Tragedy
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…
Adelgitha
The second original tragedy written by Gothic writer Matthew Lewis, Adelgitha; or, The Fruits of a Single Error is a markedly more serious a…
The Perjur'd Husband
Centlivre's first play: a tragedy. Star-crossed lovers, one married and the other betrothed elsewhere. Secret letters gone astray, gender ch…
The Steel Hammer
A large inheritance greatly transforms the lives of three people: a good man, who would have inherited at least a part of the fortune if his…
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…
The Skin Game
A small play in three acts. A kind of comic tragedy. The plot tells the story of the interaction between two very different families in rura…
Iphigenia
Racine's version of the time-honored story of Iphigenia was acted for the first time in 1674. The model upon which it is shaped is the "…
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…
Henry IV, A Tragedy
A talented actor and historian falls off his horse in a historical pageant while playing the role of Henry IV. When he comes to, he believes…
Tristan and Isolde
The Libretto of Richard Wagner's music drama Tristan and Isolde, translated into English by John P Jackson, is here presented as a spoken dr…
The Broken Heart
The Broken Heart stands next to ‘Tis Pity She's a Whore as Ford's most popular drama. All is not right in Sparta because of, as is typical i…
Agamemnon
Agamemnon is a verse tragedy of 1012 lines written by the Roman playwright Seneca the Younger in the 1st Century CE and based on the Greek L…
King Leir and His Three Daughters
King Leir and His Three Daughters is a poignant Elizabethan tragedy that explores the themes of loyalty, betrayal, and the complexities of f…
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…
Pelléas and Mélisande
Pelléas and Mélisande is a Symbolist play by the Belgian playwright and author Maurice Maeterlinck about the forbidden, doomed…
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…
The Gamester
The Gamester is Edward Moore's most famous work, and while it has fallen into relative obscurity in the last century, at the time it marked …
The Bacchae
Euripides' Bacchae tells of Dionysus, the God, come to the city of Thebes, there to drive mad those who refuse participation in his ecstatic…
Bajazet
"The time to which this tragedy relates is much later than that of any other of Racine's historical plays. The capture of Babylon (or r…