"Taking a curtain call with a live snake in her wig... Cavorting naked through the Warwickshire countryside painted green... Acting opposite a child with a pumpkin on his head... These are just a few of the things Dame Judi Dench has done in the name of Shakespeare. For the very first time, Judi opens up about every Shakespearean role she has played throughout her seven-decade career, from Lady Macbeth and Titania to Ophelia and Cleopatra. In a series...

"How does one survive the death of a loved one, the mess of war, the experience of being schooled, of falling in love, of growing old, of losing your mind? Shakespeare's world is never too far different from our own 'permeated with the same tragedies, the same existential questions and domestic worries. In this extraordinary book, Jonathan Bate brings then and now together. He investigates moments of his own life - losses and challenges - and asks...

"The unlikely true story of why we know the name William Shakespeare today, and the four-hundred-year-old book that made it possible. Four hundred years ago, no one bothered to write down the exact words of stage plays. Characters' lines were scribbled on small rolls of paper (as in, an actor's role) and passed around, but no master script was saved for the future. The main reason we've heard of Romeo, Juliet, Hamlet, and Shakespeare himself is that...

A loving couple are torn apart by a false accusation and a bickering couple are brought together by friendly plotting.

"London, 1600. With no legitimate heir to Queen Elizabeth's throne, and no clear successor, England finds itself in a supremely perilous moment. When spymaster Anthony Bacon commands esteemed playwright William Shakespeare to write a play on the poisonous history of Queen Elizabeth and the rival monarch she executed, Catholic Mary Queen of Scots, Will knows that Elizabeth's one-time favorite, the powerful Earl of Essex, will use the play to try to...

"January 1939: When Katja Heinz secures a job as a typist at Doctor Viktor's clinic, she doesn't expect to be copying top secret medical records from a notebook. At the end of the first world war, Doctor Viktor treated soldiers for psychological disorders. One of the patients was none other than Adolf Hitler. . . The notes in his possession declare Hitler unfit for office - a secret that could destroy the Führer's reputation, and change the course...