Playwright

A playwright is an author of plays for performance in the theater.

The earliest playwrights with surviving works are a group of playwrights from Greece during the 5th century BC, notably Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes. The term dramatist is sometimes synonymous with playwright, but often is not meant to include playwrights whose focus is comedy.

The word is often miss-spelt "playwrite". While this may seem intuitive, the "wright" is actually not related to word "write" in the sense of "writing" something. It is actually a suffix sometimes attached to professional names (e.g. wheelwright, ploughwright, etc.).

See also

• List of playwrights

de:Dramaturg fr:Dramaturge ja:劇作家