dramatic literature: Quick Facts

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Also Known As	play • drama

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Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (Mother Courage and Her Children)

Globe Theatre, London

theatre of the Auditorium Building in Chicago

Listen to Norris Houghton discuss the difficulty of staging Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard

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Topics

tragedy religious drama kitchen-sink drama verse drama scene comedy 10 Angry Young Men The Shakespeare Authorship Question: Much Ado About Who Wrote the Plays The Time a Law Clerk Successfully Forged a New Shakespeare Play to Impress His Dad Today in History—March 11: A Raisin in the Sun Makes Theatrical History dance radio Novel children’s literature biography rhetoric folk literature Modernist literature short story music

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Key People

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James Goldman

American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

English author

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Russel Crouse

American dramatist

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Jason Miller

American actor and playwright

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Harry Leon Wilson

American writer

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Iancu Văcărescu

Romanian author

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Joaquín Álvarez Quintero

Spanish writer

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Farkas Bolyai

Hungarian mathematician and writer

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Howard Lindsay

American playwright

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Mary Coyle Chase

American writer

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Mary Hayley Bell

British author and actress

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Serafín Álvarez Quintero

Spanish writer

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Ion of Chios

Greek poet

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Maurice Druon

French author

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Rolf Hochhuth

German writer

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Rachel Field

American author

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

German author

Portrait of Charles Dickens seated at a desk, writing with a quill pen, dressed in a suit with a bow tie.

Charles Dickens

British novelist

Painting of Samuel Johnson showing Johnson seated at a desk with a quill in hand and papers before him, wearing a brown coat and white wig.

Samuel Johnson

English author

Engraving of Miguel de Cervantes, shown with a mustache and beard, wearing a ruffled collar and cloak, based on works by Gregorio Ferro and Fernando Selma.

Miguel de Cervantes

Spanish writer

Pamela having divided her clothes into three bundles..., etching and engraving by Guillaume Philippe Benoist, 1745. Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) by Samuel Richardson.

Literary Terms (Part One) Quiz

William Shakespeare and Lord Chamberlain's Men performing "Love's Labour's Lost" for Queen Elizabeth I, from the Works of William Shakespeare; etching, dated c. mid-19th century.

English and Irish Playwrights (Part Two) Quiz

Irish author Oscar Wilde, photograph (albumen silver print)by Napoleon Sarony, 1882.

English and Irish Playwrights (Part One) Quiz

Row of colorful books on a bookshelf. Stack of books, pile of books, literature, reading. Homepage 2010, arts and entertainment, history and society

The Literary World