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The play begins with a strange scene—a large net has been spread over a house, the entry is barricaded and two slaves are sleeping in the street outside. A third man is positioned at the top of an exterior wall with a view into the inner courtyard but he too is asleep. The two slaves wake and we learn...

Today the women at the festival are going to kill me for insulting them!' This bold statement by Euripides is the absurd premise upon which the whole play depends. The women are incensed by his plays' portrayal of the female sex as mad, murderous, and sexually depraved, and they are using the festival...

I write, because you enjoin me to do so. Love you still!—How can I help it, if I would? You may believe how I stand aghast, your letter communicating the first news—Good God of Heaven and Earth!—But what shall I say?—I am all impatient for particulars. Lord have mercy upon me!—But can it...

I can write but just now a few lines. I cannot tell how to bear the sound of that Mr. Belford for your executor, cogent as your reasons for that measure are: and yet I am firmly of opinion, that none of your relations should be named for the trust. But I dwell the less on this subject, as I hope (and cannot bear to apprehend the contrary) that you will still live many, many years.

The Camp of Wallenstein is an introduction to the celebrated tragedy of that name; and, by its vivid portraiture of the state of the general's army, gives the best clue to the spell of his gigantic power. The blind belief entertained in the unfailing success of his arms, and in the supernatural agencies...

Ferdinand is an army major and son of President von Walter, a high-ranking noble in a German duke's court, while Luise Miller is the daughter of a middle-class musician. The couple fall in love with each other, but both their fathers tell them to end their affair. The story unfolds to show how cabal and their intrigue destroy the love between Ferdinand von Walter and Luise Miller.

Schiller's Suppressed Poems including: Bacchus in the Pillory, Spinosa, To the Fates, The Parallel, Klopstock and Wieland, The Muses' Revenge, The Simple Peasant, Actaeon, Man's Dignity, The Messiah. Epitaph, The Bad Monarchs, and many other poems.

In Sevastopol (or Sebastopol) Sketches Tolstoy examines the senselessness and vanity of war, the many aspects of the psychology of war, heroism, and the misleading presence of humanism in truces. The name originates from Sevastopol, a city in Crimea. Many of the episodes in Tolstoy's War and Peace are linked to the events described in these sketches.

The Cratylus has always been a source of perplexity to the student of Plato. While in fancy and humour, and perfection of style and metaphysical originality, this dialogue may be ranked with the best of the Platonic writings, there has been an uncertainty about the motive of the piece, which interpreters...

Within the last eight years—the precise date I purposely omit—I I was ordered by my physician, my health being in an unsatisfactory state, to change my residence to one upon the sea-coast; and accordingly, I took a house for a year in a fashionable watering-place, at a moderate distance from the city in which I had previously resided, and connected with it by a railway.

Zadig, a good-hearted, handsome young man from Babylonia, is in love with Sémire and they are to marry. Sémire, however, has another suitor: Orcan wants her for himself. Zadig tries to defend his love from Orcan's threat, but his eye is injured in the process. Sémire abhors this injury, causing her...

The adventure of the youthful Rustan is generally known throughout the whole province of Candahar. He was the only son of a Mirza of that country. The title of Mirza there is much the same as that of Marquis among us, or that of Baron among the Germans. The mirza, his father, had a handsome fortune....

John was not twenty years old when he assisted, as a volunteer, at the attack on Mont-Joui, which was captured, and where the Prince of Hesse lost his life. Our poor Johnny was wounded, taken prisoner, and carried into the town. The following is an account of his adventures from the attack of Mont-Joui...

The causes of our poverty; a poverty which we hide under varnished ceilings, or with the help of our dealers in fashion. We are poor with taste. There are some officers of revenue, there are contractors or jobbers, there are merchants, very rich; their children, their sons-in-law, are also very rich, but the nation in general is unfortunately not so.