Cedric Watts is a distinguished literary critic and scholar whose extensive publications delve deeply into literary analysis and scholarly critique. His works explore complex themes and styles, often drawing from a profound understanding of classic literature and Shakespearean drama. Watts's approach is characterized by its analytical precision and his ability to uncover hidden meanings and nuances within literary texts. His scholarship offers readers an enriching perspective on the art of the written word.
This history play is lively in its interplay of political intrigue and boisterous comedy, subtle in the connections between high statecraft and low craftiness, exuberant in its range of vivid characters, and memorable in its thematic concern with honour, loyalty and the quest for power.
Three men in a boat: Three friends along with the dog, Montmorency, experience the hazards and vicissitudues of life in a boating expedition along the Thames.
In this striking tragedy of political conflict, Shakespeare turns to the ancient Roman world and to the famous assassination of Julius Caesar by his republican opponents. The play is one of tumultuous rivalry, of prophetic warnings--"Beware the ides of March"--and of moving public oratory "Friends, Romans, countrymen!" Ironies abound and most of all for Brutus, whose fate it is to learn that his idealistic motives for joining the conspiracy against a would-be dictator are not enough to sustain the movement once Caesar is dead.
Classic / British EnglishOthello is a popular soldier who is in love with his beautiful new wife. He also has good friends - like Iago, another soldier. So when Iago tells him terrible stories about his wife, Desdemona, who should Othello believe? Will jealousy destroy all their lives? This is one of William Shakespeare's greatest plays.
Loose ends and red herrings are the stuff of detective fiction, and under the scrutiny of master sleuths John Sutherland and Cedric Watts Shakespeare's plays reveal themselves to be as full of mysteries as any Agatha Christie novel. Is it summer or winter in Elsinore? Do Bottom and Titania make love? Does Lady Macbeth faint, or is she just pretending? How does a man putrefy within minutes of his death? Is Cleopatra a deadbeat Mum? And why doesn't Juliet ask 'O Romeo Montague, wherefore art thou Montague?' As Watts and Sutherland explore these and other puzzles Shakespeare's genuius becomes ever more apparent. Speculative, critical, good-humoured and provocative, their discussions shed light on apparent anachronisms, performance and stagecraft, linguistics, Star Trek and much else. Shrewd and entertaining, these essays add a new dimension to the pleasure of reading or watching Shakespeare.
This landmark book describes the course of religious thinking within Islam from the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632, to 950.
Professor Watts’s study examines the main phase in Joseph Conrad’s literary development.
Englischsprachige Ausgabe mit Worterläuterungen und Nachwort
Romeo und Julia ist die wohl berühmteste Liebesgeschichte der Welt und erfreute sich schon zu Shakespeares Lebzeiten größter Beliebtheit. Sein Drama verfasste Shakespeare um 1595 und bediente sich dabei Arthur Brookes epischen Gedichts „Romeo and Juliet“ von 1562 als Quelle. Mit erstaunlichem Instinkt verdichtet Shakespeare das Geschehen um das unsterbliche Liebespaar aus den verfeindeten Häusern Montague und Capulet und gibt der im schnellen Tempo ablaufenden Handlung ihre tragische Unaufhaltbarkeit. Noch heute zieht es Liebespaare aus aller Welt zum Schauplatz der Handlung nach Verona, wo die Szenen spielen, deren Liebesgespräche als die schönsten der Weltliteratur gelten. Das Leseheft umfasst neben dem ungekürzten Originaltext (durchgängige Vers-/Zeilenzählung) ein englischsprachiges Nachwort, eine englischsprachige Zeitleiste zu Shakespeare sowie umfangreiche englisch-englische Worterläuterungen.
Encompasses witchcraft, bloody murder, and ghostly apparitions. This work tells the tragedy of a good, brave and honourable man turned into the personification of evil by the workings of unreasonable ambition.
Set aboard the Narcissus, a merchant ship journeying from Bombay to London, the novella explores the tensions among the crew as they grapple with the illness of a West Indian sailor suffering from tuberculosis. While some crew members exhibit compassion and take on additional duties to care for him, others question the severity of his condition, leading to a conflict that reveals deeper themes of humanity, duty, and the fragility of life at sea. Joseph Conrad delves into the complexities of human relationships in this poignant narrative.
Contains four stories, written between 1900 and 1902. One of them reveals the differences between instinct and intelligence in a partnership vital to human survival; and the other contains 'land-stories' that explore the utter isolation of an East European emigrant in England and in the other, the plight of a woman.
