The best plays by women 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 […]
An introduction to a classic play The Frogs is one of Aristophanes’ most curious plays. It’s the only Greek play which we know for a fact was popular enough to have been given a repeat performance. It’s also notable for its discussion of the nature of theatre – an early […]
An introduction to a classic revenge tragedy The Spanish Tragedy is one of the lesser-known gems among surviving Elizabethan drama – at least, it’s less well-known than the works of Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. Its influence on later plays in the ‘revenge tragedy’ genre was considerable – most notably, […]
The best plays of Henrik Ibsen Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) is undoubtedly the most famous Norwegian playwright who has ever lived. He wrote a number of classic plays in a variety of modes and genres, so in this post we’ve limited ourselves to five of Ibsen’s very best plays. Hedda Gabler. […]
An introduction to a forgotten masterpiece Venice Preserv’d has been called a ‘masterpiece’ by the theatre critic Michael Billington and ‘the last great verse play in the English language’ by the fascinating critic and provocateur Kenneth Tynan. Yet it’s rarely read, studied, analysed, or staged nowadays. But this brief introduction […]