The role of Hedda Gabler, the female lead and title-role in Henrik Ibsen’s celebrated 1890 play Hedda Gabler, has been called ‘the female Hamlet’, because, as the Prince of Denmark is the role many male actors (and quite a few female ones) have wanted to play, so women in the […]
Although it is often conflated in the popular imagination with the much-loved musical it inspired, George Bernard Shaw’s 1912 play Pygmalion is somewhat different from the romantic comedy My Fair Lady. Let’s take a closer look at Shaw’s play and some of its prominent themes. Before we offer an analysis […]
Murder in the Cathedral is often called T. S. Eliot’s first play, but technically, it wasn’t even his second. But before we address this, let’s take a closer look at the play itself. Murder in the Cathedral is probably Eliot’s best-known play, and his only completed work of historical drama.
Waiting for Godot is one of the most important plays of the twentieth century. But analysing its significance is not easy, because Beckett’s play represents a major departure from many conventions and audience expectations regarding the theatre. Beginning life as a French play which Beckett wrote in the late 1940s, […]
Agamemnon is the first play in the Oresteia, the only trilogy of Greek tragedies that has survived intact from classical times. The trilogy is also Aeschylus’ masterpiece: more so than any of his other surviving plays, the Oresteia moves Greek drama into new directions. Indeed, we might go so far […]