunately, his talents were left to wither when Parliament passed the Puritan edict in 1642, forbidding all stage plays and closing the theatres. Most of his early plays were performed by Queen Henrietta's Men, the acting company for which Shirley was engaged as house dramatist. Shirley's sympathies lay with the King in battles with Parliament and he received marks of special favor from the Queen. He made a bitter attack on William Prynne, who had attacked the stage in Histriomastix, and, when in 1634 a special masque was presented at Whitehall by the gentlemen of the Inns of Court as a practical reply to Prynne, Shirley wrote the text-The Triumph of Peace. Shirley spent the years 1636 to 1640 in Ireland, under the patronage of the Earl of Kildare. Several of his plays were produced by his friend John Ogilby in Dublin in the first ever constructed Irish theatre; The Werburgh Street Theatre. During his years in Dublin he wrote The Doubtful Heir, The Royal Master, The Constant Maid, and St. Patrick for Ireland. In his absence from London, Queen Henrietta's Men sold off a dozen of his plays to the stationers, who naturally, enough published them. When Shirley returned to London in 1640, he finished with the Queen Henrietta's company and his final plays in London were acted by the King's Men. On the outbreak of the English Civil War Shirley served with the Earl of Newcastle. However when the King's fortunes began to decline he returned to London. There his friend Thomas Stanley gave him help and thereafter Shirley supported himself in the main by teaching and publishing some educational works under the Commonwealth. In addition to these he published during the period of dramatic eclipse four small volumes of poems and plays, in 1646, 1653, 1655, and 1659. It is said that he was "e;a drudge"e; for John Ogilby in his translations of Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey, and survived into the reign of Charles II, but, though some of his comedies were revived, his days as a playwright were over. His death, at age seventy, along with that of his wife, in 1666, is described as one of fright and exposure due to the Great Fire of London which had raged through parts of London from September 2nd to the 5th. He was buried at St Giles in the Fields, in London, on October 29th, 1666.

The Parasite is another celebrated novel belonging to the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle. The protagonist of the narrative is named Austin Gilroy. He is a young professor of physiology whose friend, Professor Wilson, is specializing in occult practices and mesmerism. In one occasion, Gilroy is introduced to Miss Penclosa, a strange, crippled woman who claims to have psychic powers. To persuade the incredulous young man, she hypnotizes his fiancee in front of him. Being now convinced of her powers, though without having any rational explanations for them, Gilroy decides to attend the occult gatherings organized by Wilson and allows Miss Penclosa to practice her powers on him. Miss Penclosa, who falls in love with Gilroy, manages to push him to break his engagement with his fiancee. Gradually, he becomes totally dependent on her and can no longer free himself from her grip. She plays her tricks to make him praise her and caress her until he becomes like a mere toy in her hands. He is only freed when one day, as he is heading towards her house for their daily date, her nurse announces that she has died.

Ford Madox Ford was born Ford Hermann Hueffer on 17th December 1873 in Wimbledon, London, England.Today he is best known for one book, 'The Good Soldier', which is regularly held to be one of the 100 greatest novels of all time. But, rather unfairly, the breadth of his career has been overshadowed. He wrote novels as well as essays, poetry, memoirs and literary criticism. Today he is well-regarded but known only for a few works rather than the grand arc of his career.Ford collaborated with Joseph Conrad on three novels but would later complain that, as with all his collaborators, and those he so readily championed, his contribution was overshadowed by theirs.He founded The English Review and The Transatlantic Review which were instrumental in publishing and promoting the works of so many authors and movements.During WWI he initially worked on propaganda books before enlisting. Ford was invalided back to Britain in 1917, remaining in the army and giving lectures until the War's end. After a spell recuperating in the Sussex countryside he lived mostly in France during the 1920s.He published the series of four novels known as Parade's End, between 1924 and 1928. These were particularly well-received in America, where Ford spent much of his time from the later 1920s to his death in 1939.His last years were spent teaching at Olivet College in Olivet, Michigan.Ford Madox Ford died on 26th June 1939 at Deauville, France at the age of 65.

