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At the end of _____________, the only character left standing is Horatio.
Hamlet.
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______ tricks Othello into believing that his wife Desdemona is being unfaithful, so that Othello murders her for her alleged crimes.
Iago.
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________ ____ ________ is about the feuding Montagues and Capulets.
Romeo & Juliet.
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__________ murdered Julius Caesar..
Brutus
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After disbelieving his youngest (and only well-behaved) daughter, ______ ______ leaves his fortune to his evil eldest two girls.
King Lear.
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The author of A Doll�s House was ___________.
Henrik Ibsen. Known for his uncanny ability to portray the inner-strength of the nineteenth-century woman, Ibsen�s other dramatic works include Ghosts and An Enemy of the People.
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The playwright ___________ wrote many farces, including The Doctor in Spite of Himself, Sganarelle, and George Dandin.
Jean Baptiste Moliere. Also an actor, director, and stage manager, this Frenchman wrote many amusing pieces for the pleasure of the court. Born in 1622, his comedies included The Learned Women, which poked fun at intellectuals, and the set The School for Husbands and The School for Wives.
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French dramatist _____________ wrote The Romancers and The Woman of Samaria.
Edmond Rostand. Most of Rostand�s plays are light, with no dark themes�-he reserved that for his poetry, like Cyrano de Bergerac. His story Chantecler was brought to the United States in 1910.
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_____________�s play The Importance of Being Earnest debuted in 1905.
Oscar Wilde. Full of paradoxical situations, Wilde�s other plays include Lady Windermere�s Fan, A Woman of No Importance, and An Ideal Husband.
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Author of Waiting for Godot, ______________ wrote his original scripts in French and them translated them himself into English.
Samuel Beckett. Winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize for Literature, he also wrote the drama Endgame.
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______________ wrote many avant-garde plays, including The Bald Soprano.
Eugene Ionesco. Much of his work delves into the absurdity of the proletariat and the bourgeois, including La Lecon, Les Chaises, and Rhinoceros.
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Playwright Eugene O�Neill�s autobiographical work, ___ ______ _______ _________ into Night, was discovered after his death in manuscript form.
A Long Day's Journey. Prior to his death, O�Neill won a Pulitzer Prize for Strange Interlude, about an infertile woman coming to terms with her sexuality, and wrote The Iceman Cometh in 1946.
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Tennessee Williams won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1947 play ____ ______________ _________ ________, about sisters Blanche and Stella.
A Streetcar Named Desire. Out of his over 70 plays, A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie stand out as two of his finest (and earliest) works.
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Cat On a Hot Tin Roof was written by _______________.
Tennessee Williams. Among his many plays, Williams also wrote Night of the Iguana, The Milk Train Doesn�t Stop Here Any More, The Seven Descents of Myrtle, In the Bar of the Tokyo Hotel, and Small Craft Warnings.
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In Greek theaters, the ground the actors stood on was called the _______________.
Proscenium. The proscenium was elevated to help establish an upstage and downstage area for the audience. The background (traditionally three houses with three doors, and an entrance on either side) was called the skene, while the chorus stood in the orchestra.
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_________ is a transparent fabric used as a drop in the theater to create special effects of lights or atmosphere.
Scrim. It is sometimes also lit from the back so that you can see a silhouette.
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The start of Greek tragedy, a _____________ was performed by the chorus to the god Dionysus.
Dithyramb. This hymn to Dionysus involved the chorus singing back and forth with a lead singer. The practice eventually led to more advanced forms of tragedy.
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The lead singer of a dithyramb is called the ____________.
Thespis. Credited as the father of tragedy, he introduced this additional lead singer to bring dialogue into theater, so the character was named after him.
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In Greek theater, the priest or priestess who spoke on behalf of the gods was known as the ___________.
Oracle. Greek heroes frequently consult oracles to learn their fate or the next step in their journey, although the news isn�t always to their benefit (think Oedipus).
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The fifteenth-century play Everyman is a prime example of a __________ play.
Morality. Popular from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries, morality plays depicted the battle between good and evil through characters who each represented one of the two values.
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____________ killed his father and married his mother.
Oedipus. When it was prophesied that King Laius would be killed by his own son, the King abandoned Oedipus in a field. The baby was rescued by local villagers, and Oedipus believed them to be his true parents. When Oedipus was told he was fated to kill his own father, he fled, and on the way killed a man-�King Laius. Oedipus was then given the chance to win the hand of the dead king�s widow, which he did-�thus unwittingly fulfilling the prophecy.
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The Oedipus trilogy is composed of Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and _____________.
Antigone. The daughter of the incestuous affair between Oedipus and his own mother, Antigone and her sister flee to exile with their father in Oedipus at Colonus. When their brothers murder one another, a funeral service is forbidden, but Antigone chooses to perform one regardless�and is buried alive for her crime.
