Nero
Phillips, Stephen, 1864-1915Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019
Rating 3.1- Word count
- 99K words
- Chapters
- 10
Tags
English Originals Dramatic Literature Historical ReappraisalPolitical AllegoryFate and FortuneEmperor PortraitPower GameAntiheroComplex HumanityPower OppressionMoral DilemmaPlaySummary
Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Nero by Stephen PhillipsAuthor: Phillips, Stephen, 1864-1915,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Mar 8, 2008Editor's review
Stephen Phillips was a late Victorian English poet and playwright. This verse drama Nero retells the downfall of the Roman emperor Nero, with careful attention to rhythm and imagery, and serves as a useful sample of late nineteenth-century English verse drama. The work focuses not on historical scholarship but on the staged presentation of psychological and moral conflict, offering readers a sense of how classical subjects were romanticized in that era. For readers studying English literary history, the verse drama tradition, or comparing treatments of Nero across periods, this book provides an accessible text of moderate length. As a public-domain e-book, its main barrier is the English verse lines and dramatic format; readers are advised to first learn the outline of Nero's life before entering the text.Who it's for
A good fit for
- Literary readers interested in late Victorian English verse drama
- Scholars studying adaptations of classical subjects in modern English literature
- Advanced English learners who wish to encounter verse drama in the original English
Not a good fit for
- Historical researchers expecting rigorous documentation of Roman history
- Readers who prefer modern prose narration and are unaccustomed to verse drama format
- Beginners who need detailed annotations and scholarly introductions
Reading tips
- Read a brief chronology of Nero's life first, then enter the play; the character relationships will be clearer.
- Read aloud act by act, attending to the rhythm of the verse lines and the moral tension in the dialogue.
- After finishing, compare with classical accounts of Nero such as Tacitus to appreciate the choices made in literary adaptation.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
FAQ
Is this book a historical work or a literary work?
It is a verse drama by Stephen Phillips, a literary work that dramatizes the subject of Nero rather than a work of historical scholarship.How difficult is the English, and is it suitable for non-native readers?
The text is late nineteenth-century English verse drama, with literary sentence structures and vocabulary; non-native readers need a solid foundation in English reading and are advised to read with a dictionary and background materials.What are the features of the Project Gutenberg edition?
This edition is a free public-domain e-book, easy to access and search, but it usually contains no modern scholarly annotations or introduction, so readers must supplement background knowledge on their own.This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.
About the author
Phillips, Stephen, 1864-1915 Author · British · 1864–1915Stephen Phillips (1864–1915) was an English poet and playwright, best known for his verse dramas in the late Victorian period. His work Nero takes the Roman emperor Nero as its subject, developing a verse drama around a historical figure, while Primavera: Poems by Four Authors is a poetry collection he published together with three other authors, showing another side of his writing. Phillips's work generally carries on the tradition of Victorian verse drama, paying attention to the rhythm of verse and the shaping of dramatic scenes, and he holds a place in the British literary world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Because public information is limited, the details of his life and the full range of his writing are difficult to present completely, and later readers chiefly know his verse-drama style and literary standing through the works mentioned above.