A COMFORTABLE WIFE

This is the fourth volume of a detailed play-by-play catalogue of drama written by English, Welsh, Irish, and Scottish authors during the 110 years between the English Reformation to the English Revolution, covering every known play, extant and lost, including some which have never before been identified. It is based on a complete, systematic survey of the whole of this body of work, presented in chronological order. Each entry contains comprehensive information about a single play: its various titles, authorship, and date; a summary of its plot, list of its roles, and details of the human and geographical world in which the fictional action takes place; a list of its sources, narrative and verbal, and a summary of its formal characteristics; details of its staging requirements; and an account of its early stage and textual history. Volume IV covers the period during which dramatic satire emerged, as well as the opening of the original Globe theatre in London.

A History of Loudon, Massachusetts located in the Berkshires, current day Otis, Massachusetts based on the lives of the residents of its oldest cemetery Norton Cemetery. The Book tracks the founding fathers of this town and their families from Europe to the colonies to Loudon in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. It traces the town's history, through it's people from its inception and formation in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, through the French and Indian and Revolutionary Wars to a new nation. It describes the area's part in Shays Rebellion which sparked the writing of our Constitution through the 1800 and 1900's to the 21st century. All of this is based around those families that wrote the towns history and are buried in Norton Cemetery. This offers a chance to combine political and social histories offering a unique historical perspective. The history itself highlights several trends that our contrary to contemporary historical outlooks.

William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) was one of the most prominent and productive authors of the twentieth century--and his works have been among the most cinematically transformed in history. For more than five decades, adaptations of his plays, stories, and novels dominated movie theaters and, later, television screens. More than ninety individual works were filmed, and for many filmgoers his name was a greater draw than that of the director. Works such as Of Human Bondage, "The Letter," The Painted Veil, "Rain," The Razor's Edge, and others were produced multiple times, with starring roles sought by actors like Bette Davis, Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo, Lionel Barrymore, Charles Laughton, and Bill Murray. This study of the famous author explores the relationship between literature and film, what is involved in adaptation, and how best to judge films based on celebrated books. Robert Calder, the world's leading scholar of Maugham's work, offers fascinating production histories, insight into both fortunate and misguided casting decisions, shrewd analyses of performances and film techniques, and summaries of public and critical responses. Maugham's characters were often conflicted, iconoclastic, and morally out of step with their times, which may have accounted for the popularity of his fiction. Most of Maugham's works could be adapted to satisfy the tastes of moviegoers and the demands of the Hays Office censors, if not the expectations of their author.