1000 BC American sculpture and big-headed Olmecs
Massive stone heads carved by the Olmecs provide a dramatic beginning to the story of American sculpture

534 BC Thespis wins drama prize
Thespis, traditionally considered the first actor, wins the drama competition in Athens

484 BC Aeschylus wins drama prize
Aeschylus wins the prize for tragedy at the City Dionysia in Athens

468 BC Sophocles wins drama prize
Sophocles wins the prize for tragedy in Athens, defeating Aeschylus in the competition

454 BC Euripides in drama contest
Euripides enters the drama contest at the City Dionysia in Athens for the first time

427 BC Dramatic reprieve for Mytilene
Athenians vote to kill all the men on the captured island of Mytilene, but the next day change their mind - almost too late

425 BC Aristophanes the comedian
Aristophanes wins first prize in Athens for his comedy The Acharnians

423 BC Socrates satirized by Aristophanes
Socrates is now sufficiently prominent to be satirized in Clouds, a comedy by Aristophanes

185 BC Plautus and Terence copy Greeks
Plautus and Terence, in the second and third century BC, create a Roman drama based on Greek originals

44 BC Mark Antony praises Caesar
Mark Antony gives a dramatic speech in praise of Caesar, calming the crowd but also positioning himself for the next stage in an ongoing power struggle

380 Kalidasa at Gupta court
Kalidasa, the most distinguished of India's authors in classical Sanskrit, is at the Gupta court in Patna

1115 Abelard teaches Heloïse
Peter Abelard teaches philosophy at Notre Dame until an affair with one of his pupils, Héloïse, brings his career to a dramatic end

1250 Tannhäuser among the Minnesinger
Tannhäuser is one of the Minnesinger, the German equivalents of the French troubadours

1515 French victory at Marignano
The king of France, Francis I, wins a dramatic victory at Marignano and captures Milan

1564 Marlowe and Shakespeare born
Marlowe and Shakespeare are born in the same year, with Marlowe the older by two months

1581 First ballet for French wedding
The first dramatic ballet, the Balet Comique de la Reine, is presented during French wedding festivities

1582 Shakespeare marries Anne
The 18-year-old William Shakespeare marries Anne Hathaway in Stratford-upon-Avon

1587 Marlowe pioneers blank verse
Marlowe's first play, Tamburlaine the Great, introduces the swaggering blank verse of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama

1592 Shakespeare shows his paces with Richard III
After tentative beginnings in the three parts of Henry VI, Shakespeare achieves his first masterpiece on stage with Richard III

1601 Hamlet catches spirit of age
Shakespeare's central character in Hamlet expresses both the ideals of the Renaissance and the disillusion of a less confident age

1604 Shakespeare listed as actor
William Shakespeare's name appears among the actors in a list of the King's Men

1605 Masque at court of James I
Ben Jonson writes The Masque of Blackness, the first of his many masques for the court of James I

1606 Ben Jonson's Volpone
The satirical voice of the English playwright Ben Jonson is heard to powerful effect in Volpone

1611 The Tempest
Shakespeare's last completed play, The Tempest, is performed

1616 Shakespeare dies
William Shakespeare dies at New Place, his home in Stratford-upon-Avon, and is buried in Holy Trinity Church

1623 First Folio
John Heminge and Henry Condell publish thirty-six Shakespeare plays in the First Folio

1629 Bernini is architect to St Peter's
The sculptor and architect Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini is given the task of adding the drama of baroque to the newly completed St Peter's in Rome

1637 Corneille's Le Cid
Pierre Corneille's play Le Cid, popular with Paris audiences, hinges on the conflict between duty and love

1667 Racine's Andromaque
French dramatist Jean Racine's first great success, Andromaque, finds tragic drama in a quadrangle of love

1673 Molière no malade imaginaire
Molière falls fatally ill when acting in his own play Le Malade Imaginaire

1740 Goldoni a hit in Venice
Italian dramatist Carlo Goldoni makes a success of plays in the ancient commedia dell'arte tradition

