Top Ten Best Playwrights of All Time

It's sad so many think Shakespeare is boring. There has been no other playwright who so understood man's strengths and weaknesses. And his command of the English language is unparalleled!
I was recently at a performance of the Scottish play. I was laughing at one part, and no one else got the humor, which was pure wordplay. He was really good at using comic relief to break the tension in an intense drama, and then building up the drama again.
All his plays grasp the human spirit in many ways, and his characters are so memorable that many of us think of them as real people or archetypes. Directors of his plays have interpreted them in various ways, and actors have played the characters in various ways.
The pleasures and enlightenments he gives us are endless and adaptable to any age and point of view.

His philosophical insights are simplistic, but he deserves credit for creating a vivid, cartoon-like dramatization of intellectual despair.
The heir to Joyce and one of very few writers to master both the dramatic and epic forms - a nonpareil playwright and novelist.
I never tire of his offbeat wit. I could read and watch his plays over and over and come away with a different feeling every time.


There's a great bias against Ibsen in the U.S., where he is known primarily for A Doll's House and Hedda Gabler. His many other fine plays (Peer Gynt, An Enemy of the People, The Wild Duck, The Master Builder, etc.) are mostly forgotten.
Globally, however, he is one of the most respected and produced playwrights. By their own admissions, Arthur Miller and George Bernard Shaw would have been nobodies had it not been for Ibsen.
Henrik Ibsen, the father of modern drama and creator of A Doll's House, An Enemy of the People, and The Wild Duck, influenced Anton Chekhov, George Bernard Shaw, and August Strindberg. He deserves a higher position on this list.
P.S.
Why is August Strindberg not on this list?

Antigone, the greatest of all plays not written by Shakespeare, is as relevant today as it was then. How far can the state go in overriding family and religious obligations?
One of the rarest dramatists ever. We still couldn't write a play like him today.

He wrote under a pseudonym to avoid retribution from his critics.

He created tragedy and is one of the few whose work has lasted over thousands of years.
The father of tragedy and still unrivaled!
The reek of human blood smiles out at me.

Since he is Italian, not many people consider him and his deeply innovative and revolutionary ideology. If read and understood with a critical attitude, he turns out to be a genius. Only Aeschylus, Sophocles, Shakespeare, and probably Ibsen could beat him.
Ah yes, Italians are always overlooked. Just ask Leonardo da Vinci.

In all my years of high school education (currently a junior), Arthur Miller has been an excellent choice for projects in my AP American Lit class. His books flow like Nutella, unlike the banal, monotone literature received from more "elevated" and "scholarly" playwrights such as Shakespeare.
The Crucible is an absolutely brilliant work. All of Arthur Miller's plays are. I have not read a playwright that I appreciate the way I appreciate him. Even Shakespeare, who I passionately love, has not affected me the way Miller has.

I didn't even care about playwriting until I read "VERA." I was enchanted with the way Oscar Wilde wrote it! Of course, I afterwards kept reading his plays. Amazing, insightful, witty, and undoubtedly one of the best.
This man is the greatest prose writer. He was also a storyteller and writer, including The Model Millionaire.
#29!?!? Inconceivable! Easily one of the greatest playwrights. My top five would be Shakespeare, Beckett, Ibsen, Wilder, and Sophocles.
The Newcomers


Nothing moves me like the plays of Williams. Played by amateurs or professionals, they always seem to work, unlike most other plays. The writing is exquisite, and the drama is compelling!
Yesterday I watched The Glass Menagerie, and that once more confirmed my view of Williams as a great dramatic poet.
The realism in his plays is fantastic. A genuine talent.

Yes, he must be within the top ten very easily. A theatrical equivalent of Rembrandt, he painted human life in darker tones unimaginably well.
Number two behind Will, no question. His ability to use the stage and create dramas, combined with consummate irony, is unparalleled.
Not sure how you can be a master of unending hopes, but he was certainly a great playwright.

Shaw was a towering figure and deserves to be much further up the list.
This writer is especially brilliant in drama literature with the mind of a true genius.
I have always revered his work, apart from the comedies.
He is a better playwright than Shakespeare.


Truly the greatest neo-classical writer. His myth-inspired plays combine great sparseness and economy of form with the purity and simple elegance of language in wrenching tragedies inspired by the tremendous passions of heroes and gods.
His greatest plays, Athalie, Phèdre, Iphigénie, Andromaque, and Bérénice, all portraits of major female figures of Greek and Hebraic legend, showcase vibrant energy and magnificently contained emotion.
Known by contemporaries as the Clean Racine.
Noel Coward was a brilliant playwright and had a unique style that has lasted through the ages.
Dialogue like a crisply ironed white shirt.

More human beings have seen Neil Simon's plays than any other playwright in history! That's #1, numero uno, the top dude. Even though Shakespeare had a 500-year head start and has always been produced and popular, Simon is still tops. Live with it!
Looked down upon by highbrows but a master of his craft.
Great humor and a wry tolerance of human frailty.

He only wrote a few plays, but those inspired many of Shakespeare's works. Without him, we might not have the Shakespeare we know today.
A quiet achiever. Nothing flashy about these plays, but they are deeply felt.
He can see quite clearly through those thick-lensed specs.
Northern drollery laced with melancholy.


One of the true-blue, old-style word bottlers.

He combines Shakespeare's human insight and depth with total mastery of classical forms.

The early plays are already classics, especially The Caretaker and The Homecoming. They are certainly among the greatest plays of the 20th century.
Giant of British playwrights. A unique talent.
In a class of his own. Comparisons are futile.

This is an indication of playing favorites and the sign of the times I am living in. O'Neill wrote good plays, great plays, and bad plays, but his life's work is his legacy.
A reminder that a play doesn't solve all of your problems is something that makes him my creative inspiration. He will always be number one on my list.
Perhaps the greatest American playwright. He wrote some of the most intense dramas of the 20th century.
How anyone could not have Eugene O'Neill in the top five is laughable.