Tragedy
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…
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 Maid's Tragedy
Beaumont and Fletcher's The Maid's Tragedy (first published 1619) is a sensational Jacobean sex tragedy. When gentleman soldier Melantius re…
Paolo and Francesca
The tragic and adulterous story of Paolo and Francesca was originally immortalized by Dante in his "Divine Comedy". Since then, t…
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…
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…
Mithridates
Another tragedy by Racine, based on the historical character and career of Mithridates circa 63 BCE. Closing with sorrow and lamentation and…
The Master Builder
Halvard Solness is a master architect who has ruthlessly forged a preëminent career without regard for the feelings of those around him…
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 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…
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…
A Bill of Divorcement
A Bill of Divorcement describes a day in the lives of a middle-aged British woman named Margaret "Meg" Fairfield, her daughter Syd…
A Yorkshire Tragedy
A Yorkshire Tragedy: Not So New as Lamentable and True (1619) tells the gruesome tale of Walter Calverly who stabbed his wife and killed his…
The Lords of Ellingham
Although written in 1839, this Victorian-era drama contains the sort of extreme violence and lack of a firm moral compass that is usually as…
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…
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…
Beyond the Horizon
Beyond the Horizon is a 1920 play written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. It was O'Neill's first full-length work, and the winner of …
Ghosts
Ghosts is a powerful three-act play by Henrik Ibsen that delves into the complexities of family, societal expectations, and the haunting leg…
Gretchen
About as far from a rollicking Gilbert and Sullivan musical as you can get: this is Gilbert's tragic version of Goethe's Faust. - Summary b…
Romeo and Juliet
Two households, both alike in dignity,In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,Where civil blood makes…