Tragedy
Saint Augustin
What, indeed, is more romantic than this wandering life of rhetorician and student that the youthful Augustin led, from Thagaste to Carthage…
Julius Caesar
When Julius Caesar returns to Rome from conquering the Gauls, Cassius and his friends are worried that he will try to seize power and make h…
Hamlet
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. Set in the Kingdom of Denmark, the play dramatizes the revenge…
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…
Prometheus Bound
"Prometheus Bound" is the only complete tragedy of the Prometheia trilogy, traditionally assumed to be the work of Aeschylus. Jupi…
The Tragedy of King Richard II
Billed by scholars as the first part of the all-encompassing Henriad, Richard II is a richly satisfying probe into the inner workings of mon…
The Persians
The earliest of Aeschylus' plays to survive is "The Persians" (Persai), performed in 472 BC and based on experiences in Aeschylus'…
Ajax
Ajax is a Greek tragedy written in the 5th century BC. The date of Ajax's first performance is unknown and may never be found, but most scho…
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…
Frankenstein
Victor Frankenstein discovers the secret of animating lifeless matter and, by assembling body parts, creates the monster who has no name in …
The Trojan Women
Described by modern playwright Ellen McLaughlin as "perhaps the greatest antiwar play ever written," "The Trojan Women,"…
Electra
Electra or Elektra is a Greek tragedy by Sophocles. Its date is not known, but various stylistic similarities with the Philoctetes (409 BC) …
The Master Builder
Henrik Ibsen's The Master Builder, first published in 1892, is about architect Halvard Solness, who despite personal tragedy (including the …
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.…
Hecuba
Like Euripides' Trojan Women, this play takes place after the sack of Troy. Hecuba, widow of King Priam, suffers the loss of her daughter Po…
Electra
Sophocles' play dramatizes the aftermath of Agamemnon's murder by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. His daughter Electra is hu…
Prometheus Bound
Whether or not it was actually written by Aeschylus, as is much disputed, "Prometheus Bound" is a powerful statement on behalf of …
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…
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…