1762 Gluck reforms opera
The intensely dramatic music of Gluck's Orfeo ed Eurydice introduces a much needed reform in the conventions of opera

1773 She Stoops to Conquer
Oliver Goldsmith's play She Stoops to Conquer is produced in London's Covent Garden theatre

1774 Storm and stress
Goethe's play Götz von Berlichingen, a definitive work of Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress), has its premiere in Berlin

1775 Figaro here to stay
Figaro makes his first appearance on stage in Beaumarchais' The Barber of Seville

1777 School for Scandal
Richard Brinsley Sheridan's second play, The School for Scandal, is an immediate success in London's Drury Lane theatre

1778 Brook Watson and the Shark
In Brook Watson and the Shark John Singleton Copley creates the most intensely dramatic of his modern history paintings

1782 Schiller sensation
Friedrich von Schiller's youthful and anarchic play The Robbers causes a sensation when performed in Mannheim

1789 Dunlap's The Father
US painter and author William Dunlap has great success with his comedy The Father; or, American Shandyism

1792 Swedish king shot
The Swedish king Gustavus III is assassinated at a midnight masquerade in Stockholm – an event later dramatized by Verdi

1794 Goethe and Schiller in Weimar
Goethe and Schiller become friends, and together create the movement known as Weimar classicism

1830 Hernani
Victor Hugo's romantic drama Hernani provokes a riot in the Paris audience on the first night

1831 Boris Godunov
Russian poet Alexander Pushkin publishes a grand historical drama, Boris Godunov

1836 The Inspector General
The Inspector General, a farce by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol satirising Russian offialdom, has tsar Nicholas I in the audience for the premiere

1843 Prescott's Conquest of Mexico
William Hickling Prescott brings the Conquistadors dramatically to life in his 3-volume History of the Conquest of Mexico

1854 Otis makes elevator safe
US inventor Elisha Otis dramatically demonstrates his new safety elevator, cutting the rope suspending his platform in New York's Crystal Palace

1861 Paul Revere's Ride
Longfellow's narrative poem Paul Revere's Ride dramatizes a turning point at the start of the American Revolution

1861 Semmelweis washes hands to save life
Hungarian physician Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis publishes his discovery that deaths from puerperal fever can be dramatically reduced by a strict hand-washing routine

1861 East Lynne
Mrs Henry Wood publishes her first novel, East Lynne, which becomes the basis of the most popular of all Victorian melodramas

1871 Irving in The Bells
English actor Henry Irving plays what becomes one of his most famous parts, that of Mathias in the melodrama The Bells

1875 Peer Gynt
Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt has its premiere in Oslo, with incidental music by Edvard Grieg

1879 A Doll's House
Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House signals a new direction in drama in its frank treatment of tensions within a marriage

1890 Hedda Gabler
Henrik Ibsen publishes his play Hedda Gabler, with its powerfully manipulative central character, a year before it is first produced (in Germany)

1891 Hardy's Tess of the Durbervilles
Thomas Hardy publishes his novel Tess of the Durbervilles, with a dramatic finale at Stonehenge

1892 Wilde has first stage hit
Oscar Wilde's comedy Lady Windermere's Fan is a great success with audiences in London's St. James Theatre

1892 Yeats's first play
W.B. Yeats publishes a short play The Countess Cathleen, his first contribution to Irish poetic drama

1892 Shaw's Widower's Houses
Bernard Shaw's first play, Widowers' Houses, deals with the serious social problem of slum landlords

1892 Pelléas et Mélisande the play
Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck publishes his play Pelléas et Mélisande

1895 Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde's most brilliant comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest is performed in London's St. James Theatre

1896 Seagull fails in St Petersburg
Anton Chekhov's play The Seagull has a disastrous premiere in St Petersburg (but is well received two years later in Moscow)

1898 Seagull succeeds in Moscow
Chekhov's The Seagull, directed by Konstantin Stanislavsky, succeeds at the Moscow Art Theatre

1900 Uncle Vanya
Anton Chekhov's play Uncle Vanya is directed by Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theatre

1902 Cathleen ni Houlihan excites Dublin
The play Cathleen ni Houlihan, by W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, fosters Irish nationalism

