Tragedy
There are Crimes and Crimes
Maurice, a playwright on the brink of success, feels so confident in his professional future he proposes to Jeanne, his mistress. However, u…
Philoctetes
Philoctetes is a play by Sophocles (Aeschylus and Euripides also each wrote a Philoctetes but theirs have not survived). The play was writte…
Antigone
A powerful artistic protest against tyranny, "Antigone" has been translated and adapted dozens of times, applied over and over thr…
Alcestis
Alcestis, queen of Pherae, is one of the noblest heroines in all of Greek drama. Her husband Admetus is the supposedly virtuous king of Pher…
The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus
Perhaps no play in William Shakespeare's body of work is more divisive than his first tragedy Titus Andronicus, wherein the titular Roman ge…
The Trojan Women
Described by modern playwright Ellen McLaughlin as "perhaps the greatest antiwar play ever written," "The Trojan Women,"…
The Tragedy of Mariam
The Tragedy of Mariam (1613) is the first original drama written in English by a woman. Elizabeth Cary drew on Jewish histories by Josephus …
Othello
Othello is a tragedy about the downfall of the titular hero, Othello, a Moorish general in the service of Venice. His cunning ensign, Iago, …
Cato
Joseph Addison is known mostly for his periodical, "The Spectator", written with his friend Richard Steele. But he found time to w…
Alexander's Bridge
Bartley Alexander is a construction engineer and world-renowned builder of bridges going through what's known today (but not in 1912) as a m…
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…
Prometheus Bound
Whether or not it was actually written by Aeschylus, as is much disputed, "Prometheus Bound" is a powerful statement on behalf of …
Medea
Medea is an ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and Medea and first produced in 431 BCE. The plot cente…
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.…
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…
The White Devil
John Webster's The White Devil (1612) is a Jacobean revenge tragedy, replete with adultery, murder, ghosts, and violence. The Duke of Brachi…
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…
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 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…
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…