Amy Freed rewrites The Taming of the Shrew, one of the more problematic plays in the Shakespeare canon.

While beloved for its sharp dialogue and witty banter, The Taming of the Shrew offers a problematic storyline that many have deemed misogynistic. The play contains insensitive gags and uneasy politics, making it difficult for modern audiences to connect with the text. Amy Freed’s new translation reactivates the original story, blowing away the dust and cobwebs. As Freed’s text reminds us, at its heart The Taming of the Shrew is a story about courage and authenticity.

This translation of The Taming of the Shrew was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present work from “The Bard” in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. Enlisting the talents of a diverse group of contemporary playwrights, screenwriters, and dramaturges from diverse backgrounds, this project reenvisions Shakespeare for the twenty-first century. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print—a new First Folio for a new era.

A multidisciplinary guide to classroom discussion of race in the European Renaissance.
 
Teaching Race in the European Renaissance: A Classroom Guide provides both educators and students the tools they need to discuss race in the European Renaissance both in its unique historical contexts and as part of a broader continuum with racial thinking today. The volume gathers scholars of the English, French, Italian, and Iberian Renaissances to provide exercises, lesson plans, methodologies, readings, and other resources designed to bring discussions of race into a broad spectrum of classes on the early modern period, from literature to art history to the history of science. This book is designed to help educators create more diverse and inclusive syllabi and curricula that engage and address a diverse, twenty-first-century student body composed of students from a growing variety of cultural, national, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. By providing clear, concise, and diverse methodologies and analytical focuses, Teaching Race in the European Renaissance: A Classroom Guide will help educators in all areas of Renaissance Studies overcome the anxiety and fear that can come with stepping outside of their expertise to engage with the topic of race, while also providing expert scholars of race in the Renaissance with new techniques and pedagogies to enhance the classroom experience of their students.

Considered by most scholars to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote, The Tempest is a stormy tale of betrayal and forgiveness. After being banished by his brother Antonio, Prospero harnesses the magic of an otherworldly island full of monsters and spirits to seek revenge. In reworking this play for a twenty-first-century audience, Kenneth Cavander focuses on the humor and the magic in the tale, much of which has largely escaped modern audiences in recent years. 

Cavander’s translation of The Tempest, which premiered at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in 2017, was written as part of the Play On! Shakespeare project, an ambitious undertaking from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival that commissioned new translations of 39 Shakespeare plays. These translations present the Bard’s work in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. Enlisting the talents of a diverse group of contemporary playwrights, screenwriters, and dramaturges from diverse backgrounds, this project reenvisions Shakespeare for the twenty-first century. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print—a new First Folio for a new era. 

In a respectful, but not reverent, adaptation, Kenneth Cavander reimagines Timon of Athens for the twenty-first century.  
 
Never performed in Shakespeare’s lifetime, Timon of Athens presents an intriguing puzzle for contemporary audiences. The disjointed plot and many gaps in the story have led scholars to believe it was a collaboration between Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton, a younger writer known for his satires, and productions for decades have faced choices about the most effective way to present the play. In this translation, Cavander acts as a third playwright in this collaborative process. Wrangling the voices of Shakespeare and Middleton on the page, Cavander unveils poetic lines and phrases that have sat stubbornly in the cobwebs, cutting these voices through the time barrier and into the world as we know it.

This translation was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present the work of "The Bard" in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print—a new First Folio for a new era. 

Shakespeare’s tragic story of revenge is reimagined for the twenty-first century.  

One of Shakespeare’s goriest plays, Titus Andronicus traces the fall of the Andronicus family in ancient Rome. Clinging to the ways of the past, Titus desperately seeks to remain loyal to the throne as his world crumbles around him. Amy Freed’s translation of Titus Andronicus is careful and meticulous, making small but mighty changes in moments that enhance the drama of each scene. Freed’s version gives this extraordinary play an even faster track on which to run.

This translation of Titus Andronicus was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present work from “The Bard” in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. Enlisting the talents of a diverse group of contemporary playwrights, screenwriters, and dramaturges from diverse backgrounds, this project reenvisions Shakespeare for the twenty-first century. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print—a new First Folio for a new era.

A critical edition and the first English translation of the French play.

April 1542 saw a massacre of epic proportions in the Luberon, in southeastern France, of its Waldensian population, who had been peacefully living there after they settled in a few centuries before. This massacre foreshadowed the wars of religion, which tore apart the kingdom for almost forty years. The Tragédie du Sac de Cabrières is the only play devoted to these events. This is a critical edition and English translation of the French play. Three critical editions of the play have been published in 1927, 1928, and 1998, and this new edition complements the previous works. This is the first English translation of the play and makes it available to an international audience of scholars and students of the early modern period.

This edition “translates” the moment of the play's creation, the representation of the event, and its importance in the narrative of religious persecutions in sixteenth-century France. It explains how history is dramatized through the creation of the scenic story and scenic play of Cabrières. and how the specific retelling of the events of Cabrières makes this a tool of historical narration, thus allowing the audience to participate in the unfolding of history before their eyes. Therefore, they become part of history, because it is played before their eyes so that they can not only witness it but also propagate the glory of the martyrs for future generations. This is not only a translation and a work of literary scholarship, it is an analysis of the literary, political, and religious production of this period, and a multidisciplinary analysis of Waldensianism in southeastern France.

Lillian Groag presents a new version of Troilus and Cressida that will resonate with contemporary audiences.

One of the most obscure plays in Shakespeare’s canon, Troilus and Cressida may also be the Bard’s darkest comedy. Exploring some of the events of Homer’s Iliad, the play juxtaposes the carnage of the Trojan War with a love story between its two titular characters. Lillian Groag’s translation brings this ancient world to modern audiences. Replacing the archaisms with new and accessible phrasing, Shakespeare’s lines regain their meaning and humor in the twenty-first century. This translation illuminates Troilus and Cressida as one of Shakespeare’s funniest, saddest, and most bitterly modern plays.

This translation of Troilus and Cressida was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present work from “The Bard” in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. Enlisting the talents of a diverse group of contemporary playwrights, screenwriters, and dramaturges from diverse backgrounds, this project reenvisions Shakespeare for the twenty-first century. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print—a new First Folio for a new era.

Alison Carey brings the confusion and mischief of Shakespeare’s comedy into the twenty-first century. 
 
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night centers on power and love. One of the most perennially produced of Shakespeare’s comedies, it talks about shipwrecked twins, gender-bending romance, and a bumper crop of fools, from the wise to the ridiculous. Modernizing the language of the play, Alison Carey’s translation revives the joy of this comedy, taking the archaic humor and renewing it for a contemporary audience. 
 
This translation of Twelfth Night was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present the work of “The Bard” in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. Enlisting the talents of a diverse group of contemporary playwrights, screenwriters, and dramaturges from diverse backgrounds, this project reenvisions Shakespeare for the twenty-first century. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print—a new First Folio for a new era.

Tim Slover brings fresh clarity to his contemporary version of Shakespeare’s final play. 

Playwright, poet, and novelist Tim Slover presents William Shakespeare’s and John Fletcher’s collaboration, The Two Noble Kinsmen, in a modern translation that retains all the wit, romance, and poetry of the original. For his last play, the Bard pulled out all the stops, creating a tragicomedy of heart’s yearning and deadly rivalry, and peopling it with heroes and heroines out of legend, including two of the greatest—and least known—female roles in the entire canon. Fletcher provided the music and dance. Slover brings it all vividly to life with fresh clarity and fiery passion in this new, contemporary version.

This translation was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present the work of "The Bard" in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print—a new First Folio for a new era.