Tragedy
Phaedra
In the court of Louis XIV, adaptations of Greek tragedies were very popular. This play, heavily influenced by Euripides' Hippolytus, deals w…
Strange Love
A Strange Love: A Novel of Abnormal Passion was first published in French as Escal-Vigor in 1899, the English translation nine years later. …
A Florentine Tragedy
Two short fragments: an unfinished and a lost play. A Florentine Tragedy, left in a taxi (not a handbag), is Wilde’s most successful attempt…
Women Beware Women
Thomas Middleton's masterful 17th century tragedy is packed with adultery, incest, intrigue, revenge, and inventive methods for murder. Lean…
In the Village of Viger
These ten superb short stories of Duncan Campbell Scott, published in 1896, portray humorous, farcical, and tragic aspects of life in the fi…
Orestes
In accordance with the advice of the god Apollo, Orestes has killed his mother Clytemnestra to avenge the death of his father Agamemnon at h…
Brand
Inflamed by what he saw as his Norwegian homeland's shocking betrayal of Denmark after the Prussian invasion of Danish territory, Ibsen wrot…
Amy Foster
Classic shortish story by Conrad that relates his self-thought alienation from British society, as a young foreign man survives a shipwreck …
All for Love
All for Love is widely considered to be John Dryden's finest work, dramatic or otherwise. A tragedy written in blank verse, it retells the s…
Iphigenia in Aulis
Iphigenia in Aulis (Ancient Greek: Ἰφιγένεια ἐν Αὐλίδι) is the last extant work of the playwright Euripides. Written between 408, after the …
Ivanov
Nicolai (anglicised Nicholas in this translation) Ivanov, a middle-aged public servant, is unhappy. His wife Anna, disinherited by her famil…
Vera
Vera; or, The Nihilists is Oscar Wilde's first play, a melodramatic tragedy that unfolds against the backdrop of 19th-century Russia. The st…
The Duchess of Padua
Guido Ferranti, a young man, travels to Padua with his friend Ascanio after receiving a mysterious letter from a stranger, claiming to know …
The Cenci
Written in 1819, but not first staged for over hundred years after it was written due to controversial themes of incest and parricide, it wa…
Philoctetes
Philoctetes is a play by Sophocles (Aeschylus and Euripides also each wrote a Philoctetes but theirs have not survived). The play was writte…
The Father
The Father is a naturalistic drama by Swedish playwright August Strindberg. The central conflict is between the Captain and his wife Laura a…
Thyestes
Thyestes is a Latin verse tragedy written by the Roman playwright Seneca the Younger, here translated into English. It is based on the Greek…
The Furies
The Oresteia is a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus concerning the end of the curse on the House of Atreus. The name derives f…
Agamemnon
The play Agamemnon details the homecoming of Agamemnon, King of Argos, from the Trojan War. Waiting at home for him is his wife, Clytemnestr…
Oedipus
Oedipus is a Latin verse tragedy written by the Roman playwright Seneca the Younger. It is based on the Greek legend of Oedipus and his marr…