Love's Fire: Seven New Plays Inspired By Seven Shakespearean Sonnets

by Eric Bogosian (Contributor), William Finn (Contributor), John Guare (Contributor)

The fruit of an extraordinary project, Love's Fire reimagines seven of Shakespeare's immortal love sonnets as one-act plays by seven of the best playwrights in America. These short gems, paired with the sonnets that inspired them, are published here for the first time.

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Drama, Shakespeare

144 pages, Paperback

First published June 3, 1998

About the author

Eric Bogosian is an American actor, playwright, monologuist, novelist, and historian. Descended from Armenian-American immigrants, he grew up in Watertown and Woburn, Massachusetts, and attended the University of Chicago and Oberlin College. His numerous plays include Talk Radio (1987) and subUrbia (1994), which were adapted to film by Oliver Stone and Richard Linklater, respectively, with Bogosian starring in the former.
Bogosian has appeared in plays, films, and television series throughout his career. His television roles include Captain Danny Ross in Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2006–2010), Lawrence Boyd on Billions (2017–2018), and Gil Eavis on Succession (since 2018). He also starred as Arno in the Safdie brothers' film Uncut Gems (2019). He has also been involved in New York City ballet production, and has written several novels as well as the historical nonfiction Operation Nemesis (2015).

Reviews

[Faith-Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book to pieces! The General of Hot Desire is one of my favorite plays. It's just so well-thought out. I would recommend this book of plays to fans of Shakespeare's sonnets. It heightens the enjoyment!

[Kay · Rating 1 out of 5]

I may be biased, but I feel like putting Eric Bogosian's play first kind of ruined everything that came afterward for me. The play he wrote was pretty funny (of course), and for a second it had me literally like, "Did Eric Bogosian invent TomShiv??" (relationship between two characters from the HBO series Succession which was incredibly toxic but also tragic because the love WAS there). Every other play felt like something that was just slapped together to meet a deadline, which was disappointing to me as a theatre lover and particularly as a Shakespeare lover. Most of this book was boring, or just plain bad, and I wouldn't recommend it unless you're here to just read Eric Bogosian's play.

[Trin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag; shockingly my favorites were Eric Bogosian's comedic piece and Tony Kushner's pretentious but electrifying (or electrifyingly pretentious) offering. Third place for John Guare's metafictional finale. Hamish Linklater was in this! In Kushner's play he plays a character named Billygoat whose defining characteristic is he is TOO SEXY. Correct.

[even · Rating 4 out of 5]

justice for shmendrick

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

An extremely interesting sampler of several playwrights' very different styles operating within very similar themes. Though the collection is weighted more toward comedies (and the less comedic are rather stylized), the vast variety of interpretations would make it difficult for me to believe that one could flip through without finding at least one of the pieces enjoyable. For myself, said piece was John Guare's The General of Hot Desire. I found it very reminiscent of Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses stylistically—he blends some chillingly beautiful (modern) language with creative staging and structure and manages to breathe life back into religious mythology without taking the whole ordeal too seriously. Overall, a creative concept and a fun, light read!

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like an anthology of short stories, some plays in this collection were more to my tastes than others. I loved John Guare’s “The General of Hot Desire.” I also loved Tony Kushner’s “Terminating or Lass Meine Schmerzen Nicht Verloren Sein, or Ambivalence.” “140” by Marsha Norman and “Hydraulics Phat Like Mean” by Ntozake Shange didn’t work for me on the page. I read the collection for Wendy Wasserstein’s “Waiting for Philip Glass” and I found it uninvolving.

(Three questions about this play: Are the seven plays designed as one evening’s entertainment? Or are the producers to pick and choose which plays to produce? Or do all seven plays over two nights?)

[Laura Ferrari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yey to Bogosian's Bitter Sauce, Wasserstein's Waiting for Philip Glass and Tony Kushner's Ambivalence. Two thumbs down to John Guare's The General of Hot Desire. Hit the snooze bar on that one.