An overview of Romantic Drama
The early nineteenth century saw playwrights wrestling with the tension between the highly disciplined neoclassical tradition they had inherited and the emotional, individualistic, often nationalist energies of Romanticism. Schiller, Goethe, Hugo, and Pushkin produced verse dramas that aimed not at three-unity decorum but at sweeping historical scope and lyric intensity. The result was uneven on stage but enormous in influence.
Plays from this era (82)
- The Storm — by Aleksandr Nikolaevich Ostrovsky
- Boris Godunov: a drama in verse — by Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
- Becket and other plays — by Alfred Tennyson, Baron Tennyson
- Queen Mary; and, Harold — by Alfred Tennyson, Baron Tennyson
- Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards: A Tragedy — by Algernon Charles Swinburne
- Chastelard, a Tragedy — by Algernon Charles Swinburne
- Locrine: A Tragedy — by Algernon Charles Swinburne
- The Duke of Gandia — by Algernon Charles Swinburne
- The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan — by Arthur Sullivan
- There Are Crimes and Crimes — by August Strindberg
- Plays by August Strindberg: Creditors. Pariah. — by August Strindberg
- Master Olof: A Drama in Five Acts — by August Strindberg
- Plays: the Father; Countess Julie; the Outlaw; the Stronger — by August Strindberg
- Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter — by August Strindberg
- Lucky Pehr — by August Strindberg
- The Road to Damascus, a Trilogy — by August Strindberg
- Plays by August Strindberg, Second series — by August Strindberg
- Plays by August Strindberg, Third Series — by August Strindberg
- Plays by August Strindberg, Fourth Series — by August Strindberg
- Plays by August Strindberg, First Series — by August Strindberg
- Legends: Autobiographical Sketches — by August Strindberg
- Count Alarcos; a Tragedy — by Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield Disraeli
- Three Comedies — by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
- Three Dramas — by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
- Two Men of Sandy Bar: A Drama — by Bret Harte
- Faust: A Lyric Drama in Five Acts — by Charles Gounod
- Plays and Puritans — by Charles Kingsley
- The Saint's Tragedy — by Charles Kingsley
- Tecumseh : a Drama — by Charles Mair
- Peg Woffington — by Charles Reade
- Apu Ollantay: A Drama of the Time of the Incas — by Clements R. (Clements Robert), Sir Markham
- The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded — by Delia Salter Bacon
- The Lady of Lyons; Or, Love and Pride — by Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron Lytton
- The Story of My Life: Recollections and Reflections — by Ellen Terry
- Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac — by Epiphanius Wilson
- The Grand Inquisitor — by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- The Sentimentalists — by George Meredith
- Complete Project Gutenberg Works of George Meredith — by George Meredith
- Rosmersholm — by Henrik Ibsen
- Pillars of Society — by Henrik Ibsen
- An Enemy of the People — by Henrik Ibsen
- Ghosts: A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts — by Henrik Ibsen
- A Doll's House : a play — by Henrik Ibsen
- The Lady from the Sea — by Henrik Ibsen
- The Master Builder — by Henrik Ibsen
- Hedda Gabler — by Henrik Ibsen
- When We Dead Awaken — by Henrik Ibsen
- Early Plays — Catiline, the Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans — by Henrik Ibsen
- Little Eyolf — by Henrik Ibsen
- Ghosts — by Henrik Ibsen
- A Doll's House — by Henrik Ibsen
- The Feast at Solhoug — by Henrik Ibsen
- Love's Comedy — by Henrik Ibsen
- John Gabriel Borkman — by Henrik Ibsen
- Lady Inger of Ostrat: Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III — by Henrik Ibsen
- The Vikings of Helgeland — by Henrik Ibsen
- The wild duck — by Henrik Ibsen
- Vautrin: A Drama in Five Acts — by Honoré de Balzac
- The Resources of Quinola: A Comedy in a Prologue and Five Acts — by Honoré de Balzac
- Pamela Giraud: A Play in Five Acts — by Honoré de Balzac
- Shakspere and Montaigne An Endeavour to Explain the Tendency of 'Hamlet' from Allusions in Contemporary Works — by Jacob Feis
- The Hunchback — by James Sheridan Knowles
- The Love-chase — by James Sheridan Knowles
- Don Juan Tenorio — by José Zorrilla
- Redemption and two other plays — by Leo, graf Tolstoy
- Contigo Pan y Cebolla — by Manuel Eduardo de Gorostiza
- 1601: Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors — by Mark Twain
- Proserpine and Midas — by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
- The Inspector-General — by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol
- Madame Aubin — by Paul Verlaine
- Book of illustrations : Ancient Tragedy — by Richard G. (Richard Green) Moulton
- A Blot in the 'Scutcheon — by Robert Browning
- Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812: A Drama; and Other Poems — by Sarah Anne Curzon
- The Dynasts: An Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon — by Thomas Hardy
- Our American Cousin — by Tom Taylor
- The Sleeping-Car: A Farce — by William Dean Howells
- The Elevator — by William Dean Howells
- The Parlor Car — by William Dean Howells
- The Register — by William Dean Howells
- The Albany Depot : a Farce — by William Dean Howells
- The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson — by William Ernest Henley
- The Wolves and the Lamb — by William Makepeace Thackeray
Legacy & influence
Plays from Romantic Drama continue to define what working theatre artists assume a play is. Drama-school curricula are built around them; regional theatres programme at least one of them every season; high-school English departments teach them year after year because students respond to the structural clarity and the language. What looks at first like pious veneration of the canon is, on closer inspection, a working consensus among practitioners that these plays still teach us how the form actually works.