Classic Drama (pre-1945)

Ben Jonson's 1616 comedy about a junior demon who persuades his master Satan to let him spend a day in London.

The Italian Court is riddled with corruption in this classic Jacobean tragedy. In the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series.

Molière's comedy about the notorious womaniser, in a fresh and performable translation by Kenneth McLeish.

A Chekhovian family drama, first staged in Russia in 1905.

Chekhov's great play about an elderly professor whose plans to sell off his rural estate threaten the livelihoods of those who have worked tirelessly to keep the estate going.

A classic French farce of infidelity and mistaken identity. In the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series.

One of Ibsen's most powerful studies of female psychology, in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series.

Ibsen's play about idealism and liberalism undermined by a deeply conservative society. In an English translation by Kenneth McLeish, published in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series.

Ibsen's masterpiece of modern tragicomedy, in an English translation by Stephen Mulrine. In the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series.

Gorky's magnificent play about the Russian bourgeois social class and the changes occurring around them in the middle of the first decade of the twentieth century. In the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series.

John Gay's bawdy and burlesque pastiche of classical Italian opera, often regarded as the world's first ever musical.

A delightfully lewd city comedy by the co-author of The Changeling.

Chekhov's compelling early play, set in a country weighed down by political, ideological and spiritual stagnation. In the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series.

An intense and powerful drama set in a Nottinghamshire mining town. In the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series.

Ibsen's play about an idealistic doctor whose moral resolve is put to the test when he discovers that the waters from which his native spa town draws its wealth are dangerously contaminated.

A startling domestic thriller from the seventeenth century, one of the first tragedies ever to be written about ordinary people. In the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series.

Racine's reworking of Euripides' Hippolytus, celebrated for its tragic construction and the richness of its language.

One of the best-known eighteenth-century comedies of manners, Sheridan's first play, and still his most popular. In the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series.