Thespis: an Attican credited with inventing the play in the 530s at the Dionysia festival, adding an actor to the chorus. He is also said to have invented the mask. The term Thespian, referring to actors in dramas, comes from his name.
Aeschylus - One of the Three Classic Tragedian; lived from 525-456, earliest tragedian whose work survives
According to a story, Aeschylus was killed when an eagle dropped a tortoise on his (bald) head, while he was visiting Hieron I of Syracuse.
Aeschylus wrote eighty to ninety plays, out of which seven survive
The Persians: By Aeschylus, the only surviving Greek tragedy with a historical theme
The Seven Against Thebes: By Aeschylus, third play in an Oedipus-themed trilogy, Oedipodea
The Oresteia trilogy: only surviving trilogy of Aeschylus, contains Agamemnon, Choephoroe (the Libation Bearers), and Eumenides (‘kindly ones’, a euphemism for the Furies)
Other plays by Aeschylus: The Suppliant, Prometheus Bound
Aeschylus added the second actor to the play. He used three in his later plays. He won the dramatic competition at least 13 times; no doubt, many other times as well.
Sophocles - One of the Three Classic Tragedians; lived c 496-406/405, He wrote over one hundred plays, placing first about 80% of the time, and second all the rest of the times.
Seven of Sophocles' tragedies and most of one satyr play are extant. His extant plays are: Ajax, Trachinian Women, Oedipus Rex (Tyrannus), Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, Electra, Philoctetes
Sophocles added the third actor and scenery to plays, and increased the chorus from 12 to 15 members.
Sophocles is said to have made his characters as they ought to be, in contrast to Euripides, who made his characters as they are. In other words, his characters were idealized.
Euripides - One of the Three Classic Tragedians; lived c 485-406, died just before Sophocles, said to have written his plays in a cave on Salamis.
Euripides used the technique Deus ex machina, where a god solves the plot, the most of the playwrights.
19 of Euripides' plays survive, the most of any Greek dramatist. We know the titles of eighty plays by him.
Selections of Euripides' Plays:
Alcestis (pro-satyr play)
Bacchae
Electra
Hecuba
Hippolytus
Ion
Iphigenia at Aulis
Iphigenia in Tauris
Medea
Orestes
Rhesus
Suppliant Women
Trojan Women
Euripides was supposedly torn to pieces by the dogs of Archelaus, the king of Macedon, while visiting there.
All extant comedy is Athenian, the number of comedies performed at the Great Dionysia was reduced to three during and after the Peloponnesian war for economic reasons.
Comedy is organized into three periods: Old, Middle, and New.
Aristophanes - lived c 445 to 385, little is known of his life except that he was by far the greatest writer of Old Comedy.
We have eleven of Aristophanes' plays completely and fragments from several others.
The Clouds: By Aristophanes; It ridiculed Socrates
The Wasps: By Aristophanes, It ridiculed the jury and court system
The Peace: By Aristophanes; The hero in the play rides to heaven on a dung-beetle.
The Birds: By Aristophanes; Two Athenians travel to Nephelokokkygia (‘cloudcuckooland’) to escape the war.
Lysistrata: The most famous play of Aristophanes in modern times. The women of Sparta and Athens get together and decide to reject their husbands until they give up the war
The Frogs: By Aristophanes, The Athenians need a tragic poet, and Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides are all dead. Dionysus decides to settle a dispute between Aeschylus and Euripides as to who is the greatest tragedian (Sophocles having given way for Aeschylus). Dionysus chooses Aeschylus.
The last two surviving plays of Aristophanes belong to Middle Comedy (400-323)
Ecclesiazusae: By Aristophanes; probably produced in 392; belong to Middle Comedy. Women, under the leadership of Praxagora, take over the government. They institute communal property and equal sexual relations for everyone, young and old. The chorus is less important in this play than in previous Aristophanes works, and there is no parabasis.
The Plutus (The Wealth): By Aristophanes; belong to Middle Comedy; produced after Ecclesiazusae, a previous play of his. Produced in 408, had the same title but is lost. The Plutus is the last of Aristophanes’ extant plays.
New Comedy - all comedy from 323 to 263 (from the death of Alexander to the death of Philemon).
Menander - the greatest writer of New Comedy, lived from 342-292, died by drowning in the harbor of Piraeus. Only one of his some 100 plays is extant completely – The Dyscolus (‘the bad tempered man’)