Tragedy
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 Tragedy of King Lear
Known for its heartrending emotion and shocking violence, The Tragedy of King Lear is seen as one of Shakespeare's towering masterpieces. It…
The Suppliant Maidens
The Suppliants, also called The Suppliant Maidens, or The Suppliant Women, is a play by Aeschylus. It was probably first performed sometime …
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is an early tragedy by William Shakespeare about two teenage "star-cross'd lovers" whose "untimely deaths&qu…
Cleone
This is a play in 5 acts. From the playwright's preface: "An imperfect hint towards the Fable of the following Tragedy was taken from t…
Paolo and Francesca
The tragic and adulterous story of Paolo and Francesca was originally immortalized by Dante in his "Divine Comedy". Since then, t…
Esther
Esther — the first of Racine's two sacred dramas — is a tragedy in the Aristotelian acceptation of the term, as being concerned with a great…
Little Eyolf
Henrik Ibsen's 1894 play Little Eyolf tells the story of the Allmers family: the father, Alfred, his wife Rita, their crippled nine-year-old…
Creditors
Creditors is a thought-provoking tragicomedy by August Strindberg that explores the complexities of love, betrayal, and the human psyche. Se…
Faust I
Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend; a highly successful scholar, but also dissatisfied with his life, and so makes a deal w…
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…
The Thebaid
"The reign of Louis XIV. in France, like the age of Pericles at ancient Athens, was remarkable for literary excellence no less than for…
Life is a Dream
Life Is a Dream (La vida es sueño) is a Spanish-language verse drama by Pedro Calderón de la Barca. First published in 1636, 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…
Oroonoko
Based on Aphra Behn's 1688 novel (which is one of the earliest novels in the English language), Thomas Southerne's Oroonoko is seen by schol…
Pierre and Luce
Pierre and Luce were an unlikely young pair who found themselves in the chaos of Paris during the war; Pierre, the shy, recently conscripted…
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…
Philoctetes
Sophocles' play recounts an episode from the Trojan War, in which the wily Odysseus and Achilles' son Neoptolemus travel to a remote island …
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…
Andromache
In this tragedy [about part of the aftermath of the Trojan War], which made its appearance in 1667, there is a more intricate plot than is u…