The 52 best easy plays

No. 11 on this list. King John · William Shakespeare · 1596

Included in: Great Books of the Western World

Philip Faulconbridge knows exactly who he is: the illegitimate son of Richard Coeur-de-lion, raised as a Faulconbridge, legitimized by his own choice. King John knows what he wants: the English throne his brother's son Arthur has the better legal claim to. What neither man can control is the play's central force — commodity, Shakespeare's word for self-interest dressed as principle. Around them, King Philip of France swears sacred oaths and breaks them within an act. Cardinal Pandulph maneuvers the papacy's interests through excommunication and alliance. Constance, Arthur's mother, rails at every betrayal with an intensity that makes her grief both righteous and inconvenient. The play traces the political machinery of the Plantagenet world with cold precision: marriage negotiations dissolve wars, papal legates redirect armies, and a child's claim to a throne becomes a reason to have the child killed. Shakespeare sets the Bastard at the center not as hero but as observer — his asides running alongside the action like a mordant commentary on how kings behave when they think no one is watching. The verse shifts register constantly, from formal diplomatic address to earthy soliloquy to Constance's raw lament. King John is among the least-produced of Shakespeare's histories, which has left it free of the interpretive weight that settles on Hamlet or Richard II. Reading it now, the question of who has the right to rule — by birth, by force, by divine sanction, by popular consent — has not become less urgent.

No. 12 on this list. The School for Wives · Molière · 1662

Included in: Great Books of the Western World

A major Molière comedy, regularly performed and studied. Marks the beginning of his mature period and the great querelle it provoked.

No. 13 on this list. Ethan Frome · Edith Wharton · 1911

One of the most widely assigned American novels, a staple of high school and college curricula. A central text of American literary realism.

No. 14 on this list. To Kill a Mockingbird · Harper Lee · 1961

Taught in schools: Cambridge IGCSE Literature in English (0475), Common Core text exemplars (Appendix B) (US), CSEC English B – Caribbean Examinations Council

Appears on 1,674 university syllabi (80.6th percentile, Open Syllabus Project) and is a fixture of American high school and university English curricula. Wikipedia articles exist in 58 languages with dedicated reception and adaptations sections. Published by four prestige houses — Library of America, Everyman's Library, Penguin Classics, and Penguin Modern Classics — confirming its standing in the Western canon.

No. 15 on this list. Sizwe Bansi Is Dead · Athol Fugard · 1972

One of the most important plays in South African theatrical history and a central work of anti-apartheid literature. Widely performed and taught internationally.

No. 16 on this list. Our Town · Thornton Wilder · 1938

Taught in schools: Common Core text exemplars (Appendix B) (US), CSEC English B – Caribbean Examinations Council

Our Town is among the most-produced American plays, a staple of high school and college drama and American literature courses. It won the 1938 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and is widely taught as a landmark of twentieth-century American theater.

No. 17 on this list. Blasted · Sarah Kane · 1995

Now recognized as one of the most important British plays of the late twentieth century. A landmark of in-yer-face theater and a standard text in contemporary drama courses.

No. 18 on this list. Manon Lescaut · Abbé Prévost · 1731

Taught in schools: Programme de français, lycée général et technologique (France)

A cornerstone of the French novel and one of the great love stories of European literature. Widely read and studied.

No. 19 on this list. Mandragola · Niccolò Machiavelli · 1524

The greatest Italian Renaissance comedy and Machiavelli's most performed work, standard in courses on European drama and Renaissance literature.

No. 20 on this list. The Learned Ladies · Molière · 1672

A significant Molière play, regularly included in collected editions and periodically revived. Less universally performed than Tartuffe or The Misanthrope.

No. 21 on this list. Dirty Hands · Jean-Paul Sartre · 1948

One of the most performed French plays of the twentieth century and a staple of political theater. Widely taught in philosophy and literature courses.

No. 22 on this list. Monster · Walter Dean Myers · 1999

Steve Harmon is sixteen years old and on trial for felony murder. He may have acted as a lookout for a Harlem drugstore robbery that left the owner dead — or he may not have. The question hangs over Walter Dean Myers's 1999 novel, which Steve narrates in the only form that makes sense to him: a screenplay. He writes himself as the protagonist, titles the film Monster — the word the prosecutor used to describe him — and cuts between courtroom scenes and flashback journal entries while his mother cries in the gallery and his lawyer calculates the odds. The form is not a gimmick. A screenplay externalizes action and dialogue while burying interiority in stage directions, and that gap is exactly where Myers puts the book's central problem: we watch Steve perform innocence without ever being certain whether we are watching performance or truth. The trial exposes Harlem's carceral machinery — the way young Black men get classified, processed, and destroyed — but Monster refuses to let that machinery fully explain Steve. He asks, on the last page, who he is. Myers doesn't answer. Readers will spend time after the last page deciding whether that's evasion or honesty, and what it says about how they read a defendant's face.

No. 23 on this list. Devdas · Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay · 1917

A staple of Bengali and Hindi literature syllabi and one of the most culturally saturated stories in South Asia.

No. 24 on this list. Three Tall Women · Edward Albee · 1991

Pulitzer Prize winner and widely regarded as Albee's late masterpiece. A standard text in American drama courses and regularly revived in major productions.

No. 25 on this list. Exit the King · Eugène Ionesco · 1962

Ionesco's most widely performed play and one of the central works of the Theater of the Absurd. Regularly revived in major productions worldwide.

No. 26 on this list. The Flies · Jean-Paul Sartre · 1943

Taught in schools: UNAM Escuela Nacional Preparatoria – programas de Literatura (Mexico)

A major work of existentialist theater and an important document of intellectual resistance during the occupation. Regularly taught and performed.

No. 27 on this list. The Ox-Bow Incident · Walter Van Tilburg Clark · 1940

A staple of American high school and college curricula and a landmark of the Western as serious literature, though below the very top rank of the canon.

No. 28 on this list. Sweat · Emma Healey · 2017

It won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and is quickly entering contemporary American drama courses. It has had too little time to reach the canon of Gatsby or Mockingbird.

No. 29 on this list. Ti-Jean and His Brothers · Derek Walcott · 1958

A foundational work of Caribbean drama, widely taught in postcolonial literature courses. Less known outside that context than Walcott's poetry.

No. 30 on this list. In the Blood · Suzan-Lori Parks · 1999

Widely taught in American drama and African American literature courses. Recognized as one of Parks's major works and a significant contemporary American play.