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Plays set in ancient Greece

  • Troilus and CressidaTroilus and Cressida, written by William Shakespeare probably in 1602, arrives with a strange and unsettling preface. One printing of the 1609 quarto…
  • Medea (play)Medea, the ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides, opens in the immediate aftermath of a betrayal. A woman who gave up her homeland, her family, and her…
  • The Birds (play)The Birds by Aristophanes opened at the City Dionysia in Athens in 414 BC, and two middle-aged men were stumbling across a hillside wilderness with a pet…
  • A Midsummer Night's DreamA Midsummer Night's Dream opens in Athens, four days before a wedding, with a father dragging his daughter before a duke and invoking a law that would see…
  • The PersiansThe Persians, written by Aeschylus, holds a distinction that no other surviving text can claim: it is the oldest piece of ancient Greek drama still in…
  • The FrogsThe Frogs opens with Dionysus cutting off his own slave's joke before it even lands. Xanthias is hauling his master's baggage and reaches for crude toilet…
  • The Two Noble KinsmenWilliam Shakespeare wrote The Two Noble Kinsmen in 1613 or 1614, his final play before he retired to Stratford-upon-Avon, where he died in 1616.
  • Oedipus RexOedipus Rex opens with a city dying. Thebes is consumed by plague, and its king stands before his people vowing to hunt down the murderer responsible.
  • Antigone (Anouilh play)Jean Anouilh's Antigone opened at the Théâtre de l'Atelier in Paris on the 6th of February, 1944, while German soldiers patrolled the streets outside.
  • Pericles, Prince of TyrePericles, Prince of Tyre arrived in print in 1609 as a quarto edition and was reprinted five times before 1635, making it one of the most popular plays of…
  • The BacchaeThe Bacchae ends with a mother cradling what she believes is the head of a mountain lion, only to realize it belongs to her own son.
  • Prometheus BoundPrometheus Bound opens with four characters on stage at once, a staging so unusual that no other surviving ancient Greek tragedy matches it.
  • The Comedy of ErrorsThe Comedy of Errors is one of William Shakespeare's earliest plays, and it gave the English language something most plays never do: a common idiom.