Stories in Short

Parted from his beloved Julia, Proteus follows his friend Valentine to Milan, where he meets the bewitching Silvia.

Valentine and Proteus are the two gentlemen in question, from Verona in northern Italy. However, as Elizabeth Bennet might say, one had got all the gentlemanliness, and the other all the appearance of it...

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The sly cat hatches a plan to get all the benefits of domestic life without any of the responsibilities.

In this short tale by Rudyard Kipling, we learn how the Cat tried to get all the comforts of domestic life without doing any work in return.

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Her enemies made Jane stronger, but her lover struck a blow from which she might never recover.

Rebellious Jane needed all her fiery spirit to carry her through a loveless childhood, and a shocking discovery at the altar.

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Macbeth becomes wound in spells, and finds that one murder leads to another.

Macbeth was a real Scottish king, succeeding Duncan I in 1040 after defeating him in battle. But Shakespeare’s thought-provoking tragedy, one of the greatest stories in all English literature, is almost entirely fiction.

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The Prince of Denmark is bound to avenge his father’s murder.

The Danish Prince came home to find his father mysteriously dead, and his uncle ready to marry his mother the Queen, and claim the crown.

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Is an old family legend being used as a cover for a very modern murder?

Local superstition about a family legend going back to the English Civil War (1642-1651) blames the death of Charles Baskerville on a giant, ghostly hound, but Sherlock Holmes doesn’t seem to be able to take it seriously.

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