Explore Plays

Written in the early part of his career, this is one of William Shakespeare's most popular plays. It is about two "star crossed lovers" whose untimely deaths unite their feuding families. Today, the characters symbolize young love.

The Tragedy of Macbeth (commonly called Macbeth) is a tragedy by William Shakespeare about a man who commits regicide so as to become king and then commits further murders to maintain his power.

Pygmalion is a play based on the Greek myth of the same name. It tells the story of Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics (based on phonetician Henry Sweet), who makes a bet with his friend Colonel Pickering that he can successfully pass off a Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, as a refined society lady by teaching her how to speak with an upper class accent and training her in etiquette. In the process, Higgins and Doolittle grow close, but she ultimately rejects his domineering ways and declares she will marry Freddy Eynsford-Hill - a young, poor, gentleman. Pygmalion, the George Bernard Shaw play, is based on Pygmalion, a sculptor from Greek Mythology.

Faust: The First Part of the Tragedy (German: Faust. Eine Tragödie or Faust. Der Tragödie erster Teil) is the first part of Goethe's Faust. It was first published in 1808.

Waiting for Godot is a play in which two characters wait for someone named Godot, who never arrives.

America Hurrah is a satirical play by Jean-Claude van Itallie, which premiered at the Pocket Theatre in New York City on November 7, 1966. The play was an early expression of the burgeoning 1960s counterculture, expressing discontent with American consumerism and involvement in the Vietnam War. It consists of three one-act plays: "Interview," "TV," and "Motel."

The White Devil is a revenge tragedy that debuted in 1612 by English playwright John Webster (1580-1634). A notorious failure when it premiered, Webster complained the play was acted in the dead of winter before an unreceptive audience. The play's complexity, sophistication, and satire made it a poor fit with the repertory of Queen Anne's Men at the Red Bull Theatre, where it was first performed. It was successfully revived in 1630 by Queen Henrietta's Men at the Cockpit Theatre and published again in 1631. In 1707 Nahum Tate published an adaptation of Webster's play titled Injured Love.

The action takes place over the course of several weeks in August inside the three-story home of Beverly and Violet Weston outside Pawhuska, Oklahoma. The play is reminiscent of Alexandre Dumas, fils' play The Lady of the Camellias (a.k.a. "Camille"), centering as it does on the waning days of a sharp-tongued addicted dying woman who is surrounded by a large cast of eccentric lazy hangers-on revealed as various love-hate relationships unfold. The similarity is emphasized by links between the names of the main characters, "Violet" in Letts' play and "Violetta" in "La Traviata" (the opera made from Dumas' "Camille"). However, at the end of Letts' play, the man is dead and the woman lingers on.

The Threepenny Opera (German: Die Dreigroschenoper) is a play with musical elements by German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill, in collaboration with translator Elisabeth Hauptmann and set designer Caspar Neher. It was adapted from an 18th-century English ballad opera, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, and offers a Socialist critique of the capitalist world. It opened on 31 August 1928 at Berlin's Theater am Schiffbauerdamm.