A Raisin in the Sun
1959 · 151 pages
Ten thousand dollars of insurance money reaches a Chicago apartment and a Black family goes to war over what it is for. Broadway had never staged a play by a Black woman before.
★ 6.4
The Books canon
Sourced and shelved.
Every book chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
1962 · 257 pages
Two in the morning, a history professor and his wife receive a younger couple after a faculty party, and the drinking turns into a night of games designed to strip them bare.
★ 6.5
Richard III
1592 · 448 pages
Richard tells the audience in his first speech that he means to be a villain, then makes them accomplices. He courts a widow beside the corpse of the king he murdered.
★ 6.8
Julius Caesar
1599 · 288 pages
Brutus is persuaded that killing his friend will save the republic. Antony stands over the body, says he comes to bury Caesar and not to praise him, and turns Rome around.
★ 6.8
Henry IV, Part Two
1599 · 338 pages
Falstaff ages and the king dies while Prince Hal waits for the crown. Shakespeare wrote no colder scene than the new king telling his old tavern friend that he does not know him.
★ 7.0
Henry IV, Part One
1597 · 274 pages
Falstaff is the greatest comic creation in English, a fat knight who lies about everything, and Prince Hal wastes his youth drinking with him while rebellion gathers against his father the king.
★ 7.2
Henry V
1599 · 292 pages
Outnumbered in France, a young king talks his army into fighting at Agincourt, promising that whoever survives will remember the day forever. After the battle he reads out the names of the dead.
★ 7.3
A Doll's House
1879 · 72 pages
Nora Helmer forged a signature to save her husband's life and has been paying the debt in secret ever since. The play ends on a closing door that modern theater still hears.
★ 8.0
A Streetcar Named Desire
1947 · 128 pages
Blanche DuBois arrives at her sister's New Orleans apartment with nothing left, and her brother-in-law Stanley sets about destroying what remains. No American play has staged desire and cruelty this nakedly.
★ 8.7