1. Ancient Greek Playwrights:
- Sophocles
- Euripides
- Aeschylus
- Aristophanes
2. Roman Playwrights:
- Plautus
- Seneca the Younger
- Terence
3. Medieval Playwrights:
- Anonymous (medieval morality, mystery plays)
4. Renaissance and Early Modern Playwrights:
- William Shakespeare
- Christopher Marlowe
- Ben Jonson
- Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin)
- Lope de Vega (Spain)
- Pedro Calderón de la Barca (Spain)
5. Neoclassicism and Enlightenment:
- Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet)
- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
- Jean Racine (France)
- Pierre Corneille (France)
6. Romanticism and 19th-Century Playwrights:
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Germany)
- Friedrich Schiller (Germany)
- Victor Hugo (France)
- Henrik Ibsen (Norway)
- August Strindberg (Sweden)
- Anton Chekhov (Russia)
- George Bernard Shaw (Ireland)
- Oscar Wilde (Ireland)
7. Modern and Contemporary Playwrights:
- Bertolt Brecht (Germany)
- Samuel Beckett (Ireland)
- Harold Pinter (England)
- Tom Stoppard (England)
- Edward Albee (United States)
- Tennessee Williams (United States)
- Arthur Miller (United States)
- August Wilson (United States)
- Lorraine Hansberry (United States)
- Tony Kushner (United States)
- Athol Fugard (South Africa)
- Wole Soyinka (Nigeria)
This is just a partial list, as there are many more playwrights who have made significant contributions to the art form.