1902 The Lower Depths
Maxim Gorky's play The Lower Depths is performed at the Moscow Art Theatre

1904 The Cherry Orchard
Anton Chekhov's last play, The Cherry Orchard, is staged by Stanislavsky just a few months before the author's death

1904 Synge's Riders to the Sea
J.M. Synge's play Riders to the Sea has its premiere at the Molesworth Hall in Dublin

1904 Peter Pan flies for the first time
J.M Barrie's play for children Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up has its premiere in London

1905 Two London premieres for GBS
Bernard Shaw has two new plays opening in London in the same year, Major Barbara and Man and Superman

1907 Playboy of the Western World
J.M. Synge's Playboy of the Western World provokes violent reactions at its Dublin premiere

1907 Ghost Sonata
Swedish playwright August Strindberg publishes The Ghost Sonata, which has its first performance in Stockholm the following year

1908 Maeterlinck's Blue Bird
Maurice Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird is performed at the Moscow Art Theatre in a production by Stanislavsky

1910 Deirdre of the Sorrows
J.M. Synge's last and unfinished play, Deirdre of the Sorrows, is performed in Dublin shortly after his death

1911 Hoffmansthal's Everyman
Hugo von Hofmannsthal adapts the English medieval morality play Everyman ('Jedermann') for performance in Salzburg

1913 Pygmalion
Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion has its first performance – in a German version in Vienna

1915 Mayakovsky's A Cloud in Trousers
The Russian poet and dramatist Vladimir Mayakovsky publishes his first major long poem, A Cloud in Trousers

1916 Provincetown Players
The Provincetown Players are founded in Massachusetts, opening with a production of Eugene O'Neill's Bound East for Cardiff

1916 Hobson's Choice
Manchester dramatist Harold Brighouse has a major success when his play Hobson's Choice is performed in London

1916 Dramatic Shackleton rescue
After an 800-mile journey in an open boat Ernest Shackleton returns to rescue his stranded colleagues in the South Shetlands

1921 Pirandello's amazing five weeks
Within a five-week period the Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello writes two masterpieces, Six Characters in Search of an Author immediately followed by Henry IV

1921 Capek introduces the robot
The Czech playwright Karel Capek gives the world the term 'robot', in the title of his play Rossum's Universal Robots

1921 Anna Christie
Eugene O'Neill's play Anna Christie is performed in New York

1922 Nanook of the North
Robert J. Flaherty lives with the Inuit in the Arctic to make his dramatized documentary Nanook of the North

1923 Shadow of a Gunman
Sean O'Casey's first play The Shadow of a Gunman is performed at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin

1923 Elmer Rice's Adding Machine
US dramatist Elmer Rice establishes his reputation with The Adding Machine, an expressionistic drama about the machine age

1923 Shaw's Saint Joan
Bernard Shaw's play Saint Joan has its world premiere in New York

1924 Juno and the Paycock
Sean O'Casey's second play Juno and the Paycock is performed at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin

1927 Mae West gaoled for obscenity
Mae West is sentenced to eight days in gaol when Sex, written, produced and starred in by herself on Broadway, is judged to be obscene

1927 Porgy and Bess as a play
DuBose Heyward's novel Porgy, dramatized with a new title by himself and his wife Dorothy, has a great success on Broadway and in London

1928 The Front Page
The Front Page, by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, has its premiere on Broadway

1928 Journey's End
Set in a World War I trench, the play Journey's End reflects the wartime experiences of its British author, R.C. Sherriff

1929 The Bedbug
Vladimir Mayakovsky's play The Bedbug is directed in Moscow by Meyerhold with incidental music by Shostakovich

1930 Green Pastures
US author Marc Connelly's play Green Pastures has its premiere on Broadway

1930 Private Lives
Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence star in the West End in Private Lives, Coward's comedy of marital complications

1931 Mourning becomes Electra
The trilogy Mourning becomes Electra, Eugene O'Neill's transposition to New England of the Oresteia story, is performed in New York

