Tragedy
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…
Madame Bovary
Published in book form in April 1857, the novel focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her mea…
Phaedra
In the court of Louis XIV, adaptations of Greek tragedies were very popular. This play, heavily influenced by Euripides' Hippolytus, deals w…
The Revenger's Tragedy
"When the bad bleeds, then is the tragedy good." The Revenger's Tragedy is a bloody Jacobean drama centering on Vindici, whose bel…
The Persians
The earliest of Aeschylus' plays to survive is "The Persians" (Persai), performed in 472 BC and based on experiences in Aeschylus'…
A Doll's House
Published in 1879, this play was a bombshell, exposing the tragic hypocrisy of Victorian like middle class marriage. The play is significant…
Electra
Sophocles' play dramatizes the aftermath of Agamemnon's murder by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. His daughter Electra is hu…
Electra
Electra or Elektra is a Greek tragedy by Sophocles. Its date is not known, but various stylistic similarities with the Philoctetes (409 BC) …
Hamlet
Hamlet is commonly regarded as one of the greatest plays ever written. Drawing on Danish chronicles and the Elizabethan vogue for revenge tr…
Iphigenia in Aulis
Iphigenia in Aulis (Ancient Greek: Ἰφιγένεια ἐν Αὐλίδι) is the last extant work of the playwright Euripides. Written between 408, after the …
Rosmersholm
Rosmersholm is a play written in 1886 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. In the estimation of many critics the piece is Ibsen's masterwor…
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…
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…
Frankenstein
Victor Frankenstein discovers the secret of animating lifeless matter and, by assembling body parts, creates the monster who has no name in …
Orestes
In accordance with the advice of the god Apollo, Orestes has killed his mother Clytemnestra to avenge the death of his father Agamemnon at h…
Amy Foster
Classic shortish story by Conrad that relates his self-thought alienation from British society, as a young foreign man survives a shipwreck …
The Duchess of Padua
Guido Ferranti, a young man, travels to Padua with his friend Ascanio after receiving a mysterious letter from a stranger, claiming to know …
Alcestis
Alcestis is the earliest surviving play by Euripides. Alcestis, the devoted wife of King Admetus, has agreed to die in his place, and at the…
Ivanov
Nicolai (anglicised Nicholas in this translation) Ivanov, a middle-aged public servant, is unhappy. His wife Anna, disinherited by her famil…
Vera
Vera; or, The Nihilists is Oscar Wilde's first play, a melodramatic tragedy that unfolds against the backdrop of 19th-century Russia. The st…