- Ben Jonson
Benjamin Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 - 6 August 1637) was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly "Volpone" and "The Alchemist" which are considered his best, and his lyric poems. A man of vast reading and a seemingly insatiable appetite for controversy, Jonson had an unparalleled breadth of influence on Jacobean and Caroline playwrights and poets. - T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM (September 26 1888 – January 4 1965), was a poet, dramatist and literary critic. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. He wrote the poems "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", "The Waste Land", "The Hollow Men", "Ash Wednesday", and "Four Quartets"; the plays "Murder in the Cathedral" and "The Cocktail Party"; and the essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent". - Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 - 22 December 1989) was an Irish dramatist, novelist and poet. Beckett's work is stark, fundamentally minimalist, and, according to some interpretations, deeply pessimistic about the human condition. His work grew increasingly cryptic and attenuated over his career. The perceived pessimism in Beckett's work is mitigated both by a great and often wicked sense of humour, and by the sense, for some readers, … - Christopher Marlowe
Christopher "Kit" Marlowe was an English dramatist, poet, and translator of the Elizabethan era. The foremost Elizabethan tragedian before William Shakespeare, he is known for his magnificent blank verse, his overreaching protagonists, and his own untimely death. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"'"',, (28 August 1749 - 22 March 1832) was a German polymath. Goethe's works span the fields of poetry, drama, literature, theology, Humanism, science, and painting. His most enduring work, the two-part dramatic poem "Faust", is considered one of the peaks of world literature. Goethe's other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, the bildungsroman "Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship", … - Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (June 21, 1905 - April 15, 1980), normally known simply as Jean-Paul Sartre (pronounced:), was a French existentialist philosopher and pioneer, dramatist and screenwriter, novelist and critic. He was a leading figure in 20th century French philosophy. - Pierre Corneille
Pierre Corneille was a French tragedian who was one of the three great 17th Century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine. He has been called “the founder of French tragedy” and produced plays for nearly 40 years. - Friedrich Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and dramatist. During the last several years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller struck a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang Goethe, with whom he discussed much on issues concerning aesthetics, encouraging Goethe to finish works he left merely as sketches; this thereby gave way to a period now referred to as Weimar Classicism. - David Hare
Sir David Hare (born June 5, 1947) is an English dramatist and director. Hare was born in Sussex and was educated at Lancing College and at Jesus College, Cambridge. His first play, "Slag", was produced in 1970. In 1973, he was appointed resident dramatist to the Nottingham Playhouse, a major provincial theatre. In 1975, he helped found the Joint Stock Theatre Company. He was knighted in 1998. He is married to the Algerian fashion designer Nicole Farhi. - Henry Fielding
Henry Fielding (April 22, 1707 - October 8, 1754) was an English novelist and dramatist known for his rich earthy humour and satirical prowess, and as the author of the novel "Tom Jones". Aside from his literary achivements, he has a significant place in the history of law-enforcement, having founded what some have called London's first police force, the Bow Street Runners. - John Gay
John Gay (30 June,1685 - 4 December,1732) was an English poet and dramatist. He is best remembered for "The Beggar's Opera" (1728), set to music by Johann Christoph Pepusch. The characters, including Captain Macheath and Polly Peachum, became household names. - John Ford
John Ford (baptised April 17, 1586 - c.1640?) was an English Jacobean and Caroline playwright and poet born in Ilsington in Devon in 1586. Ford left home to study in London, although more specific details are unclear-a sixteen-year-old John Ford of Devon was admitted to Exeter College, Oxford on March 26, 1601, but this was when the dramatist had not yet reached his sixteenth birthday. - Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker. His versatile, unconventional approach and enormous output brought him international acclaim. - Jean Anouilh
Jean Anouilh (June 23, 1910 - October 3, 1987) was a French dramatist. - John Webster
John Webster (c. 1580 - c. 1634) was an English Jacobean dramatist, a late contemporary of William Shakespeare. His tragedies "The White Devil" and "The Duchess of Malfi" are often regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage. - Cyrano de Bergerac
Cyrano Hercule Savinien de Bergerac (6 March 1619 - 28 July 1655) was a French dramatist and duellist born in Paris, who is now best remembered for the many works of fiction which have been woven around his life story, most notably the play by Edmond Rostand which bears his name ("see Cyrano de Bergerac (play)"). In those fictional works he is featured with an overly large nose. - Thomas Dekker
Thomas Dekker (c. 1572 - August 25 1632) was an Elizabethan dramatist and pamphleteer, a versatile and prolific writer whose career spanned several decades and brought him into contact with many of the period's most famous dramatists. - Václav Havel
Václav Havel, GCB, CC, (born October 5, 1936 in Prague) is a Czech writer and dramatist. He was the ninth and last President of Czechoslovakia (1989-1992) and the first President of the Czech Republic (1993-2003). - Jean Racine
Jean Racine (December 22, 1639 - April 21, 1699) was a French dramatist, one of the "big three" of 17th century France (along with Molière and Corneille). Racine was primarily a tragedian, though he did write one comedy. - Thomas Kyd
Thomas Kyd was an English dramatist, the author of "The Spanish Tragedy", and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama. Although well-known in his own time, Kyd fell into obscurity until 1773 when an early editor of the The Spanish Tragedie, Thomas Hawkins, discovered that the playwright was named as its author by Thomas Heywood in his "Apologie for Actors" (1612). - John Millington Synge
