Audiobooks online: genre "Tragedy", page 10

Tamburlaine the Great is the name of a play in two parts by Christopher Marlowe. It is loosely based on the life of the Central Asian emperor, Timur 'the lame'. Written in 1587 or 1588, the play is a milestone in Elizabethan public drama; it marks a turning away from the c...

Murder and madness, witches and war: Librivox presents a recording of Macbeth, perhaps Shakespeare's best known tragedy. Macbeth, a general in King Duncan's army, is given a prophecy by a trio of witches: he himself will become king. Fired by ambition and goaded by...

Tom Thumb, small of stature, great of heart. This play was written as a parody of the tragic heroic biography of a great man, filled with biting satire as to people and events of the time. Note as warned by the title that this is not a happy-ending fairy tale. (Follow the etext l...

Based on Aphra Behn's 1688 novel (which is one of the earliest novels in the English language), Thomas Southerne's Oroonoko is seen by scholars today as the driving force that kept Behn's work from fading into obscurity. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it w...

Considered by her contemporaries a playwright “second only to Shakespeare,” Joanna Baillie was one of the most critically acclaimed writers of the Romantic Era. The Plays on the Passions, first published in 1798, stands as her undeniable magnum opus: a multivolume series of trage...

In the court of Louis XIV, adaptations of Greek tragedies were very popular. This play, heavily influenced by Euripides' Hippolytus, deals with love that violates social taboos. Note: In Racine's work, a new "scene" begins whenever a character enters or exits. Therefore, there ar...

The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, commonly referred to simply as Doctor Faustus, is a play by Christopher Marlowe, based on the Faust story, in which a man sells his soul to the devil for power and knowledge. Doctor Faustus was first published in 1604...

Christopher Marlowe's Elizabethan tragedy focuses on the downfall of King Edward II, whose love for his favorite courtier, Piers Gaveston, leads to rebellion. (Summary by Elizabeth Klett)CastGaveston: Chuck ...

"Oedipus Rex" (Ancient Greek: Οἰδίπους Τύραννος, Oidipous Tyrannos), also known as "Oedipus the King" or "Oedipus the Tyrant," is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles that was first performed about 429 BC (noted classicist Gilbert Murray, translator of this version of the play, rende...

Like Euripides' Trojan Women, this play takes place after the sack of Troy. Hecuba, widow of King Priam, suffers the loss of her daughter Polyxena and her son Polydore, and is hungry for revenge on those who have wronged her. Summary by Elizabeth KlettCast of Characte...

Written in 1819, but not first staged for over hundred years after it was written due to controversial themes of incest and parricide, it was not considered stageable. This tragedy is a true story, set in Rome, 1599, centred around the murder of the tyrant, Count Francesco Cenci,...

The Changeling is a sensational 1622 tragicomedy by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley that comprises two intertwining plots. The first involves Beatrice-Joanna, daughter of the governor of Alicante, and her unruly passion for Alsemero, despite the fact that she is engaged to Al...