Four Ancient Playwrights
While there were many playwrights that submitted plays to the Dionysian Festivals, most records of their efforts have been lost. Those we do know about were the most celebrated, both in creating award-winning tragic and comic works of theater, but also in their contribution to shaping the conventions of the genre.
Aeschylus
Aeschylus (525-455 BCE) was a prolific playwright, credited for over 80 plays (though just handful have survived). He was also extremely successful, winning top festival honors more than a dozen times. The three tragedies in his trilogy, Orestia, deal with the concept of vengeance vs. justice and breaking the cycle of violence. Aeschylus was also an actor, and helped advance the development of scenery and costuming through his plays.
Sophocles
Originally, Sophocles (496-406 BCE) was an actor, but due to a weak voice, he gave it up and instead became the first poet to exclusively write, rather than perform, his own plays. The plays of Sophocles were frequent festival winners, popular with judges and audiences alike. The Greek philosopher Aristotle credits Sophocles for increasing the number of actors from two to three and the chorus to thirteen. Antigone, Electra, and Oedipus Rex are among Sophocles' most famous tragedies.
Euripides
While Euripides (480-407 BCE) was just as prolific as Aeschylus and Sophocles, he did not enjoy the same level of success in his lifetime, as he inserted more social commentary than was usual in his plays. In his tragedy Medea, Euripides created one of the first strong female main characters, driven to misguided vengeance by her fury, rather than by fate. Fortunately, a larger number of his plays—18 tragedies and one satyr play, survived, and his work became popular in the second century.
Aristophanes
The plays of Aristophanes (ca 450-385 BCE) helped define Old Comedy, where unlike tragedy, the chorus and actors interact directly with the audience. Also unlike the tragedians, whose plays often focused on historical events played out within the context of myths and legends, Aristophanes' plays satirized contemporary subjects, with caricatures of real people, including Euripides, Sophocles and Aeschylus. Of his more than 40 plays (11 of which survive), he only received six festival victories. His 405 BCE play, The Frogs, an episodic "buddy comedy" about travelling through Hades, was so well-received it won an unprecedented second performance in the next year's festival.