1932 Anouilh's first play
French playwright Jean Anouilh has his first play, L'Hermine, produced and published

1933 Blood Wedding
García Lorca writes his play Blood Wedding while he is director of a company touring in rural Spain

1934 The Children's Hour
In Lillian Hellman's play The Children's Hour two teachers are maliciously accused of lesbianism by one of their pupils

1935 Mutiny on the Bounty
Frank Lloyd directs Charles Laughton and Clark Gable in a dramatic account of the famous mutiny on the Bounty

1935 Murder in the Cathedral
T.S. Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral has its first performance in Canterbury cathedral

1936 House of Bernarda Alba
García Lorca writes his play The House of Bernarda Alba in the last year of his short life

1936 French without Tears
Terence Rattigan's first play, French without Tears, is performed in London

1938 Our Town
Thornton Wilder's play Our Town opens on Broadway

1938 War of the Worlds causes panic
A dramatized version of H. G. Wells's War of the Worlds, broadcast on US radio, terrifies listeners who think Martians are invading

1941 Mother Courage
Bertolt Brecht's play set in the Thirty Years' War, Mother Courage, has its first performance in Zurich

1942 The Skin of our Teeth
Thornton Wilder's play The Skin of our Teeth has a mixed reception at its New Haven premiere

1943 Sartre writes for the theatre
Jean-Paul Sartre begins a new career as a dramatist with his first play, The Flies ('Les Mouches')

1945 The Glass Menagerie
US dramatist Tennessee Williams has his first success with The Glass Menagerie

1946 The Iceman Cometh
Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, set in a down-and-out bar of the kind he had known in his youth, is performed in New York

1947 Brecht's Galileo
Bertolt Brecht's play The Life of Galileo has its premiere in Los Angeles with Charles Laughton in the lead

1947 Streetcar Named Desire
Marlon Brando stars on Broadway in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar named Desire

1947 An Inspector Calls
J.B. Priestley challenges audiences with An Inspector Calls, a play in which moral guilt spreads like an infection

1948 The Lady's Not For Burning
Christopher Fry's verse drama The Lady's Not For Burning engages in high-spirited poetic word play

1948 Balanchine's company in City Center
George Balanchine's New York City Ballet becomes the resident company in the City Center for Music and Drama

1949 Death of a Salesman
Death of a Salesman, by US playwright Arthur Miller, has its first performance in New York

1950 The Bald Prima Donna
French dramatist Eugène Ionesco's play The Bald Prima Donna launches the Theatre of the Absurd

1953 Waiting for Godot
Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot ('En attendant Godot') is first performed in French in Paris

1953 The Crucible
Arthur Miller's play The Crucible uses the Salem witch trials as a metaphor for the contemporary paranoia of McCarthyism

1954 Under Milk Wood is broadcast
Dylan Thomas's 'play for voices', Under Milk Wood, is broadcast on BBC radio, with Richard Burton as narrator

1955 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Tennessee Williams' play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opens on Broadway

1955 A View from the Bridge
Arthur Miller's play A View from the Bridge is performed in New York

1956 Dürrenmatt's The Visit
The Visit, by Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt, has its premiere in Zürich

1956 Long Day's Journey into Night
Eugene O'Neill's searing account of tensions within his own family, Long Day's Journey into Night, has its premiere in Stockholm

1956 Look Back in Anger
John Osborne's play Look Back in Anger features in the first season of London's new English Stage Company

1957 The Entertainer
Laurence Olivier brings the music-hall artist Archie Rice vibrantly to life in John Osborne's The Entertainer

1958 The Hostage
Irish dramatist Brendan Behan's play The Hostage is produced in Dublin

1958 Chicken Soup with Barley
Chicken Soup with Barley begins a trilogy by English playwright Arnold Wesker

1958 The Fire Raisers
The Fire Raisers, by Swiss dramatist Max Frisch, is performed in Zürich

1958 The Swamp Dwellers
Nigerian dramatist Wole Soyinka's play The Swamp Dwellers is produced in London

1958 Pinter's Birthday Party
Harold Pinter's first play in London's West End, The Birthday Party, closes in less than a week

