The 222 Greatest Plays

For a modern reader, the ancient drama of Oedipus Rex can be startlingly accessible. There is little of the struggle through the language that one experiences with even more recent plays, such as Shakespeare's.... Critique • Quotes • Text • Buy

It can be difficult to read Edward II today as a Christopher Marlow play. One keeps sliding into thinking of it as minor Shakespeare—you know, all those early plays with kings and numerals in their titles. Partly this is a matter of.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

Possibly Shakespeare's best-known play. Everyone knows the story of star-crossed lovers who defied their families—the feuding Capulets and Montagues—and ended their lives tragically. Romeo and Juliet is a play with.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

I once read all Shakespeare's historical plays in chronological order. Not in the order he wrote them, but in the order of the historical events they supposedly relate. Like many before me, I discovered that (1) the historical.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

Hamlet is such a famous play—so much the great drama, the one that everyone in the world can quote at least six words from—that we usually can't see how strange it is that this should be so. Look at the.... Critique • Quotes • At the movies • Buy

A straightforward play really, about a dysfunctional family. People thinks it's cosmic because of that annoying storm in the middle. That's not my opinion but the summary of Jonathan Miller, given in a television interview.... Critique • Quotes • Text • Buy

Perhaps the most shocking thing about 'Tis Pity She's a Whore is that it still shocks. John Ford's plays were written in a period of increasingly scandalous theatre. After Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

It is hard to understand exactly why Tartuffe was once attacked by religious authorities. Molière's target is the title character who presents a pious outer appearance to hide his scheming for material gain. Shouldn't.... Critique • Quotes • Translations • Buy

The Misanthrope reads at first like one of those overheated old Russian novels in which everyone talks and talks, all very excitedly, while the action happens elsewhere. It's certainly Molière's most reflective play.... Critique • Quotes • Translations • Buy

Your first go at The Country Wife may leave you mystified. Especially mixed up over all the criss-crossing plots involving characters who can scarcely be told apart. They're all randy, witticism-spouting, wealthy layabouts.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

Two things keep me from dismissing the drama She Stoops to Conquer as severely overrated. One: I don't recall seeing it performed. Live on stage it may be hilarious for all I know. And two: if it's overrated, it's been long.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

On the early covers of Thornton Wilder's play, Our Town, a small community is shown perched on the side of a lofty hill or mountain, giving the illustration a kind of aspirational feeling. What isn't immediately clear.... Critique • Quotes • At the movies • Buy

What may be most surprising about Lillian Hellman's play The Little Foxes is it's such an absorbing piece of drama despite being about a business deal. The Hubbard siblings—brothers Oscar and Ben and sister Regina.... Critique • Quotes • At the movies • Buy