William Shakespeare

Southampton turns out to be too bashful to speak in parliament, and also too weak to withstand the mockery of rakish friends for his fidelity to his wife. He suffers agony of conscience over his...

At thirteen, profoundly affected by a Saturday matinee of John McGrath 's Events While Guarding the Bofors Gun and by the idea that theatre can change people's lives, she decided to be a playwright.

Both the title-page and the body of the work quote (unascribed) lines about social injustice spoken by Shakespeare 's King Lear (who has only just realised the rampant injustice of the world and of his...

Frances Milton never blames her father for his unkindness; she still owes him total gratitude and devotion, which she seems to regard as on a par with our debt of love and gratitude to God...

Its setting is Catford Street, an ordinary, poor street in shabby postwar London, and the elegant Square round the corner. Its protagonist is a child waif, Lovejoy Mason; RG 's theme is the childhood...

As the work opens, Cordelia, slight of body, determined of will, savvy of mind (who is to reappear later in another book, The Skull Beneath the Skin), is running a seedy detective agency...

The Shakespeare allusion is curious and suggestive. Antonio is replying to Shylock's famous speech claiming humanity for Jews; he justifies his own racial or religious hostility, and suggests that usury can only be pracised on...

The first letter, the earliest piece in the volume, was said to have been written seventeen years ago at the age of seventeen: to Myra, which suggests that ML may have been one among...

Critics have pointed to a range of influences and allusions in this novel. Kate Flint has suggested that the representation of the sorrowful-eyed aesthete Francis Chaloner was a satiric jab at Oscar Wilde , who...

During her schooldays literature was her greatest escape. She remembers Hansel and Gretel, the first story she read in English and reread many times, followed by Snow White. She also read...

Valisneria tells the story of a young couple who decide, since they have abounding wealth and happiness in each other, they will resign the company of all other society. After a time however, the two...

Arguably Hardy's most melodramatic novel, The Return of the Native closes with a happy ending requested by the magazine editor. In a preface to a later edition, Hardy compared the story to Shakespeare 's King Lear.

The Inheritance opens with what sounds like an allusion to Jane Austen : It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that there is no passion so deeply rooted in human nature as that of pride.

This novel is both social history and satire, covering territory similar to that of Virginia Woolf 's The Years and May Sinclair 's The Tree of Heaven. Like these, it traces the lives of...

EH was a frequent participant in amateur dramatic readings. She often read the works of Robert Browning . Shakespeare , perhaps owing to her childhood deprivation, was also a particular favourite. She was praised as...