George Etherege was born in Maidenhead, Berkshire, around 1636, the eldest of six children to George Etherege and Mary Powney. Little is known of much of his life and especially his early years. He was educated at Lord Williams's School and the next sighting of him is as apprentice to a lawyer before he himself began to study law at Clement's Inn, London, one of the Inns of Chancery. Thereafter conjecture attributes many things to him but none that can be confirmed as fact. However, after the Restoration to the throne of Charles II in 1660 he wrote his first comedy; The Comical Revenge, or, Love in a Tub, which also brought him to the attention of Lord Buckhurst, who later became the Earl of Dorset. The Comical Revenge was performed at the Duke's theatre in 1664 although other accounts say it was premiered at Lincoln's Inn Fields. It is written partly in rhymed heroic verse and contains several comic scenes that are refreshingly bright, especially in the context of other plays performed at the time. The verbal sparring between Sir Frederick and the Widow was a new departure for the stage and it worked brilliantly. An immediate success, it had followed much of the earlier traditions of theatre but had already begun to lay the foundations for what would become the comedy of manners. It gave him an immediate entree to a world of literary rakes, including Sir Charles Sedley, John Wilmot, the earl of Rochester and many of the roguish elements of the Court circle. He seemed easy-going and amiable and his nicknames seem to confirm this; "e;gentle George"e; and "e;easy Etheredge."e; Whether this rich life of gaudy pleasures hindered his writing or not it would be another four years before his next play would be finished and performed. In 1668 She Would If She Could, a comedy full of action, wit and spirit, came to the stage. Although it was also seen by others to be frivolous and immoral. However, the play does cement Etheredge's modern reputation as a powerful figure in English playwriting. The play dropped the romantic verse element to concentrate on flirtation for flirtations own sake. It was a radical departure. Unfortunately, it also flopped. It is said due to bad acting but the sudden movement away from the normal structure of a play may equally be the reason. Etheridge now departed on new adventures and between 1668 and 1671 Etherege resided in Constantinople as the secretary of the English ambassador, Sir Daniel Harvey. Returning once more to English shores he wrote the prologue for the opening, in 1671, of the new Dorset Garden Theatre. In 1676 his last and wittiest comedy, The Man of Mode; or, Sir Fopling Flutter, was brought to the stage. It was an immediate and over-whelming success. He was acclaimed. A writer being the sum of his own experiences it was widely believed that the play's characters paint comic pictures of several of his well-known contemporaries. Sir Fopling Flutter himself being a portrait of Beau Hewit, the reigning exquisite of the hour, Dorimant a reference to John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester, and Medley a portrait of Etherege himself or fellow playwright and wit Sir Charles Sedley. Even the drunkard shoemaker was a real character, who made his fortune from being brought to public attention. After this brilliant success Etheredge retired from literature, and a few years later had lost much of his new fortune to gambling. Etherege was knighted in either 1679 or 1680 and went on to marry the wealthy widow Mary Sheppard Arnold. In March, 1685 he was appointed resident minister in the imperial German court at Regensburg. After three and a half-year's residence and the Glorious Revolution, he left for Paris to join James II in exile. He died in Paris, probably in late 1691, although the date and cause of death are uncertain.

The reality is that little is known of Aristophanes actual life but eleven of his forty plays survive intact and upon those rest his deserved reputation as the Father of Comedy or, The Prince of Ancient Comedy. Accounts agree that he was born sometime between 456BC and 446 BC. Many cities claim the honor of his birthplace and the most probable story makes him the son of Philippus of gina, and therefore only an adopted citizen of Athens, a distinction which, at times could be cruel, though he was raised and educated in Athens. His plays are said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more realistically than any other author could. Intellectually his powers of ridicule were feared by his influential contemporaries; Plato himself singled out Aristophanes' play The Clouds as a slander that contributed to the trial and condemning to death of Socrates and although other satirical playwrights had also caricatured the philosopher his carried the most weight. His now lost play, The Babylonians, was denounced by the demagogue Cleon as a slander against the Athenian polis. Aristophanes seems to have taken this criticism to heart and thereafter caricatured Cleon mercilessly in his subsequent plays, especially The Knights. His life and playwriting years were undoubtedly long though again accounts as to the year of his death vary quite widely. What can be certain is that his legacy of surviving plays is in effect both a treasured legacy but also in itself the only surviving texts of Ancient Greek comedy.

