(The Treasury of Loyal Retainers), also known as the story of the Forty-Six (or Forty-Seven) , is the most famous and perennially popular of all Japanese dramas. Written around 1748 as a puppet play, it is now better known through Kabuki theater performances. Donald Keene's translation of the original text is presented here with a new preface and an introduction and notes to aid readers in their comprehension and enjoyment of the play.

Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725) wrote some 130 plays, chiefly for the puppet theater, many of which are still performed today by puppet operators and Kabuki actors. Chikamatsu is thought to have written the first major tragedies about the common man. This edition of four of his most important plays includes three popular domestic dramas and one history play.

Japanese no theatre or the drama of perfected art' flourished in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries largely through the genius of the dramatist Zeami. An intricate fusion of music, dance, mask, costume and language, the dramas address many subjects, but the idea of form' is more central than meaning' and their structure is always ritualized. Selected for their literary merit, the twenty-four plays in this volume dramatize such ideas as the relationship between men and the gods, brother and sister, parent and child, lover and beloved, and the power of greed and desire. Revered in Japan as a cultural treasure, the spiritual and sensuous beauty of these works has been a profound influence for English-speaking artists including W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound and Benjamin Britten.

One of the world's greatest love stories in its first complete English translation, brought up-to-date in this new edition. Cyril Birch has captured all the elegance, lyricism, and subtle humor of this drama by Tang Xianzu, perhaps the finest of the Ming dramatists.

Kalidasa's play about the love of King Dusyanta for Sakuntala, a monastic girl, is the supreme work of Sanskrit drama by its greatest poet and playwright (c.4th century CE). Overwhelmingly erotic in tone and in performance, The Recognition of Sakuntala aimed to produce an experience of aesthetic rapture in the audience, comparable to certain types of mystical experience. The pioneering English translation of Sakuntala in 1789 caused a sensation among European composers and writers (including Goethe), and it continues to be performed around the world. This vibrant new verse translation includes the famous version of the story from the Mahabharata, a poetic and dramatic text in its own right and a likely source for Kalidasa. The introduction discusses the play in the aesthetic and cultural context of ancient India.

is the longest and, in some ways, the greatest epic poem in any language. Intended to be a treatise on life itself, it embraces religion and ethics, polity and government, philosophy and the pursuit of salvation. The shortest recension of the Sanskrit version consists of some 88,000 verses. The main narrative, however, is the story of the rivalry between the cousins, the Pandavas and the Kauravas, which culminates in the great battle of Kuruksetra. Chakravarthi V. Narasimhan here introduces and presents the portions dealing with this story and its central theme of the universal destruction and evil of war. His prose translation of approximately 4000 verses is supplemented by a glossary, genealogical tables, and an index correlating the verses with the original Sanskrit text.

This is a collection of the most important genres of Japanese performance -noh, kyogen, kabuki, and bamrili puppet theater -in one comprehensive, authoritative volume. Organized by genre, each section features a rich selection of representative plays and explorations into each theatrical style and is prefaced by an illustrative essay covering a wide range of subjects, from stage direction to musical accompaniment. With classic and new translations of more than thirty plays and scenes -along with Brazell´s detailed, historically rich supplementary material and copious illustrations -no better anthology exists for students of this most fascinating and diverse dramatic tradition.

This volume is set in a typical, old Beijing teahouse. Lao She's drama follows the lives of the owner and his customers through three stages in modern Chinese history. The play spans fifty years and has a cast of over sixty characters drawn from all levels of society. Brought together in Yutai Teahouse, they reflect, through the changes that were taking place in Chinese society.

The strength and appeal of the play lie in part in Lao She's masterful recreation of the characters and language of the streets of old Beijing, but the center of its strength is Lao She's vision, his unerring choice of significant detail, and this familiarity with the old society he is describing, with its strengths, weaknesses, and ironies. It is this which carries Teahouse beyond the borders of social criticism and makes it a complex and living work of art. Written in 1957, Teahouse bids an inspired, lingering farewell to old Beijing and the old society, despite their evils and ills, and extends a passionate welcome to the new society with its promise of freedom and equality of the people.

Standing as it does between old and new China, and deeply rooted in both, Teahouse shimmers with a fine since of ambivalence. True to its writer, to China, and to its time, it is a masterpiece of modern theatre.