Stags and Hens Stags and Hens Stags and Hens is a play written by Willy Russell. Like most of Willy Russell's work, the play discusses working class society in England in the 1970s. It makes comments about the working class' intellect, life, party habits and the exclusion of the different. It was originally written in 1978 for television and drama students of the then-Manchester Polytechnic, as an in-house television production. It was first published as a script in 1986 in a collection with Educating Rita and Blood Brothers. Russell adapted it for performance in 2008 as 'Stags and Hens - The Remix' at
The Brothers (Shirley play) offers his patrimony to his older brother—who refuses it. The supposedly dead Don Ramyres suddenly re-appears, to announce that he's merely been testing his sons; and he blesses the marriages of both young men. As is usually the case with Caroline era plays, "The Brothers" shows links and commonalities with various earlier works; Forsythe cites Webster's "The Devil's Law Case," Jonson's "The Staple of News", the Beaumont/Fletcher play "The Maid's Tragedy," and "The London Prodigal", among others. The Brothers (Shirley play) The Brothers is a Caroline era stage play, a comedy written by James Shirley. First published in 1653, "The