222 plays
Drama
Plays in the general drama category are the workhorses of the repertoire — pieces that don't sit cleanly in tragedy, comedy, history, or farce, but that share a…
Browse by
Genres of stage drama
Genre is the working theatre artist's first sorting tool. Programme directors think in terms of it; drama curricula are built around it; rehearsal-room conversations begin with it. The pages below collect the plays in our archive by their dominant genre, with a short essay on each form and links to every script we hold of that type.
Advertisement
114 plays
Verse Drama
Verse drama is what the theatre did when it believed prose was not enough. The verse plays in our archive — Greek, Elizabethan, neoclassical French, German Romantic —…
80 plays
Tragedy
Tragedy is the form in which a serious action arrives at a serious end. From the Athenian fifth century onward, the genre has been concerned with what people…
62 plays
Comedy
Comedy as a working theatrical form has, for two and a half millennia, used the apparatus of misunderstanding to clarify the rules of a society. Whether the means…
24 plays
One-Act Play
The one-act is the short story of the theatre — a single sustained action, usually in a single setting, often hinging on one decision. The one-acts in this…
12 plays
History Play
The history play is theatre's way of arguing with the historians. From the Elizabethan chronicle plays through nineteenth-century European national dramas, history plays in this archive use real…
6 plays
Farce
Farce is the most underrated of the comic forms — underrated because it looks easy from the cheap seats and is, in fact, the hardest thing on a…