The "Father of Tragedy", Aeschylus was born in the city of Eleusis. Immersed early in the mystic rites of the city and in the worship of the Mother and Earth goddess Demeter, he was once sent as a child to watch grapes ripening in the count...

Born in 495 B.C. about a mile northwest of Athens, Sophocles was to become one of the great playwrights of the golden age. The son of a wealthy merchant, he would enjoy all the comforts of a thriving Greek empire. He studied all of the arts...

Euripides was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom a significant number of plays have survived. Some ancient scholars attributed 95 plays to him but, a...

Aristophanes, son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a prolific and much acclaimed comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete. These, together with fragments of some of his other plays,...

Titus Maccius Plautus, commonly known as "Plautus", was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of...

Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero. While he was later forced to commit suicide for alle...

Miguel de Cervantes was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel, is a classic of Western literature, and is regarded amongst the best works of fiction ever written. His influe...

Christopher Marlowe, English dramatist and poet. Probably the greatest English dramatist before Shakespeare, Marlowe was educated at Cambridge and he went to London in 1587, where he became an actor and dramatist for the Lord Admiral's Comp...

William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His exta...

Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft - Knight in the Order of Saint Michael - was a Dutch historian, poet and playwright from the period known as the Dutch Golden Age. Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft, often abbreviated to P.C. Hooft, was born in Amsterdam...

Gerbrand Adriaensz Bredero is considered the major Dutch poet of his generation, particularly for his spontaneous love sonnets. The first Dutch master of comedy, Bredero was an important innovator; he drew upon classical elements as well as...

Jan Six was an important cultural figure in the Dutch Golden Age. The son of a well-to-do merchant family Six, Jan studied liberal arts and law in Leiden in 1634. He became the son-in-law of the mayor of Amsterdam, Nicolaes Tulp, in 1655, w...

Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac was a French novelist, playwright, epistolarian and duelist. A bold and innovative author, his work was part of the libertine literature of the first half of the seventeenth century. Today he is best known...

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, better known as Molière, was a French theatre writer, director, stage manager, actor, and all-around man of theatre, one of the masters of comic satire. The son of an interior decorator, Jean Baptiste Poquelin los...

John Dryden was an English poet, dramatist, and critic. He first came to public notice in 1659 with his Heroic Stanzas, commemorating the death of Oliver Cromwell. The following year, however, he celebrated the restoration of Charles II wit...