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Plays/Films/Dramas — page 2
165 public-domain plays/films/dramas books, summarised. Page 2 of 4.
The collected works of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. 09 (of 11)
Henrik Ibsen
A small Norwegian fjord town becomes the battleground where domestic tranquility collides with past ghosts, radical ideals, and the terrifying pull of the untamed sea.
The works of Thomas Middleton, Volume 3 (of 5)
Thomas Dekker
A father in disguise watches his reformed daughter struggle against debt, while a courtier duel sets off an unyielding clash of honour.
The Wonder-Working Magician
Pedro Calderón de la Barca
The hunger for forbidden knowledge leads a brilliant scholar into a pact with darkness, only to discover that the soul he bartered is tethered to a purity he cannot corrupt.
Liliom
Ferenc Molnár
A carousel barker finds his life transformed by a love he cannot articulate, leading him through a final, earthly act of violence into an afterlife of judgment.
Anathema: A Tragedy in Seven Scenes
Leonid Andreyev
A tragic spirit seeks to expose the hollowness of divine justice by testing a humble man’s capacity for love, only to find that human goodness is a flame easily extinguished by the world’s indifference.
Eyes that cannot see
Albert Theodor Gnudtzmann
A quiet, devastating drama about the blindness of parental love, this play reveals how even the most well-intentioned guardians can become the greatest obstacles to their child’s independence.
The Mortal Gods, and Other Plays
Olive Tilford Dargan
In a world of shifting power and hollow crowns, the true sovereign is the one who dares to dream of a higher justice. These plays explore the collision between ancient ambitions and the rising, unstoppable tide of human conscience.
Tannhäuser
Aleister Crowley
A seeker of the ultimate, a wanderer caught between the sacred and the profane, navigates a metaphysical journey to reconcile the disparate poles of human experience. Through the lens of a legendary minstrel, this dramatic poem probes the agonizing tension between carnal obsession and divine illumination.
The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet
Bernard Shaw
A cynical horse thief faces the hangman’s noose in the American West, only to find himself confronted by a force he cannot name, unraveling his defiance and transforming his soul.
Such is Life: A Play in Five Acts
Frank Wedekind
Deposed by a popular uprising, a proud monarch discovers that the only place left for him in his former kingdom is upon the theatrical stage.
Three Comedies
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
In the theater of late-nineteenth-century Norway, domestic life is a battlefield of hidden histories and stifled desires. These plays peel back the layers of bourgeois respectability to reveal the painful cost of maintaining appearances.
Four Short Plays
Bell, Florence Eveleen Eleanore Olliffe, Lady
These four short plays capture the domestic anxieties, social pretenses, and eccentric yearnings of early twentieth-century life with a sharp, observant wit. They offer a window into a world where private secrets and public reputations constantly collide.
The Game of Chess: A Play in One Act
Kenneth Sawyer Goodman
A ruthless governor transforms a deadly assassination attempt into a high-stakes psychological battlefield to prove his intellect remains absolute.
The collected works of Henrik Ibsen Vol. 10 (of 11)
Henrik Ibsen
A caged bird of high society trades her freedom for a respectable marriage, only to find the quiet walls of her home closing in around her like a trap.
The Dramatic Values in Plautus
Wilton W. (Wilton Wallace) Blancké
Humorless critics often misjudge the Roman playwright Plautus by holding his slapstick antics to strict standards of modern dramatic technique. In truth, his works succeed because they prioritize uninhibited public laughter over refined dramatic realism.
Fair Em
Unknown
A disguised monarch and a resilient miller’s daughter navigate a web of romantic misunderstandings, testing the true nature of nobility and devotion in a kingdom defined by shifting loyalties.
The collected works of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. 03 (of 11)
Henrik Ibsen
A relentless priest demands absolute purity of will, tearing apart his own life and those of his loved ones to satisfy a God who demands everything or nothing at all.
The works of Thomas Middleton, Volume 4 (of 5)
Thomas Dekker
These plays capture the frantic, cynical, and often brutal energy of seventeenth-century London, peeling back the polished veneer of society to reveal the desperate appetites beneath.
Plays of Old Japan: The 'No'
Marie Carmichael Stopes
This volume acts as a scholarly bridge to the Nō, a centuries-old tradition of Japanese musical drama characterized by ritualized movement, mask-work, and a profound, atmospheric melancholy. Through expert commentary and translated librettos, it invites the reader into a world where the boundaries between the…
Pillars of Society
Henrik Ibsen
A town’s most respected leader builds his reputation on a foundation of silence, unaware that his carefully curated life is about to be dismantled by the ghosts of his own past.
The speaker's ideal entertainments
George M. (George Morley) Vickers
A collection of theatrical recitations and staged dialogues designed to provide amateur performers with the tools for dramatic delivery in home, school, and community settings.
There Are Crimes and Crimes
August Strindberg
The line between an innocent thought and a criminal act is thinner than we imagine, and once crossed, it can unravel a man’s world with terrifying speed.
Daddy Long-Legs
Jean Webster
An orphan girl discovers the joy of liberation and the mystery of love when an anonymous benefactor transforms her grim existence into a vibrant college life.
Numantia
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
To preserve their honor in the face of inevitable destruction, the citizens of a besieged city choose a collective death over the humiliation of Roman subjugation.
The works of Thomas Middleton, Volume 1 (of 5)
Thomas Dekker
This collection brings together five foundational dramas from the early seventeenth-century stage, showcasing a playwright’s sharp, cynical eye for the social climbers, aging fools, and desperate schemers of London life.
