Playwrights – Interesting Literature

10 of the Best Plays by Women Dramatists

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The first named writer in world history was a woman, Enheduanna. Yet as Virginia Woolf pointed out in A Room of One’s Own, Shakespeare’s hypothetical sister Judith would have found it impossible to make it in the world of Elizabethan theatre. But in fact, ever since the time of Shakespeare, women have found a way to write for the English (or American) stage, and have changed the way we think about theatre. In this pick of 10 of the greatest plays by women writers, we’ve tried to include a representative chronological range, from the early years of female dramatists through to the present day.

Five Fascinating Facts about Euripides

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Have all the nations of the world since his time created a dramatist worthy to hand him his slippers?’ Such was Goethe’s assessment of Euripides. Even Shakespeare, it would seem, wasn’t worthy of such a slipper-carrying honour where Euripides was concerned. Here are five curious facts about the life and work of one of the great tragedians of antiquity.

1. Of the eighty or so plays Euripides is thought to have written, only eighteen have survived.

Among the titles that we have lost – probably forever – are Aegeus, Antigone, Autolycus, Danae, Hippolytus Veiled, Ixion, Oedipus, Sciron, Theseus, and Thyestes.

A Very Short Biography of George Bernard Shaw

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was a prolific writer of plays but also of essays justifying his plays: the two (double-columned) volumes of his Plays and Prefaces both stretch to over 1,000 pages. In this post, we’re going to attempt to distill his busy life into a very short biography – and, we hope, an interesting one – covering some of the most fascinating aspects of the man known variously as Bernard Shaw, George Bernard Shaw, or even just plain ‘GBS’.

Five Fascinating Facts about Aphra Behn

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

1. Aphra Behn wrote one of the first novels in English.

However, which of her works qualifies for the title ‘early novel’ is a tricky issue. The mantle usually goes to Oroonoko, her 1689 ‘true history’ of a ‘Royal Slave’, about a prince from Africa who is sold into slavery in South America, organises an uprising against the slave-owners, and is defeated and executed. But Oroonoko is short – only around 70 pages – so is often excluded from the ranks of the ‘novel’ proper. However…

Five Fascinating Facts about Aristophanes

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

1. We have eleven of Aristophanes’ plays, but he is thought to have written more than forty.

Aristophanes is the earliest comic playwright, or at least the earliest whose work has survived so that we can read it. We are lucky to have The Knights, The Frogs, The Wasps, Lysistrata, Wealth, and the six other Aristophanes plays that have survived beyond antiquity, but in fact we have lost a host of others, including Seasons, Storks, Old Age, Centaur, and Merchant Ships, as well as the promisingly named Frying-Pan Men and Women in Tents. We can only guess at their contents (and how funny they were).