Antigone

A soldier is told he will be king and starts killing to make it happen sooner than it would have anyway. The shortest of the great tragedies and the one where the fall begins on the first page.

William Shakespeare

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 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