George Peele

The Battle of Alcazar revolves around the theme of succession to the Moroccan throne and the fatal interference of Portugal in the conflict. The play occupies a unique place in the English Literature in that it is the first piece to usher Morocco to the London stage. The treatment of the matter of Morocco won the play immediate success and unprecedented popularity among Elizabethan audiences, which inspired a number of playwrights, poets and novelists to employ Morocco as a subject of matter in their literary creativity. The introduction to the present edition of The Battle of Alcazar looks at Anglo-Moroccan relations in the sixteenth century, with particular focus on the historical conditions that made possible the entry of Morocco in English Literature. Departing from readings that interpret the action as an allegorical conflict between good and evil, the introduction presents the play as a text which, because of political and ideological tensions, is fraught with inherent thematic and structural contradictions and haunted by counter-hegemonic voices. All this makes The Battle of Alcazar a rich and complex text and entitle it to be admitted into the cannon of great drama. -- Back cover.

First published in 1908, The Old Wives' Tale affirms the integrity of ordinary lives as it tells the story of the Baines sisters—shy, retiring Constance and defiant, romantic Sophia—over the course of nearly half a century. Bennett traces the sisters' lives from childhood in their father's drapery shop in provincial Bursley, England, during the mid-Victorian era, through their married lives, to the modern industrial age, when they are reunited as old women. The setting moves from the Five Towns of Staffordshire to exotic and cosmopolitan Paris, while the action moves from the subdued domestic routine of the Baines household to the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War.

This is a pastoral comedy written to honor Elizabeth I... In the play, Paris is arraigned before Jupiter for having assigned the apple to Venus. Diana, with whom the final decision rests, gives the apple to none of the competitors but to a nymph called Eliza, a reference to Queen Elizabeth I. --Wikipedia.com.