Initially banned in France by King Louis, Molière's celebrated social satire Tartuffe exposes false piety and hypocrisy in the Catholic Church. When a pious fraud worms his way into a wealthy family and manipulates the patriarch into giving up his fortune, it’s up to his family to expose the truth before they end up in the poorhouse!

Rosalind, daughter of the deposed Duke Senior, is exiled from the court by her wicked uncle. Disguising herself as a young man and accompanied by her cousin Celia, she takes refuge in the Forest of Arden. In the forest Rosalind meets Orlando with whom she is in love, but her male disguise complicates matters, especially when Rosalind finds she has unwittingly attracted the shepherdess Phebe. But out of the confusion comes reconciliation and forgiveness, and all ends happily.

Dr. Johnson may have been correct in saying that “Rousseau was a very bad man,” but none can argue that his ideas are among the most influential in all of world history. It was Rousseau, the father of the romantic movement, who was responsible for introducing at least two modern day thoughts that pervade academia. The Confessions is Rousseau’s landmark autobiography. Both brilliant and flawed, it is nonetheless beautifully written and remains one of the most moving human documents in all of literature.

Anne Elliot has grieved for seven years over the loss of her first love, Captain Frederick Wentworth. But events conspire to unravel the knots of deceit and misunderstanding in this beguiling and gently comic story of love and fidelity.

Distressed by his father's death and his mother's over-hasty remarriage, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, is faced by a specter from beyond the grave bearing a grim message of murder and revenge. The young prince is driven to the edge of madness by his struggle to understand the situation he finds himself in and to do his duty. Many others, including Hamlet's beloved, the innocent Ophelia, are swept up in his tragedy.

Written in 1593, King Richard III is one of Shakespeare's earliest plays. This play differs from its predecessors, being amore structured piece, examining the development and motivations of a single character, Richard Duke of Gloucester, who will stop at nothing to gain control of the throne occupied by his brother Edward IV.

The CliffsNotes study guide on Moliere's Tartuffe, The Misanthrope & The Bourgeois Gentleman supplements the original literary work, giving you background information about the author, an introduction to the work, critical commentaries, expanded glossaries, and a comprehensive index, all for you to use as an educational tool that will allow you to better understand the work. CliffsNotes Review tests your comprehension of the original text and reinforces learning with questions and answers.

Six hilarious satires from the ingenious Molière, France’s original master of comedies: "The Imaginary Cuckold", "The School for Husbands", "The School for Wives", "Tartuffe" and "The Misanthrope".

A Signature Performance: Four-time Emmy Award winner David Hyde Pierce delivers an air of lovable self-importance in his rendition of the classic social satire that remains as fresh today as the day it was published.

The central core of the stories concerns a Persian king and his new bride. The king has a brother who is a vizier in faraway Samarcand, and he invites him to come to the palace for a visit. Just before his departure, the vizier is shocked to discover his wife's infidelity. Enraged, he kills her. Full of pain and grief, the vizier continues on to the court of his brother, the king. But, once arrived at his brother's palace, the vizier soon discovers the king's wife is also involved in an even more flagrant infidelity.

Julius Caesar is one of Shakespeare’s most compelling Roman plays. The plot against Caesar and the infamous assassination scene make for unforgettable listening. Brutus, the true protagonist of the play, is mesmerizing in his psychological state of anguish, forced to choose between the bonds of friendship and his desire for patriotic justice.

Lemuel Gulliver, a slightly staid ship’s doctor, relates the tales of his astonishing travels. He encounters the tiny, warring Lilliputians; the giant, sceptical Brobdingnagians; the ludicrously intellectual Laputans; and the idealistic - if rather stolid - Houyhnhnms and their bestial servants, the Yahoos. An immediate best seller when it was first published in 1726, Gulliver’s Travels has remained a favourite ever since. It was an attack on the politics and society of Swift’s day, but it is also a polemical, inventive, surreal, vitriolic, and wonderfully imaginative masterpiece.

When the deviously amorous Norman plans a clandestine weekend away with his sister-in-law, he has some fun and games in mind. But not quite the fun and games that he gets.

Jane Austen's most popular novel, originally published in 1813, some 17 years after it was first written, presents the Bennet family of Longbourn. Against the background of gossipy Mrs. Bennet and the detached Mr. Bennet, the quest is on for husbands for the five daughters. The spotlight falls on Elizabeth, second eldest, who is courted by Darcy, though initially she is more concerned with the fate of her other sisters.

Sinéad Cusack, Anna Massey, Patricia Routledge, Andrew Sachs and Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies star in this 1974 BBC Radio full-cast production of Chekhov’s classic play.Madame Ranyevskaya and her daughter Anya have returned home from Paris to discover that their family estate - which includes their beloved cherry orchard - has to be sold to cover the family’s debts.