English Dramatists

English Language has been blessed with a number of playwrights ,poets and others.Here is a presentation on different English dramatists and playwrights.A detailed description on Shakespeare,Marlowe,Harold Pinter,Bernard Shaw along with their major plays are given.

1. ENGLISH DRAMATISTS
AND PLAYWRIGHTS

2. WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE

3. English poet, dramatist, and actor,
often called the English national
poet and considered by many to
be the greatest dramatist of all
time.
He is often called as Bard of
Avon.


His works consist of:
 37 plays
154 sonnets
Two narrative poems
 And few other verses

4. His plays have been translated into every major living language,
and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1590
and 1613.
His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he
raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the
sixteenth century.
Next he wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including
Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest
examples in the English language.
In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as
romances, and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality
and accuracy during his lifetime.

5. MAJOR PLAYS
HAMLET MACBETH JULIUS CAESAR

6. MAJOR PLAYS
ROMEO & JULIET THE TEMPEST OTHELLO

7. MAJOR PLAYS
THE MERCHANT
OF VENICE
KING LEAR TWELFTH NIGHT

8. HAROLD PINTER

9. •Harold Pinter was a Nobel Prize-winning British
playwright, screenwriter, director and actor.
• One of the most influential modern British dramatists,
his writing career spanned more than 50 years.
•His best-known plays include The Birthday Party (1957),
The Homecoming (1964), and Betrayal (1978), each of
which he adapted for the screen.

10. •His screenplay adaptations of others' works include The
Servant (1963), The Go-Between (1971), The French
Lieutenant's Woman (1981), The Trial (1993), and Sleuth
(2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage,
television, and film productions of his own and others'
works.
•On 13 October 2005, the Swedish Academy announced
that it had decided to award the Nobel Prize in
Literature for that year to Pinter, who "in his plays
uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces
entry into oppression's closed rooms".

11. MAJOR PLAYS
THE BIRTHDAY
PARTY
BETRAYAL THE
HOMECOMING

12. MAJOR PLAYS
THE CARETAKER OLD TIMES NO MAN’S LAND

13. CHRISTOPHER
MARLOWE

14. Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit
Marlowe, was an
English playwright, poet and translator of
the Elizabethan era. Marlowe was the
foremost Elizabethan tragedian of his day.He
greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who
was born in the same year as Marlowe and
who rose to become the pre-eminent
Elizabethan playwright after Marlowe's
mysterious early death. Marlowe's plays are
known for the use of blank verse and their
overreaching protagonists.

15. •Of the dramas attributed to Marlowe, Dido, Queen of Carthage is
believed to have been his first. It was performed by the Children of
the Chapel, a company of boy actors, between 1587 and 1593. The
play was first published in 1594; the title page attributes the play to
Marlowe and Thomas Nashe.
•Marlowe's first play performed on the regular stage in London, in
1587, was Tamburlaine the Great, about the
conqueror Timur (Tamerlane), who rises from shepherd to warlord. It
is among the first English plays in blank verse,and, with Thomas
Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, generally is considered the beginning of
the mature phase of the Elizabethan theatre. Tamburlaine was a
success, and was followed with Tamburlaine the Great, Part II.
•The two parts of Tamburlaine were published in 1590; all Marlowe's
other works were published posthumously. The sequence of the
writing of his other four plays is unknown; all deal with controversial
themes.

16. MAJOR PLAYS
DR.FAUSTUS EDWARD II THE JEW OF
MALTA

17. MAJOR PLAYS
TAMBURLINE DIDO,QUEEN
OF
CARTHAGE

18. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

19. George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950),
known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish
playwright, critic, polemicist, and political activist. His influence
on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s
to his death and beyond.

20. •He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such
as Man and Superman (1902), Pygmalion (1912) and Saint
Joan(1923). With a range incorporating both contemporary
satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading
dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded
the Nobel Prize in Literature.
•Born in Dublin, Shaw moved to London in 1876, where he
struggled to establish himself as a writer and novelist, and
embarked on a rigorous process of self-education. By the mid-
1880s he had become a respected theatre and music critic

21. MAJOR PLAYS
PYGMALION SAINT JOAN MAN AND
SUPERMAN

22. MAJOR PLAYS
MAJOR BARBARA MRS.WARREN’S
PROFESSION
ARMS AND THE
MAN

23. MAJOR PLAYS
THE APPLE CART CANDIDA ANDROCLES AND
THE LION

24. THESE ARE FEW OF THE FAMOUS ENGLISH
DRAMATISTS AND THEIR MAJOR PLAYS

25. THANK YOU
PREPARED BY
Mubeena K
KSTC