Macbeth

A king investigates a murder and discovers he is the murderer, the son and the husband he has been looking for. The tragedy every other tragedy is measured against.

Sophocles

A woman buries her brother against the king's explicit order and accepts what that will cost her. A play about which law wins when family duty and state power cannot both be obeyed.

Sophocles

A daughter waits years for her brother to come home and avenge their murdered father, and the waiting becomes its own punishment. Grief as a way of life rather than an event.

Sophocles

Abandoned by the husband she gave up everything for, Medea chooses a revenge that destroys her as completely as it destroys him. Still the most shocking ending in Greek theatre.

Euripides

The surviving plays of the earliest of the great tragedians, including the Oresteia and Prometheus Bound. This is where the form was invented, with the chorus still doing most of the work.

Aeschylus