Henrik Ibsen (20th March, 1828 - 23rd May, 1906) is often referred to as the father of realism and ranked just below Shakespeare as Europe's greatest ever playwright especially as his plays are performed most frequently throughout the world after Shakespeare's. He was Norwegian and although set his plays in Norway, he wrote them in Danish and lived most of his professional life in Italy and Germany. His affect on the theatre is still evident today and shapes the distinction of plays being art as opposed to entertainment since he broke down all previous traditions and explored issues, developed characterisation, revealed uncomfortable truths, challenged assumptions and brokedown facades in ourselves as well as society. These factors are clearly demonstrated in The Feast of Solhoug, Ibsen's first publicly successful drama which employed Ibsen's poetic style to great effect providing a melody to the lines echoing old Scandinavian ballads and songs. The plot centres around Magrit who as the play opens is marrying the master of Solhoug, Bengt Guateson, Knut Gersling who wants to marry her and Gudmund Alfson, who she wants to marry but is in love with another woman. These make good ingredients for a wonderful melodrama with tantalising misunderstandings. The play has been said to possess the charm of a northern summer night, in which the glimmer of twilight gives place only to the gleam of morning.

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. In 1895 Galsworthy began an affair with Ada Nemesis Pearson Cooper, the wife of his cousin Major Arthur Galsworthy. The affair was kept a secret for 10 years till she at last divorced and they married on 23rd September 1905. 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. Here we publish Villa Rubein, a very fine story that captures Galsworthy's unique narrative and take on life of the time. 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. In his writings he campaigns for a variety of causes, including prison reform, women's rights, animal welfare, and the opposition of censorship as well as a recurring theme of an unhappy marriage from the women's side. During World War I he worked in a hospital in France as an orderly after being passed over for military service. 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.

Madame Bovary (1856) is the French novelist Gustave Flaubert's much-celebrated masterpiece that has been translated into more than forty languages in the world. It belongs to the realistic movement of fiction and has often been considered by critics as one of its most important foundational works. The book recounts the life story of Charles Bovary, a young man from northern France who has been brought up by his mother to become rather a simpleton. Charles is trained to be a medical doctor and then starts practicing his job. He first marries an elder woman that his mother chooses for him. While being married, he has an acquaintance with a beautiful young woman named Emma with whom he falls in love. He is given the opportunity to get closer to Emma and marry her after the death of his first wife. The story then becomes entirely focused on the character of Emma who soon gets bored of her marital status and starts to look for extramarital relations. She indulges in sexual adventures with two different partners while her husband never suspects anything. She even unsuccessfully attempts to elope with one of her lovers once. Madame Bovary commits suicide by the end of the narrative after having drowned herself in irredeemable debt. Charles, who cherishes her memory, discovers about her cheating only later and still tries to find her excuses before he dies himself.

The life of William Shakespeare, arguably the most significant figure in the Western literary canon, is relatively unknown. Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1565, possibly on the 23rd April, St. George's Day, and baptised there on 26th April. Little is known of his education and the first firm facts to his life relate to his marriage, aged 18, to Anne Hathaway, who was 26 and from the nearby village of Shottery. Anne gave birth to their first son six months later. Shakespeare's first play, The Comedy of Errors began a procession of real heavyweights that were to emanate from his pen in a career of just over twenty years in which 37 plays were written and his reputation forever established. This early skill was recognised by many and by 1594 the Lord Chamberlain's Men were performing his works. With the advantage of Shakespeare's progressive writing they rapidly became London's leading company of players, affording him more exposure and, following the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, a royal patent by the new king, James I, at which point they changed their name to the King's Men. By 1598, and despite efforts to pirate his work, Shakespeare's name was well known and had become a selling point in its own right on title pages. No plays are attributed to Shakespeare after 1613, and the last few plays he wrote before this time were in collaboration with other writers, one of whom is likely to be John Fletcher who succeeded him as the house playwright for the King's Men. William Shakespeare died two months later on April 23rd, 1616, survived by his wife, two daughters and a legacy of writing that none have since yet eclipsed.

