DDD's 100 Greatest Playwrights (in progress)
1. William Shakespeare
2. Sophocles
3. Moliere
4. Anton Chekhov
5. Euripides
6. Samuel Beckett
7. Aeschylus
8. Tennessee Williams
9. Aristophanes
10. Pedro Calderon de la Barca
11. Henrik Ibsen
12. George Bernard Shaw
13. Jean Racine
14. Bertolt Brecht
15. Eugene O'Neill
16. Antonin Artaud
17. Christopher Marlowe
18. Arthur Miller
19. August Strindberg
20. Lope de Vega
21. Pierre Corneille
22. Seneca
23. Oscar Wilde
24. Harold Pinter
25. Menander
26. Plautus
27. Ben Jonson
28. Edward Albee
29. Terence
30. Tony Kushner
31. Voltaire
32. Luigi Pirandello
33. Jean-Paul Sartre
34. Aphra Behn
35. David Mamet
36. Carlo Goldoni
37. Eugene Ionesco
38. Friedrich Schiller
39. Oliver Goldsmith
40. John Dryden
41. Sam Shepard
42. August Wilson
43. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
44. Thomas Middleton
45. Neil Simon
46. Tom Stoppard
47. John Fletcher
48. William Wycherley
49. Edmond Rostand
50. Richard Brinsley Sheridan

DDD's 100 Greatest Playwrights (coming soon)

both lists in progress. but i figured i'd see if anyone wanted to throw out ideas early.

brian friel?

Thornton Wilder?

both will likely be in the finished top 100.

Sir Francis Bacon.

I'd like to see someone do a list like this for prose writers or poets.

I have often wondered who would be considered the greatest poet. Shakspeare? Tennyson? Blake? Yeats? Byron? Just a few that come to mind. When it comes to American poetry, I'm thinking Whitman would have to be the highest.

Chekhov for number 2 or 3!

(I have no real reason for this other than that I personally think he's the best after Shakespeare).

he should actually be 3 objectively, maybe 2. especially as time moves forward and his plays grow in popularity while Moliere fades into the past.

No he doesn't.

Just noticed the overwhelming representation of European and American playwrights on here. I feel that for the next update, there should probably be at least one or two Japanese playwrights representing Noh and Kabuki, as both are extremely important forms of drama.

I'm thinking that Zeami Motokiyo should be on here for his massive influence on Noh, and Chikamatsu Monzaemon and Kawatake Mokuami for their influence on Kabuki.

initially it was a Western list by design, i just forgot to put that in the post. i don't have near enough knowledge of Eastern theatre to do it justice, although i would openly welcome a counter list for it.

I see what you mean, but you'd be surprised as to how much has crossed over. Chikamatsu is pretty much entirely responsible for the archetype of two Asians lovers committing suicide for purposes of honor, and please don't tell me Shakespeare came first, as it's unlikely that anyone in feudal Japan would have heard of him.