Play
4 volumes
The Courier's Tragedy Extensive excerpts
Richard Wharfinger — The Crying of Lot 49 · Thomas Pynchon
A seventeenth-century revenge tragedy, complete with poisoned saints' feet and a lake full of bones, whose surviving texts do not agree on whether they mention Trystero.
The King in Yellow Quoted
Unknown — The King in Yellow · Robert W. Chambers
A play in two acts. The first is harmless, even banal. The second, once read, is not something a mind comes back from.
The Murder of Gonzago Extensive excerpts
Unknown; Hamlet adds a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines — Hamlet · William Shakespeare
A play about a duke poisoned through the ear in a garden, staged at Elsinore so that a king will flinch — Hamlet's name for it, when he wants a lighter one, is The Mousetrap.
Treplev's Play Extensive excerpts
Konstantin Treplev — The Seagull · Anton Chekhov
A symbolist play about the world-soul at the end of time, performed once, on a homemade stage, to a mother who cannot stop being an audience, and then put in the stove.