Introductory Note: Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Introductory note on Shakespeare's Sonnets (Wikipedia)

Introductory note on Shakespeare's Sonnets (Wikipedia)
The most concentrated beauty of Shakespeare's unbounded creative genius is found in his sonnets. Written as personal messages to friends and not intended for publication, they reveal the inner Shakespeare more truly than do any of his great plays. (Volume 40, Harvard Classics) Sonnets entered in the London Stationers' Register, May 20, 1609.
Introductory note on Epictetus (Volume 2, Harvard Classics)
When a man is invited to a banquet he must be satisfied with the dishes put before him. Epictetus reasoned that man should be content with what life offers, and in serenity find happiness. (Volume 2, Harvard Classics)
Flowers often tire of their stationary life and sometimes at night frolic away to a ball in a beautiful castle. Thus a fanciful story-teller accounts for their drooping condition in the morning. (Volume 17, Harvard Classics)
Introductory note on Hans Christian Andersen (Volume 17, Harvard Classics)
Introductory note on Socrates and Plato (Volume 2, Harvard Classics)
Condemned for impiety, Socrates felt so justified in the virtue of his past action that instead of receiving a death sentence, he told the judges he should be maintained at public expense as a public benefactor. (Volume 2, Harvard Classics)
Chessboards on which, of their own accord, black pieces played against white; chariots that swiftly turned hither and yon without a driver; pots in which a coward's meat would not cook --- all these are woven into bewitching stories. (Volume 32, Harvard Classics)
Introductory note on Ernest Renan (Volume 32, Harvard Classics)
The best part of the Divine Comedy for a few minutes' reading is the "Inferno." There the reader finds the most vivid descriptions, the most startling and unforgettable pictures. (Volume 20, Harvard Classics) Dante born May 15, 1265.
Introductory note on Dante Alighieri (Volume 20, Harvard Classics)
Introductory note on Robert Burns (Volume 38, Harvard Classics)
Edward Jenner found that disease in the heel of a horse, transmitted through a cow to the dairy attendants, was an agent in making human beings immune from smallpox. His amazing experiments inaugurated a new epoch. (Volume 38, Harvard Classics) Edward Jenner makes his first vaccination May 14, 1796.
Two dogs fell a-gossiping about their masters and about a dog's life among the humble Scotch folk. Each "rejoic'd they werena men but dogs; an' each took aff his several way." (Volume 6, Harvard Classics)
Introductory note on Robert Burns (Volume 6, Harvard Classics)
The manuscripts of many of the best poems of Rossetti were buried with his wife. Friends prevailed upon him to allow them to be exhumed --- and these poems, once buried with the dead, are now a treasure of the living. (Volume 42, Harvard Classics) Rossetti born May 12, 1828.
Introductory note on Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Wikipedia)
Introductory note on John Webster (Volume 47, Harvard Classics)
Latest news abroad in Malfi: The Duchess has run off with her butler. But this happened before the days of newspapers or radio, so Webster made from it an exciting play. (Volume 47, Harvard Classics)
Introductory note on Sir Walter Raleigh (Volume 33, Harvard Classics)
Savages who drink the powdered bones of their dead mixed with wine, Amazons who hold riotous festivals, the worship of golden statues, all the primitive wonders of Guiana are described by the famous Elizabethan gallant, Sir Walter Raleigh. (Volume 33, Harvard Classics)
Introductory note on J. C. Friedrich von Schiller (Volume 32, Harvard Classics)
Who has ever thought the arts had anything to do with freedom? Schiller did. Forced by a German noble to enter a military school, he escaped. Struggling to achieve freedom, he wrote a series of letters on the relation of art to freedom. (Volume 32, Harvard Classics) Friedrich von Schiller died May 9, 1805.
Introductory note on Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Volume 18, Harvard Classics)
Lady Teazle hides in haste when her husband is unexpectedly announced. Situations which set many tongues wagging and fed the fire of gossip in Scandal-land, startle the reader. (Volume 18, Harvard Classics) "School for Scandal" produced at Drury Lane, May 8, 1777.
A haughty aristocrat, who murdered his wife for enjoying life more than he, now bargaining for a new bride; a crafty bishop begging and bullying his heirs for a tomb richer than that of his rival; these are subjects of Browning's pen. (Volume 42, Harvard Classics) Robert Browning born May 7, 1812.
Introductory note on Robert Browning (the Ridpath Library of Universal Literature)
Introductory note on Benvenuto Cellini (Volume 31, Harvard Classics)
"Benvenuto, the figure cannot succeed in bronze," so spoke the patron Duke. Cellini, stung to fury, passionately burst out: "You do not understand art." Feverishly he began the casting of the statue --- but read his own account of the tilt with the Duke. (Volume 31, Harvard Classics)