By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
We thought it was about time we offered some of our favourite curious facts about plays and drama, so what follows are twenty of the funniest or most fascinating nuggets from the theatre. So if you’ve taken your seat, we’ll dim the lights and raise the curtain on these interesting theatre facts.
Fun facts about the ancient Greek playwright
1. Of the ninety or so plays Aeschylus is thought to have written, only seven have survived. And one of those we cannot be absolutely sure he wrote: scholars have questioned whether Prometheus Bound, one of the seven surviving plays attributed to him, is actually his work. The six plays that we can confidently attribute to Aeschylus are: The Persians (one of the few Greek tragedies to be based on recent real-life events), Seven Against Thebes, The Suppliants, and the Oresteia trilogy, comprising Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
One of the most celebrated tragedies of ancient Greece was Oedipus Rex, Sophocles’ play about the Theban king who unwittingly killed his father and married his mother. In order to become King of Thebes, Oedipus had had to solve a famous riddle – or should that be riddles?