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Plays began to become important in ancient Greece and two types of plays which were written and performed were comedies and tragedies. A comedy, in ancient Greece, was usually a play that marked or made fun of a certain topic, person, or group of people. One famous comedy writer was Aristophanes. He wrote the plays The Birds and Lysistrata. A tragedy, in ancient Greece, usually dealt with a moral or social issue, human suffering, and almost always ended in disaster. Three famous Greek tragedy writers are Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles. Aeschylus wrote the play The Oresteia, of these plays was Antigone. It was written about 441 B.C. and was about a girl named Antigone who defies the king’s orders and buries her brother, who was killed while leading a rebellion. In this play, many of the Greek values were expressed, which also is the purpose of most of the western civilization plays in today world (to express certain values). Also, the ideas of comedies and tragedies are used in western civilization except they are expanded and twisted around a little. A lot of famous play writers today are also inspired by the works of play writers from ancient