1959 The Caretaker
Harold Pinter's second play in London's West End, The Caretaker, immediately brings him an international reputation

1959 The Miracle Worker
William Gibson's play The Miracle Worker dramatizes the extraordinary story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan

1960 A Man for All Seasons
Paul Scofield plays Thomas More in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons

1962 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
US dramatist Edward Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? opens on Broadway

1963 Kennedy is a Berliner
President Kennedy, in divided Berlin, makes the dramatic declaration: Ich bin ein Berliner ('I am a Berliner')

1965 The Odd Couple
Neil Simon's play The Odd Couple is produced in New York

1966 Offending the Audience
Austrian author Peter Handke provokes interest with his first play Offending the Audience

1966 Rozencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, by Tom Stoppard, is produced at the Edinburgh Festival

1967 Relatively Speaking
English playwright Alan Ayckbourn has his first success with Relatively Speaking

1967 A Day in the Death of Joe Egg
A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, by English dramatist Peter Nichols, has its premiere in London

1970 Accidental Death of an Anarchist
Italian playwright Dario Fo's black comedy Accidental Death of an Anarchist has its premiere in Milan

1972 Caryl Churchill's first play, Owners, is produced in London
English dramatist Caryl Churchill's first play, Owners, is produced in London

1977 Three Acts of Recognition
German author Botho Strauss's play Three Acts of Recognition wins him an international audience

1978 MacMillan's Mayerling
Kenneth MacMillan turns a double suicide of 1889 into a ferociously dramatic ballet, Mayerling

1979 Amadeus
Peter Shaffer's play about Mozart, Amadeus, has its premiere in London

1980 True West
US author Sam Shepard's play True West has its premiere in New York

1981 Chariots of Fire
Chariots of Fire, directed by Hugh Hudson, dramatizes the rivalry between two British athletes at the 1924 Summer Olympics

1982 Little Shop of Horrors
Little Shop of Horrors, by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, opens in New York

1982 Noises Off
Michael Frayn's farce Noises Off opens in London's West end

1983 The Dresser
Ronald Harwood's play The Dresser is partly inspired by the British actor Donald Wolfit

1987 Talking Heads
Talking Heads, a series of dramatic monologues by English author Alan Bennett, is broadcast on British TV

1987 Our Country's Good
Timberlake Wertenbaker bases her play Our Country's Good on Thomas Keneally's novel The Playmaker

1987 US stock-market collapse
The Dow-Jones index loses 30% in a dramatic US stock-market collapse

1988 M. Butterfly
M. Butterfly, by US author and composer David Henry Hwang, uses Puccini's opera as its inspiration

1990 Racing Demon
Racing Demon launches a trilogy on the British establishment by English playwright David Hare

1991 Madness of George III
Alan Bennett's play The Madness of George III is performed at the National Theatre in London

1992 Oleanna
David Mamet's play Oleanna dramatizes the ambiguities of sexual politics

1993 Millennium Approaches
Millennium Approaches, the first part of Tony Kushner's Angels in America, is premiered in London

1994 Art has Berlin prremiere
Art, a play by French-born Iranian playwright Yasmina Reza, has its premiere in Berlin

1995 The Usual Suspects
Bryan Singer directs the film The Usual Suspects, an intricate crime drama written by Christopher McQuarrie

1996 Marina Carr's Portia Coughlin
Irish author Marina Carr's play Portia Coughlin is performed at the Abbey Theatre

1997 Martin McDonagh writes first play in trilogy
Irish author Martin McDonagh's play The Beauty Queen of Leenane is the first in a trilogy

1998 Saving Private Ryan
Steven Spielberg directs Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan, a World War II drama about a US paratrooper

1998 Frayn's Copenhagen
Michael Frayn's play Copenhagen dramatizes the visit of Werner Heisenberg to Niels Bohr in wartime Denmark

2000 Gladiator
Russell Crowe stars in Ridley Scott's film Gladiator, a revenge drama set in second-century Rome

2013
Ayad Akhtar tackles a topical subject with his Pulitzer-Prize drama Disgraced, about a successful American's concealment of his Pakistani Muslim background