There are many great expository works, and many great novels, stories, and lyric poems, but there are only a few great plays. However, those few—the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the plays of Shakespeare, Molière’s comedies, the works of a very few moderns—are very great indeed, for they contain within them some of the deepest and richest insights men have ever expressed in words.