The reality is that little is known of Aristophanes actual life but eleven of his forty plays survive intact and upon those rest his deserved reputation as the Father of Comedy or, The Prince of Ancient Comedy. Accounts agree that he was born sometime between 456BC and 446 BC. Many cities claim the honor of his birthplace and the most probable story makes him the son of Philippus of gina, and therefore only an adopted citizen of Athens, a distinction which, at times could be cruel, though he was raised and educated in Athens. His plays are said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more realistically than any other author could. Intellectually his powers of ridicule were feared by his influential contemporaries; Plato himself singled out Aristophanes' play The Clouds as a slander that contributed to the trial and condemning to death of Socrates and although other satirical playwrights had also caricatured the philosopher his carried the most weight. His now lost play, The Babylonians, was denounced by the demagogue Cleon as a slander against the Athenian polis. Aristophanes seems to have taken this criticism to heart and thereafter caricatured Cleon mercilessly in his subsequent plays, especially The Knights. His life and playwriting years were undoubtedly long though again accounts as to the year of his death vary quite widely. What can be certain is that his legacy of surviving plays is in effect both a treasured legacy but also in itself the only surviving texts of Ancient Greek comedy.

Philip Massinger was baptized at St. Thomas's in Salisbury on November 24th, 1583.Massinger is described in his matriculation entry at St. Alban Hall, Oxford (1602), as the son of a gentleman. His father, who had also been educated there, was a member of parliament, and attached to the household of Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke. The Earl was later seen as a potential patron for Massinger.He left Oxford in 1606 without a degree. His father had died in 1603, and accounts suggest that Massinger was left with no financial support this, together with rumours that he had converted to Catholicism, meant the next stage of his career needed to provide an income.Massinger went to London to make his living as a dramatist, but he is only recorded as author some fifteen years later, when The Virgin Martyr (1621) is given as the work of Massinger and Thomas Dekker.During those early years as a playwright he wrote for the Elizabethan stage entrepreneur, Philip Henslowe. It was a difficult existence. Poverty was always close and there was constant pleading for advance payments on forthcoming works merely to survive.After Henslowe died in 1616 Massinger and John Fletcher began to write primarily for the King's Men and Massinger would write regularly for them until his death.The tone of the dedications in later plays suggests evidence of his continued poverty. In the preface of The Maid of Honour (1632) he wrote, addressing Sir Francis Foljambe and Sir Thomas Bland: "e;I had not to this time subsisted, but that I was supported by your frequent courtesies and favours."e;The prologue to The Guardian (1633) refers to two unsuccessful plays and two years of silence, when the author feared he had lost popular favour although, from the little evidence that survives, it also seems he had involved some of his plays with political characters which would have cast shadows upon England's alliances.Philip Massinger died suddenly at his house near the Globe Theatre on March 17th, 1640. He was buried the next day in the churchyard of St. Saviour's, Southwark, on March 18th, 1640. In the entry in the parish register he is described as a "e;stranger,"e; which, however, implies nothing more than that he belonged to another parish.

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was born on October 16, 1888 in a hotel bedroom in what is now Times Square, New York. Much of his childhood was spent in the comfort of books at boarding schools whilst his actor father was on the road and his Mother contended with her own demons. He spent only a year at University - Princeton - and various reasons have been given for his departure. However whatever his background and education denied or added to his development it is agreed amongst all that he was a playwright of the first rank and possibly America's greatest. His introduction of realism into American drama was instrumental in its development and paved a path for many talents thereafter. Of course his winning of both the Pulitzer Prize (4 times) and the Nobel Prize are indicative of his status. His more famous and later works do side with the disillusionment and personal tragedy of those on the fringes of society but continue to build upon ideas and structures he incorporated in his early one act plays. Eugene O'Neill suffered from various health problems, mainly depression and alcoholism. In the last decade he also faced a Parkinson's like tremor in his hands which made writing increasingly difficult. But out of such difficulties came plays of the calibre of The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey Into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten. Eugene O'Neill died in Room 401 of the Sheraton Hotel on Bay State Road in Boston, on November 27, 1953, at the age of 65. As he was dying, he whispered his last words: "e;I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room and died in a hotel room."e;

