Tragedy
Prometheus Bound
Whether or not it was actually written by Aeschylus, as is much disputed, "Prometheus Bound" is a powerful statement on behalf of …
Hamlet
Hamlet is commonly regarded as one of the greatest plays ever written. Drawing on Danish chronicles and the Elizabethan vogue for revenge tr…
The Good Soldier
The Good Soldier (1915) "... is set just before World War I and chronicles the tragedies of the lives of two seemingly perfect couples.…
The History of Troilus and Cressida
The History of Troilus and Cressida has long baffled critics and audiences alike for its inconsistent tone, which ranges from bawdy comedy t…
Dido, Queen of Carthage
Dido, Queen of Carthage is the earliest of Christopher Marlowe's known plays, possibly written while he was still a student at Corpus Christ…
Hedda Gabler
Hedda Gabler has just returned from her honeymoon. She has married out of ennui, and is already heartily sick of her husband, who is a plodd…
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is an early tragedy by William Shakespeare about two teenage "star-cross'd lovers" whose "untimely deaths&qu…
The Persians
This is one of the few Greek tragedies that deals with historical events rather than mythological ones. The elders of the Persian court awa…
Ghosts
Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts was first published in 1881 and staged in 1882, and like his earlier play A Doll's House, profoundly shocked his conte…
Berenice
Titus, emperor of Rome, wants to marry Berenice, queen of Palestine, but decides that Rome will not be able to handle having him marry a for…
Electra
Sophocles' play dramatizes the aftermath of Agamemnon's murder by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. His daughter Electra is hu…
Antigone
This is the final installment in Sophocles' Theban Plays, following Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus. Oedipus's daughter Antigone deliber…
Agamemnon
The play Agamemnon details the homecoming of Agamemnon, King of Argos, from the Trojan War. Waiting at home for him is his wife, Clytemnestr…
Philoctetes
Sophocles' play recounts an episode from the Trojan War, in which the wily Odysseus and Achilles' son Neoptolemus travel to a remote island …
Ion
This drama, set in Ancient Greece, was written by a Victorian lawyer who was a close friend of Charles Dickens. When collected into book for…
The Cenci
Written in 1819, but not first staged for over hundred years after it was written due to controversial themes of incest and parricide, it wa…
Zastrozzi, A Romance
“Would Julia of Strobazzo’s heart was reeking on my dagger!”From the asthmatic urgency of its opening abduction scene to the Satanic defianc…
A Florentine Tragedy
Two short fragments: an unfinished and a lost play. A Florentine Tragedy, left in a taxi (not a handbag), is Wilde’s most successful attempt…
Adrienne Lecouvreur
This drama was written in 1848 for the great French tragedienne, Rachel, by Eugene Scribe and his writing partner, Ernest Legouve. Scribe is…
Thyestes
Thyestes is a Latin verse tragedy written by the Roman playwright Seneca the Younger, here translated into English. It is based on the Greek…