Identifying Titles, Authors, or Schools of Drama - CLEP Humanities

Among the ancient Greek tragedians, the work of Sophocles has been held in high esteem since he worked in the fifth century BCE. His most notable work is Oedipus Rex, which tells the story of the titular ancient king of Thebes who, unbeknownst to him, marries his mother and kills his father. The play, like most Greek drama, hinges on dramatic irony, with the audience knowing Oedipus' secrets throughout.

Sophocles was a playwright from Greece. He wrote three plays about Oedipus. Oedipus Rex, also known as Oedipus the King, was the most famous of those plays. Oedipus Rex is probably the most famous Greek tragedies ever written, especially since Sigmund Freud used it as the basis for some of his seminal works of psychology.

Christopher Marlowe was an early contemporary of William Shakespeare, and was arguably more popular in his time than Shakespeare. Marlowe's death in 1593 under mysterious circumstances was seen to have cut short a promising literary career. His work continues on, as in his telling of the Faust myth, Doctor Faustus, from 1589.

Titus Andronicus was William Shakespeare's first tragedy, performed originally in the early 1590s, when Shakespeare only had success as a comedy writer. Titus Andronicus is by far the goriest and most violent of Shakespeare's plays, in which he emulated contemporary "revenge plays." The play finishes with the titular Roman general feeding a pie to a Gothic queen that contains the meat of her two dead sons.

Among Shakespeare's comedies, Much Ado About Nothing is relatively straightforward narratively, with the action focusing on two couples, the young lovers Claudio and Hero and the combative couple Beatrice and Benedick. The straightforward narrative, however, allows Shakespeare to play up the witty dialogue between Beatrice and Benedick. The play is famous for some of Shakespeare's cleverest writing and funniest scenes.

W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan were a librettist and composer, respectively, who began teaming up in the 1870s to write comic operas. Throughout the next few decades, Gilbert and Sullivan wrote some of the most well known works of theater, including The Pirates of Penzance, H.M.S. Pinafore, and The Mikado. Gilbert and Sullivan's work highly influenced the development of musical theater in the twentieth century.

Henrik Ibsen wrote both of the plays Ghosts and A Doll's House. He was a 19th century Norwegian playwright. He is sometimes called the "father of realism."

The "Restoration" in "Restoration comedies" refers to the return of the monarchy to England under the Stuart King Charles II. Following the deeply Puritan Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell, which banned all forms of theater and celebrations, theater companies and audiences found a taste for bawdy and over-the-top comedies that featured outlandish characters and bizarre situations.

Moliere helped popularize and develop theater during the seventeenth century by combining elaborate and genteel French comedy styles with the broader and more jovial Italian commedia dell'arte. Moliere's works such as The Misanthrope, Tartuffe, and The Miser all were essentially farces that mocked upper-class values, religious people, and social habits. These elements made Moliere equally controversial and influential in subsequent centuries.

Eugene O'Neill was a landmark figure in American theater, as he introduced the realism of European writers like Strindberg, Ibsen, and Chekhov to America. His plays Mourning Becomes Electra, Long Day's Journey Into Night,and The Iceman Cometh all have become standard parts of repertoire for many American theater companies. O'Neill won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936.

David Mamet came out of the Chicago theater scene in the late 1970s with a distinctive, fully-formed style with short, snappy dialogue referred to as "Mamet-speak," demonstrated in early work like 1976's American Buffalo. He was immediately considered one of the leading playwrights in America, with his Glengarry Glen Ross winning a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1984, and Speed-the-Plow winning the same award in 1988.

Lillian Hellman had an instant Broadway success in 1934 with her first play, The Children's Hour, which also caused controversy over its themes of lesbianism, false accusations, and suicide. The pattern would continue throughout her career, as 1939's The Little Foxes and 1941's Watch on the Rhine both dealt with anti-semitism in America. Both plays were so successful that they were turned into movies with Hellman screenplays.

Brendan Behan joined the IRA as a teenager in the 1940s, and because of crimes he committed against the British government, was imprisoned while still young. Upon being pardoned in 1947, Behan left the IRA behind and began a full-time literary career. An icon of Irish literature, Behan's first two plays, 1954's The Quare Fellow and 1958's An Giall (The Hostage), both depicted life in an Irish prison like the ones in which Behan was held.

A Raisin in the Sun was considered a risky proposition when it was first produced on Broadway in 1959, dealing as it did with the story of an African-American family. The play proved to be a success anyway, helping launch not only Hansberry's career, but also that of actor Sydney Poitier. The play was the first on Broadway with a cast that had an African-American majority.

Beginning with his play 1982 play Jitney, August Wilson undertook a project to write one play representing each decade of the twentieth century that took on the African-American experience. All but one, 1984's Ma Rainey Black Bottom took place in Pittsburgh, often featuring members of the same family. Two of the plays won Wilson the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, 1987's Fences and 1990's The Piano Lesson.

Many critics and scholars group Blood Wedding, The House of Bernarda Alba, and Yerma as a trilogy, as they all deal with rural Spain and were composed from 1932 to 1936. Their author, Federico Garcia Lorca, had actually intended to write a third play to make a trilogy, and did not himself see The House of Bernarda Alba in the trilogy. Lorca was killed by Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War in 1936, for his activity on behalf of the Republican forces, which often was apparent in his writings.

John Guare emerged in the 1960s with a wave of other playwrights, but distinguished himself through wry humor and interesting narrative form, both of which he applied to conventionally dramatic stories. The House of Blue Leaves (1966) is a black comedy about nuns, the Vietnam War, and mental institutions that features many characters coming and going. Six Degrees of Separation (1990) tells the story of a con man's deception of socialites from the socialites' perspective at a dinner party.

A Streetcar Named Desire won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize in Drama for its playwright, Tennessee Williams. Largely considered one of the premier dramas of the twentieth century, the play's depiction of mental health problems, sexual desire, and violence was considered groundbreaking in its own time. The play would be made into an award-winning movie in 1951 and firmly established Tennessee Williams as one of the largest figures of the theater world.

Arthur Miller won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1949, David Mamet won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1984, Eugene O'Neil won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1922, 1928, and 1957, and Sarah Ruhl won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 2010.

Christopher Marlowe was an early contemporary of William Shakespeare, and was arguably more popular in his time than Shakespeare. Marlowe's death in 1593 under mysterious circumstances was seen to have cut short a promising literary career. His work continues on, as in his telling of the Faust myth, Doctor Faustus, from 1589.

Among the ancient Greek tragedians, the work of Sophocles has been held in high esteem since he worked in the fifth century BCE. His most notable work is Oedipus Rex, which tells the story of the titular ancient king of Thebes who, unbeknownst to him, marries his mother and kills his father. The play, like most Greek drama, hinges on dramatic irony, with the audience knowing Oedipus' secrets throughout.