Philip Massinger was baptized at St. Thomas's in Salisbury on November 24th, 1583.Massinger is described in his matriculation entry at St. Alban Hall, Oxford (1602), as the son of a gentleman. His father, who had also been educated there, was a member of parliament, and attached to the household of Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke. The Earl was later seen as a potential patron for Massinger.He left Oxford in 1606 without a degree. His father had died in 1603, and accounts suggest that Massinger was left with no financial support this, together with rumours that he had converted to Catholicism, meant the next stage of his career needed to provide an income.Massinger went to London to make his living as a dramatist, but he is only recorded as author some fifteen years later, when The Virgin Martyr (1621) is given as the work of Massinger and Thomas Dekker.During those early years as a playwright he wrote for the Elizabethan stage entrepreneur, Philip Henslowe. It was a difficult existence. Poverty was always close and there was constant pleading for advance payments on forthcoming works merely to survive.After Henslowe died in 1616 Massinger and John Fletcher began to write primarily for the King's Men and Massinger would write regularly for them until his death.The tone of the dedications in later plays suggests evidence of his continued poverty. In the preface of The Maid of Honour (1632) he wrote, addressing Sir Francis Foljambe and Sir Thomas Bland: "e;I had not to this time subsisted, but that I was supported by your frequent courtesies and favours."e;The prologue to The Guardian (1633) refers to two unsuccessful plays and two years of silence, when the author feared he had lost popular favour although, from the little evidence that survives, it also seems he had involved some of his plays with political characters which would have cast shadows upon England's alliances.Philip Massinger died suddenly at his house near the Globe Theatre on March 17th, 1640. He was buried the next day in the churchyard of St. Saviour's, Southwark, on March 18th, 1640. In the entry in the parish register he is described as a "e;stranger,"e; which, however, implies nothing more than that he belonged to another parish.

James Shirley was born in London in September 1596. His education was through a collection of England's finest establishments: Merchant Taylors' School, London, St John's College, Oxford, and St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. degree in approximately 1618. He first published in 1618, a poem entitled Echo, or the Unfortunate Lovers. As with many artists of this period full details of his life and career are not recorded. Sources say that after graduating he became "e;a minister of God's word in or near St Albans."e; A conversion to the Catholic faith enabled him to become master of St Albans School from 1623-25. He wrote his first play, Love Tricks, or the School of Complement, which was licensed on February 10th, 1625. From the given date it would seem he wrote this whilst at St Albans but, after its production, he moved to London and to live in Gray's Inn. For the next two decades, he would write prolifically and with great quality, across a spectrum of thirty plays; through tragedies and comedies to tragicomedies as well as several books of poetry. Unfortunately, his talents were left to wither when Parliament passed the Puritan edict in 1642, forbidding all stage plays and closing the theatres. Most of his early plays were performed by Queen Henrietta's Men, the acting company for which Shirley was engaged as house dramatist. Shirley's sympathies lay with the King in battles with Parliament and he received marks of special favor from the Queen. He made a bitter attack on William Prynne, who had attacked the stage in Histriomastix, and, when in 1634 a special masque was presented at Whitehall by the gentlemen of the Inns of Court as a practical reply to Prynne, Shirley wrote the text-The Triumph of Peace. Shirley spent the years 1636 to 1640 in Ireland, under the patronage of the Earl of Kildare. Several of his plays were produced by his friend John Ogilby in Dublin in the first ever constructed Irish theatre; The Werburgh Street Theatre. During his years in Dublin he wrote The Doubtful Heir, The Royal Master, The Constant Maid, and St. Patrick for Ireland. In his absence from London, Queen Henrietta's Men sold off a dozen of his plays to the stationers, who naturally, enough published them. When Shirley returned to London in 1640, he finished with the Queen Henrietta's company and his final plays in London were acted by the King's Men. On the outbreak of the English Civil War Shirley served with the Earl of Newcastle. However when the King's fortunes began to decline he returned to London. There his friend Thomas Stanley gave him help and thereafter Shirley supported himself in the main by teaching and publishing some educational works under the Commonwealth. In addition to these he published during the period of dramatic eclipse four small volumes of poems and plays, in 1646, 1653, 1655, and 1659. It is said that he was "e;a drudge"e; for John Ogilby in his translations of Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey, and survived into the reign of Charles II, but, though some of his comedies were revived, his days as a playwright were over. His death, at age seventy, along with that of his wife, in 1666, is described as one of fright and exposure due to the Great Fire of London which had raged through parts of London from September 2nd to the 5th. He was buried at St Giles in the Fields, in London, on October 29th, 1666.