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Daughter of Zeus and Leda, _______ ___ ______ was considered the most beautiful woman in existence.
Helen of Troy. When Helen was selecting a suitor, her surrogate father Tyndareus made each potential mate swear to protect whoever Helen chose with their life. Though she chose Menelaus, she was kidnapped by Paris and taken to Troy�which started the Trojan War. She is often dubbed �the face that launched a thousand ships� for her influence.
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William Shakespeare wrote historical accounts of King ________ the IV, V, VI, and VIII.
Henry. The succession of plays follows Henry IV and his descendents through wars to protect their homeland, England.
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The final three tragedies of Aeschylus are known as the ___________.
Oresteia. The three plays are Agamemnon, The Cho�phoroe, and The Eumenides. Eugene O�Neill later rewrote the trilogy in American-style as Mourning Becomes Electra
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_____________ ________ is a bold attack by Aeschylus against the vengefulness of the gods
Prometheus Bound. It is important to note, however, that Prometheus Bound was intended to be a trilogy, but the latter two parts have never been found. Aeschylus may have redeemed the gods in later sections.
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Greek playwright Aristophanes wrote _____________, where Athenian women boycott their spouses in order to end the war.
Lysistrata. Aristophanes was both conservative and skeptical, writing satirical plays while denouncing the works of Socrates and the like. He wrote The Clouds as a satire about Socrates, and The Wasps, a satire about the Athenians being sue-crazy.
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In ____ _______ ______ of Windsor, Shakespeare resurrects Sir John Falstaff, who keeps company with two women simultaneously that eventually discover one another.
The Merry Wives. Rest-assured, the not-so-merry wives get together and trap Falstaff in the woods, with their children dressed as ghouls to scare him.
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Antonio is arrested and threatened with losing a pound of flesh when he reneges on a loan in "The __________ ____ _________".
Merchant of Venice. Bassanio, in an attempt to win the hand of Portia by selecting the right treasure chest, borrows money from the merchant Antonio, who in turn borrows the money from Shylock�-with a pound of his flesh as a guarantee. When Antonio's wealth is reported lost at sea, Shylock has Antonio arrested and tries to claim his right to the pound of flesh-�and Antonio's life. At the last minute, Antonio is saved by a lawyer (actually Portia in disguise), who points out that the contract is flawed since the deal is that Shylock gets a pound of flesh, but he can't take that without taking some of Antonio's blood.
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In The Tempest, ____________ creates a thunderstorm to trap his brother Ferdinand into coming to the island he and his daughter Miranda have been stranded on for twelve years.
Prospero. Once the King of Naples, he was tricked by his brother (the heir to the throne) into staying on this deserted island. When Ferdinand arrives at the island, he does so on the side opposite of Prospero, and woos Miranda (his niece). Things are complicated by the running off of Prospero�s slave, Caliban, and the mischievous spirit, Ariel.
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In __________ ______, Viola dresses as a man after the (supposed) death of her twin brother, only to be pursued by Olivia.
Twelfth Night. This tale is only made more complicated when Sebastian, the presumed--dead brother, returns and meets Olivia-�who is currently in love with Viola, a woman.
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Close friends Proteus and Valentine are separated in _____ ______ ____________ of Verona.
The Two Gentlemen. The two friends then meet up in Milan, where they fall for the same woman, Silvia. Though Valentine and Silvia are prepared to elope, Proteus interferes every step of the way in an attempt to gain her for himself. When Julia comes to Milan in search of her true love, Proteus, Proteus comes to his senses and apologizes to all involved.
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An African-American woman raised in Chicago, Lorraine Hansberry wrote the play __ ________ ___ ____ ____.
A Raisin in the Sun. The play was a cross between a comedy and a drama, focusing on the everyday lives of an average black American family. Hansberry died of cancer five years later, having written only one other (and far less successful) play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein�s Window
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French dramatist ____________ wrote the tragedies, Cinna, and Polyeucte.
Pierre Corneille. A seventeenth-century writer, Corneille�s greatest work was Le Cid in 1637. However, a critical essay by Jean Chapelain called Corneille a plagiarist with poorly constructed work, and thereafter he stayed with more traditional pieces.
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In Greek and Roman tales, women who roamed the forests adorned in animal skins and worshipping Dionysus were called ___________.
Bacchae. They may also have been referred to as maenads. These women were said to have danced themselves into wild frenzies and torn apart wild animals with their bare hands in the excitement. Note that Dionysus is the god of wine and fertility and drama in Greek mythology.
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In Greek mythology, ______________ was said to have stolen fire from the gods and given it to man when Zeus mistreated them.
Prometheus. Credited with creating humankind out of clay, he took it upon himself to teach many skills to humans so they could better themselves.
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