<p><span style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;; font-size: 12px;">While&nbsp;</span><i style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;; font-size: 12px;">Julius Caesar</i><span style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;; font-size: 12px;">&nbsp;and&nbsp;</span><i style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;; font-size: 12px;">Coriolanus</i><span style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;; font-size: 12px;">&nbsp;are concentrated on the city of Rome, the epic love affair of&nbsp;</span><i style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;; font-size: 12px;">Antony and Cleopatra</i><span style="color: rgb(69, 69, 69); font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;; font-size: 12px;">&nbsp;extends across the Empire. Each of these plays is profoundly concerned with political action, with the relation between the political and the personal. Shakespeare, like Plutarch, closely scrutinizes his heroes and compels us to question what sort of men they are.</span><br></p><p class="p3" style="margin-bottom: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 14px;"><br></p><p class="p2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);">In this collection each play is accompanied by notes and an introduction, making this edition of particular value to students and theater-goers.</p><p class="p1" style="margin-bottom: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 15px;"><b><br></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; line-height: normal; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><strong><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: &quot;Google Sans&quot;, sans-serif;">Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.<o:p></o:p></span></strong></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; line-height: normal; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><strong><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: &quot;Google Sans&quot;, sans-serif;">&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></strong></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; line-height: normal; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><strong><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: &quot;Google Sans&quot;, sans-serif;">About the Author<o:p></o:p></span></strong></p><p class="p1" style="margin-bottom: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);">William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world^s pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England^s national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "The Bard"). His surviving works consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language, and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.</p><p class="p2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 14px;"><br></p><p class="p1" style="margin-bottom: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);">Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. Scholars believe that he died on his fifty-second birthday, coinciding with St George’s Day.</p><p class="p2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 14px;"><br></p><p class="p1" style="margin-bottom: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);">At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592 he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of the playing company the Lord Chamberlain^s Men, later known as the King^s Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare^s private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.</p><p class="p2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 14px;"><br></p><p class="p1" style="margin-bottom: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);">Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1590 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. Next he wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including&nbsp;<i>Hamlet, King Lear</i>, and&nbsp;<i>Macbeth</i>, considered some of the finest examples in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime, and in 1623, two of his former theatrical colleagues published the&nbsp;<i>First Folio</i>, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare^s.</p><p class="p2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 14px;"><br></p><p class="p1" style="margin-bottom: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);">Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the nineteenth century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare^s genius, and the Victorians hero-worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called "bardolatry". In the twentieth century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are consistently performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.</p><p class="p2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 14px;"><br></p><p class="p1" style="margin-bottom: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);">According to historians, Shakespeare wrote 37 plays and 154 sonnets throughout the span of his life. Shakespeare^s writing average was 1.5 plays a year since he first started writing in 1589. There have been plays and sonnets attributed to Shakespeare that were not authentically written by the great master of language and literature.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; line-height: normal; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><strong><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: &quot;Google Sans&quot;, sans-serif;">&nbsp;</span></strong></p><p class="p1" style="margin-bottom: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 15px;"><b><br></b><br></p>