John Millington Synge (April 16, 1871–March 24, 1909) was an Irish dramatist, poet, prose writer, and collector of folklore. He was a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival and was one of the cofounders of the Abbey Theatre. He is best known for the play "The Playboy of the Western World", which caused riots in Dublin during its opening run at the Abbey. Although he came from a middle-class Protestant background, … - J. M. Barrie
Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM (9 May 1860 - 19 June 1937), more commonly known as J. M. Barrie, was a Scottish novelist and dramatist. He is best remembered for creating Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up, whom he based on his friends, the Llewelyn Davies boys. He is also credited with the popularisation of the name "Wendy", which was little-known in either Britain or America before he gave it to the heroine of "Peter Pan". - Jean Giraudoux
Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux (October 29, 1882 - January 31, 1944) was a French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright. He is considered among the most important French dramatists of the period between World War I and World War II. - Alfred de Musset
Alfred Louis Charles de Musset, (December 11, 1810 - May 2, 1857) was a French dramatist, poet, and novelist. - W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (18 November 1836 - 29 May 1911) was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include "H.M.S. Pinafore", "The Pirates of Penzance", and one of the most frequently performed works in the history of musical theatre, "The Mikado". These, as well as most of their other Savoy operas, … - William Wycherley
William Wycherley was an English dramatist of the Restoration period. He was born at Clive, near Shrewsbury, where his family was settled on a moderate estate of about £600 a year. Like Vanbrugh, Wycherley spent his early years in France, where he was sent, at fifteen, to be educated in the heart of the "precious" circle on the banks of the Charente. Wycherley's friend, Major Pack, says that he "improved, with the greatest refinements", … - George Farquhar
George Farquhar was an Irish dramatist. Born in Derry, the son of a clergyman, he attended Trinity College, Dublin, but left without any qualifications, possibly to join a roving troupe of actors. His career was blossoming, when an accident on stage during a performance of "The Indian Emperor" by John Dryden, in which he wounded a fellow actor in a sword fight, caused him to quit the Dublin stage. He left Dublin for London in 1697, and his play, … - Edmond Rostand
Edmond Eugène Alexis Rostand was a French poet and dramatist. Rostand is associated with neo-romanticism, and is best known for his play "Cyrano de Bergerac". Rostand's romantic plays provided an alternative to the naturalistic theatre popular during the late 19th century. One of Rostand's works, "Les Romanesques", has been adapted as the highly successful musical comedy "The Fantasticks". - Robert Wilson
Robert Wilson (flourished 1572 - 1600), was an Elizabethan dramatist who worked primarily in the 1580s and 1590s. He is also believed to have been an actor who specialized in clown roles. He was connected with sixteen plays intended for Philip Henslowe's Rose Theatre, in partnership with other playwrights who also produced copy for Henslowe. While mentioned as a dramatist by Francis Meres in 1598, … - Thomas Heywood
Thomas Heywood (early 1570s-16 August1641) was a prominent English playwright, actor and miscellaneous author whose peak period of activity falls between late Elizabethan and early Jacobean theatre. Few details of Thomas Heywood's life have been documented with certainty. Most references indicate that the county of his birth was most likely Lincolnshire, while the year has been variously given as 1570, 1573, 1574 and 1575. - George Moore
George Augustus Moore was an Irish novelist, short story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist. Moore came from a Roman Catholic landed family, originally intended to be an artist, and studied art in Paris during the 1870s. There he befriended many of the leading French artists and writers of the day. As a writer, he was amongst the first English language authors to absorb the lessons of the French realists, … - Philip Massinger
Philip Massinger (1583 - March 17, 1640) was an English dramatist. His finely plotted plays, including "A New Way to Pay Old Debts", "The City Madam" and "The Roman Actor", are noted for their satire and realism, and their political and social themes. - Gerhart Hauptmann
Gerhart Hauptmann (November 15, 1862 - June 6, 1946) was a German dramatist who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1912. - Edward Bond
Edward Bond (born July 18 1934) is an English playwright, theatre director, poet, theorist and screenwriter. He is the author of the play "Saved" (1965), the production of which was instrumental in the abolition of theatre censorship in the UK. His highly controversial work has met with extremes of reaction, from vilification to claims that he is the world's greatest living dramatist. - Nicholas Rowe
Nicholas Rowe (1674 - 1718), English dramatist, poet and miscellaneous writer, was selected Poet Laureate in 1715. - John Vanbrugh
Sir John Vanbrugh (pronounced "Van'-bru") (January 24 1664?-March 26 1726) was an English architect and dramatist, perhaps best known as the designer of Blenheim Palace. He wrote two argumentative and outspoken Restoration comedies, "The Relapse" (1696) and "The Provoked Wife" (1697), which have become enduring stage favourites but originally occasioned much controversy. Vanbrugh was in many senses a radical throughout his life. - Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Hugo von Hofmannsthal (February 1, 1874 - July 15, 1929), was an Austrian novelist, librettist, poet, dramatist, narrator, and essayist. - George Peele
George Peele (baptized 25 July 1556 - buried 9 November 1596), English dramatist, was born in London. - Peter Shaffer
Sir Peter Levin Shaffer (born May 15, 1926) is an English dramatist, author of numerous award-winning plays, several of which have been filmed. - Dennis Potter
Dennis Christopher George Potter (17 May 1935-7 June 1994) was a controversial English dramatist, best known for "The Singing Detective". His widely acclaimed television dramas mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social. He was particularly fond of using themes and images from popular culture. Potter was born in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire. His father was a coal miner in this rural mining area between Gloucester and Wales.
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