Лучшие книги Джона Форда

Джон Форд – один из крупнейших английских драматургов шекспировской плеяды. Юрист по профессии, он получил классическое образование в Оксфорде. Дебютировал как поэт, автор поэм, элегий и сонетов. Трагедия «Как жаль, что она шлюха», изданная в 1633 году, – самое сильное драматургическое произведение Форда. Западный кинематограф дважды брался за эту душераздирающую историю любви брата и сестры. Не так давно известный театральный режиссер Роман Виктюк обратился к этой пьесе, поставив спектакль «Крылья из пепла».
Анабелла – известная красавица, к которой сватаются толпы женихов, представить, что она будет верной Джованни невозможно. Ее новоиспеченный муж Соранцо узнает, что она ждет ребенка, а у «доброжелателей» выведывает, что отец ребенка – ее родной брат. Нежная любовь и страсть, ревность и кровь – всё в этой драме гениально переплетено.

Трагедия в пяти действиях

A new volume of the greatest revenge tragedies of the seventeenth-century stage

These four plays, written during the reigns of James I and Charles I, took revenge tragedy in dark and ambiguous new directions. In The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil, John Webster explores power, sex, and corruption in the Italian court, creating two unforgettable anti-heroines. In The Broken Heart, John Ford questions the value of emotional repression as his characters attempt to subdue their desires and hatreds in ancient Greece. Finally, Ford's masterpiece 'Tis Pity She's a Whore explores the taboo themes of incest and forbidden love in a daring reworking of Romeo and Juliet.

For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Ford wrote darkly about sexual and political passion, despair, thwarted ambition, and incest. This selection also shows his ability to portray the poignancy of love as well as write entertaining comedy and create convincing roles for women. His Annabella, Hippolita, Penthea, Calantha, and Katherine Gordon rank among the most dramatically powerful female characters on the post-Shakespearean stage.

Setting Ford's earliest surviving independently-written play, The Lover's Melancholy, alongside his three best known works, this edition includes an introduction with sections on each play addressing gender issues, modern relevance, and staging possibilities. Under the General Editorship of Michael Cordner of the University of York, the texts of the plays have been newly edited and are presented with modernized spelling and punctuation, supplemented by detailed annotation.

The Witch of Edmonton is an English Jacobean play, written by William Rowley, Thomas Dekker and John Ford in 1621. The play-"probably the most sophisticated treatment of domestic tragedy in the whole of Elizabethan-Jacobean drama"-is based on supposedly real-life events that took place in the village of Edmonton, outside London, earlier in the year. The play depicts Elizabeth Sawyer, an old woman shunned by her neighbours, who gets revenge by selling her soul to the Devil, who appears to her in the shape of a black dog called Tom. In addition, there are two subplots. One depicts a bigamist who murders his second wife at the devil's prompting, and the other depicts a clownish yokel who befriends the devil-dog.