This third collection of plays by Friel includes Afterplay, featuring two characters originally created by Chekhov; six works based on plays by Chekhov (Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya, The Yalta Game, The Bear), Turgenev (A Month in the Country) and Ibsen (Hedda Gabler); and two original works, Performances, about the private life and public work of Leoš Janáçek, and The Home Place, set in Ireland at the beginning of Home Rule.

Dramatizing ‘a mystery that has come to us in echoes and whispers from over three thousand years ago’, Armitage’s play follows on from the account of the Greeks’ wooden horse in Homer’s Odyssey to tell the story of the Trojan War to its bitter end. Set in present-day Hisarlik, the site of ancient Troy, with a cast of gods and mortals, the play explores an ancient conflict that rages to this day.

From Night Watches by Allan Monkhouse, published in 1916, to Abigail Docherty's Sea and Land and Sky (2010), this collection of seven plays shows how the war has been represented through the 'traditions, forms and economies of the theatre' over the last century. The other works are Alice Dunbar-Nelson's Mine Eyes Have Seen (1918); Tunnel Trench (1924) by Hubert Griffith; Noël Coward's Post Mortem (1930); Oh What a Lovely War! (1963) by Theatre Workshop; and The Accrington Pals (1981) by Peter Whelan.

Part of the Introductions to Chinese Culture series, this book provides an accessible overview of theatre in China, from traditional Chinese opera and its many variations to drama without music in the 20th century. Like all the books in the series, it is written by a noted expert in the field, well illustrated with colour reproductions and photographs and offers an ideal introductory survey for both students and general readers.

Known now as a translator and author of dark tragedies, Chapman in his own time was admired as the creator of wonderfully original comedies for the theatre, and this play was one of the most popular of the Elizabethan era. Written in 1597, it was the English theatre's first 'comedy of humours', satirizing the attitudes, behaviour and social pretentions of contemporary men and women. This edition is part of the Revels Plays series. The text of the play has been edited from the original of best authority and is accompanied by an extensive introduction dealing with text, dating, the playwright, sources and stage history, plus annotation, collation and commentary notes and a glossary.

Widely regarded as the most elegantly structured of Lyly's plays, Love's Metamorphosis is based on the story of Erisichthon's felling of a grove sacred to Ceres from Ovid's Metamorphoses, but here it is love that exhibits the ability to change. The play was written for Paul's Boys and first performed in the 1580s.

Bill Tarmey (1941–2012) played the lovable rogue Jack Duckworth in Coronation Street for 31 years until his character was killed off during the show's 50th anniversary in 2010. His story of growing up in post-war Manchester, singing in working men's clubs, and then finding his niche playing a rascal whose life uncannily mirrored his own will be cherished by all fans of Britain's longest-running soap.

Edited by Tiffany Stern for this Arden Early Modern Drama edition, this is Richard Brome's comedy about four lovers who leave their noble families and join the beggar community in search of adventure. The last production staged before theatres were closed by the English Civil War, the play shows an intense engagement with contemporary politics: the young people find the beggar's life is full of dance and song – and hardship.

In collaboration with the novelist, Mike Poulton reimagined Hilary Mantel's Man Booker Prize-winning novels for the stage. In this incarnation, Wolf Hall takes the story of Thomas Cromwell up to the coronation of Anne Boleyn, and Bring Up the Bodies ends with her execution. The scripts of the plays are accompanied by Poulton's introduction and Mantel's notes on the characters.

One of three ‘jocular dramas’ which Mozart created with librettist Da Ponte, Cosí fan tutte used to be considered implausible and scandalous, since two sisters marry strangers who are really their disguised fiancés – but its unsettling paradoxes now make it feel a very modern comedy.