Criminals
George Middleton
A newlywed bride flees her hotel on her wedding night, returning to her parents' home in a state of traumatized shock. Her sudden arrival forces three people to confront the dangerous silence surrounding the realities of marriage.
Hecuba and other plays
Euripides
Torn apart by war, betrayed by allies, and hunted by relentless rival dynasties, displaced queens and surviving heirs fight for existence when every altar turns against them.
Rustic Chivalry (Cavalleria Rusticana): Melodrama in One Act
James Cartwright Macy
A passionate Sicilian village becomes the backdrop for a swift, lethal clash between betrayed affection and traditional honor on Easter morning.
Turandot, Princess of China: A Chinoiserie in Three Acts
Carlo Gozzi
Cruel beauty meets stubborn devotion under the shadow of the Peking scaffold.
Red oleanders
Rabindranath Tagore
The red oleander is a flower of both beauty and warning, a symbol of life force intruding upon a world of cold, mechanical greed. It represents the vibrant, dangerous spirit that refuses to be suppressed by the weight of gold.
The great Galeoto
José Echegaray
The tragedy of human fallibility is rarely more piercing than when fueled by the idle, venomous tongues of others. These plays examine how the weight of collective suspicion can transform a harmless life into a ruinous catastrophe.
The Black Cat: A Play in Three Acts
John Todhunter
HOOK A portrait of modern marriage begins to fray as an artist and his wife struggle to find equilibrium within the stifling constraints of their own disillusionment.
The collected works of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. 11 (of 11)
Henrik Ibsen
Three late masterpieces lay bare the ruin left behind when human warmth is sacrificed to ambition, pride, and artistic obsession.
The son of Don Juan: an original drama in 3 acts inspired by the reading of Ibsen's work entitled 'Gengangere'
José Echegaray
A man haunted by the excesses of his father finds his own future collapsing into a void of inherited ruin. This drama offers a relentless, harrowing look at the cost of a life built on vice.
The Scarecrow
Percy MacKaye
A witch’s creation of straw and pumpkin, animated by a devilish accomplice, seeks to win a lady’s heart and expose the hollow hypocrisy of colonial society in this darkly ironic, supernatural drama.
Savva and the Life of Man: Two plays by Leonid Andreyev
Leonid Andreyev
These two plays explore the friction between the fragility of human existence and the immense, indifferent forces that govern it. They serve as a stark, uncompromising mirror to the volatility of early twentieth-century Russian life.
'And So Ad Infinitum' (The Life of the Insects): An Entomological Review, in Three Acts, a Prologue and an Epilogue
Karel Čapek
This stinging, allegorical drama uses the frantic lives of insects to mirror the darkest impulses of human society, exposing our vanity, greed, and cycle of destructive conflict.
![Cover of Original Plays [First Series]](https://cdn.myebooksbuy.com/c/original-plays-first-series-w-s-william-schwenck-gilbert.webp)
Original Plays [First Series]
W. S. (William Schwenck) Gilbert
Human nature reveals its funniest flaws when stripped of hypocrisy. These six plays expose vanity, romance, and moral posturing through razor-sharp verse, enchanted settings, and absurd courtroom chaos.
Duologues and scenes from the novels of Jane Austen
Jane Austen
A keen ear for the natural friction between people turns quiet parlors into electric battlegrounds of ambition, pride, and comedic absurdity.
John Gabriel Borkman
Henrik Ibsen
A fallen financier locked in self-imposed exile faces the bitter winter air and the unresolved loves of his past. He must choose between clutching his grand illusions and confronting the devastating human cost of his ambition.
Plays
Aleksandr Nikolaevich Ostrovsky
This collection of plays captures the volatile, claustrophobic world of 19th-century Moscow’s rising merchant class, where money and moral standing are perpetually at war. It is a sharp, unsentimental portrait of a society built on shaky foundations.
The Scarlet Stigma: A Drama in Four Acts
Nathaniel Hawthorne
This stage adaptation transforms a classic meditation on secret guilt into a visceral, gothic drama, where a hidden sin manifests as a physical mark of torment. It maps the internal fracture of a man who preaches righteousness while harboring a ruinous truth.
Six One-Act Plays
Margaret Scott Oliver
Six distinct short plays capture human foolishness and passion, spanning exotic desert courts, historical Spanish ramparts, quiet working-class homes, and noisy city parks.
A Fool's Paradise: An Original Play in Three Acts
Sydney Grundy
A deceptive calm in a country estate unravels into secret origins, sudden romantic entanglements, and a calculated attempt at murder.
The Princess of Bagdad: A Play In Three Acts
Alexandre Dumas
A woman’s reckless spending and a millionaire’s calculated obsession collide in a high-stakes drama of debt, reputation, and the fragile bonds of marriage. This play traces the unraveling of a household as its inhabitants face the consequences of a life built on illusion.
The Betrothal: A Sequel to the Blue Bird
Maurice Maeterlinck
This fairy play follows a young man’s quest to find his true love, exploring the idea that our most significant life choices are guided by the unseen voices of our ancestors and our future descendants. It is a work of gentle symbolism, grounding grand metaphysical questions in the simple, rustic setting of a…
The Ghetto: A Drama in Four Acts
Herman Heijermans
This drama follows the collision between an aging miser’s rigid religious devotion and his son’s yearning for a life defined by art, honesty, and a love that transcends the barriers of the Ghetto.
Within the Gates
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
A physician’s sudden death pulls him from a life of professional ego and domestic neglect into an afterlife that forces him to confront the true weight of his earthly choices. This drama explores the endurance of love beyond the grave, serving as both a spiritual meditation and a poignant, often painful, domestic…