William Shakespeare

The subtitle of this novel (which in earlier centuries had been the title of a bawdy song) here alludes to a proverb about the impossible perfections of maids' husbands and bachelors' children. This first novel...

The hospital poems in this volume present experiences of fear, pain, and alienation, with tirelessly exact observation and tireless compassion. The artist (that is, a typist concerned about the quality of her work) who speaks...

This is a satirical novel set on a US campus—though not, PHJ insists, embodying any identifiable place or people. The title, from Shakespeare 's Midsummer Night's Dream, suggests that the campus of the story...

The title-page bears a quotation from Shakespeare ; the dedication argues that the rebel Monmouth was wrong but deserving of pity. The story traces the fate of a family named Bruce; it opens with a...

In addition to its over-riding themes of colonialism and the marriage market, this novel, set in early British Calcutta (and incorporating a good deal of travel book material), is much concerned with literature and with...

The action in the novel takes place over one day, in which the two elderly actresses Dora and Nora Chance (who are twin sisters) are celebrating their seventy-fifth birthday. They share their birthdate with their...

The Cry concerns itself with burning issues for women, particularly those of intellectual conformity and of vulnerability to slander. Its authors show off their huge reading both ancient and modern, and coin new words with...

Smith's take on Iphis and Ianthe begins with sisters Anthea and Imogen listening to their grandfather's stories from when I was a girl in the women's suffrage movement: a sure induction into matters of gender...

The title comes from the Fool in Shakespeare : Nero is an angler in the lake of darkness.This novel portrays the effects of attempting to control the destinies of others.Three different men are cast...

She finds an answer in yet another myth (or rather an embroidered story from history), that of Antony and Cleopatra, where the lovers are not trapped by hierarchy, but connected as equals by love: The...

Chapters are headed with a lavish array of quotations. Among the better-known authors are Ariosto (in the original), Shakespeare , Drayton , Milton , Pope (on the title-page), Young , Gray , Collins , Johnson

Although Shakespeare 's Richard III clearly plays a major role in shaping the myth of Richard's villainy against which Tey writes, she alludes to this play only in passing, when a character comments on Laurence Olivier

Ophelia: A Comedy, a rewriting of the play-within-a-play in Shakespeare 's Hamlet, mercilessly scrambles the plot, and has assimilated characters from other plays: Portia, Goneril, Lady Capulet, Juliet's Nurse, and Cleopatra's Charmian. Charmian...

All the characters are fond of aphorisms (from Anne we get Bitterness is wanton, like showing the hangman the gauge of your neck . . . . It also comes easily to lazy sentimentalists

The titles, however, reveal that romance is to be countered with romance: The Generous Poverty, The Honourable Infidelity, The Fortunate Misfortune, The Double Rape, etc., sound like novels, and they employ...