DIVAN · Genres
Drama
19 published works. Explore books by literary genre and discover new works.
A Doll's House
A Doll's House — Henrik Ibsen. Nora Helmer’s apparently comfortable marriage depends on assumptions that a hidden debt begins to expose. As the truth approaches, Ibsen’s play questions duty, dependence and a woman’s freedom to define her own life.
Henrik IbsenDramaeBookA Trick for a Trick
A Trick for a Trick — Jovan Sterija Popović. A purse changes hands in a garden, and neighbourly advice becomes a weapon. A Trick for a Trick needs only two people and one hiding place. Its action is small enough to follow at a glance; its arguments expand to take in marriage, learning, commerce and conscience. Both men are gifted explainers, especially when an explanation makes self-interest sound respectable.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookAn Ideal Husband
An Ideal Husband — Oscar Wilde. A respected politician’s past threatens his marriage and public reputation when Mrs Cheveley arrives with a demand. Wilde’s comedy uses polished conversation and shifting loyalties to question moral certainty and the idea of an ideal husband.
Oscar WildeDramaeBookHedda Gabler
Hedda Gabler — Henrik Ibsen. Newly married Hedda Tesman feels trapped by domestic expectations and tries to control the people around her. Her destructive involvement with Eilert Lovborg and Thea Elvsted turns a confined drawing-room drama into a study of power, fear, and frustrated freedom.
Henrik IbsenDramaeBookLady Windermere's Fan
Lady Windermere's Fan — Oscar Wilde. Lady Windermere believes that her husband’s attentions to the socially suspect Mrs. Erlynne prove a betrayal. Over a single day, a birthday fan becomes the hinge of a comedy about appearances, scandal, sacrifice, and judgments made too quickly.
Oscar WildeDramaeBookMiloš Obilić
Miloš Obilić — Jovan Sterija Popović. In Miloš Obilić, honour is both a source of strength and a point of vulnerability. A hero who wants to free Serbia from foreign rule must answer an insult to his own name; a decision declared in public becomes an obligation that even love cannot easily restrain. Against his openness stand Branković’s envy, Negoda’s resourcefulness and Lazar’s willingness to believe a rumour once it takes the form of a letter.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookSvetislav and Mileva
Svetislav and Mileva — Jovan Sterija Popović. In Svetislav and Mileva, peace arrives as a demand made upon a family. After the defeat at Kosovo, Milica and Stefan seek a way to preserve their country; the price Bajazit sets includes Mileva’s marriage. She becomes the point at which duty to the fatherland, maternal love and an existing pledge of love collide. The play conducts its political argument through conversations between people who love one another and nevertheless cause one another pain.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookSympathy and Antipathy
Sympathy and Antipathy — Jovan Sterija Popović. Agnica reads a story and decides to turn it into a performance. Her parents dislike the man she wants to marry, so she devises an illness that only his presence can relieve. The audience hears the plan before the household sees its effects. This difference in knowledge is the play’s engine: each new sign confirms a theory to the doctor while revealing a piece of stagecraft to us.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookThe Badger Before the Court
The Badger Before the Court — Petar Kočić. Peasant David Štrbac takes a badger to court for ruining his maize. His apparently absurd complaint exposes poverty, official arrogance and the struggle for dignity in Petar Kočić’s satirical drama.
Petar KočićSatirical dramaeBook · AudiobookThe Enchanted Donkey
The Enchanted Donkey — Jovan Sterija Popović. The donkey in this comedy never speaks. Everyone else speaks a great deal, and their eloquence makes the animal seem increasingly sensible. Three students discover a sleeping peasant and a donkey they would like to turn into money. Their solution depends on a theatrical substitution: one student stays behind in the animal’s place, ready to explain the miracle when the owner wakes.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookThe Fate of a Mind
The Fate of a Mind — Jovan Sterija Popović. A Doctor of Philosophy has misplaced his mind. His servants look for it as though it were an object left in a room, and the Doctor eventually advertises a reward for its return. The joke grows out of the language he teaches: once a mind can sit at home, a river can have shoulders and a school can float, figures of speech become things that can walk, quarrel and get lost.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookThe Importance of Being Earnest
The Importance of Being Earnest — Oscar Wilde. Jack and Algernon invent convenient identities to escape social obligations and pursue the women they love. Their schemes collide in a sparkling comedy of mistaken names, courtship and Victorian respectability.
Oscar WildeDramaeBookThe Inspector-General
The Inspector-General — Nikolai Gogol. Officials in a corrupt provincial Russian town mistake a penniless young traveller for an important government inspector. Their frantic efforts to flatter and bribe him expose a web of vanity, fear and public dishonesty in Gogol's five-act comedy.
Nikolai GogolDramaeBookThe Liar and His Accomplice
The Liar and His Accomplice — Jovan Sterija Popović. Two hungry adventurers stop before a respectable house and invent a social position for themselves. Aleksa becomes Baron Golić, Mita his servant. Yet skill in lying is not all that opens the door: within the house is already a desire to hear exactly what they offer.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookThe Miser or Kir Janja
Jovan Sterija Popović’s Tvrdica ili Kir Janja (The Miser or Kir Janja) turns a merchant’s household into a counting house. Bread, a hat, a servant’s wages and a daughter’s marriage all pass through Janja’s private arithmetic. His thrift repeatedly destroys what it should preserve. Yet his attachment to money also makes him vulnerable: a promising return can overcome the caution that governs every ordinary expense.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookThe Patriots
The Patriots — Jovan Sterija Popović. A cockade can be taken off in a moment. In The Patriots, that small action becomes a political system. The same men discover first that freedom requires Hungarian colours, then that Serbian colours are indispensable, then that both may be worn at once. Their explanations grow more elaborate as their principles grow cheaper.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookThe Quarrelsome Husband
The Quarrelsome Husband — Jovan Sterija Popović. Maksim can find fault with a clean room because too much cleaning wears out the floor. An untidy room would condemn his wife just as surely. The trouble in The Quarrelsome Husband is therefore more stubborn than a disagreement about housework: any answer can be made wrong by a man determined to complain.
Jovan Sterija PopovićDramaeBook · AudiobookThe Vow
The Vow — Simo Matavulj. In The Vow, a word spoken within a family becomes an obligation reaching into love, religion and public life. Dubrovnik is more than a backdrop: aristocratic pride, memories of former independence, newspaper accusations and municipal elections enter the drawing room itself. Ivo tries to reconcile political conviction, his love for Milica and tenderness towards his ailing mother. What one person calls duty becomes another’s intolerable sacrifice.
Simo MatavuljDramaeBook · AudiobookThe World
The World — Branislav Đ. Nušić. The clock strikes three, a daughter brings her father back from sleep, and the newspaper offers the comforting question of what Russia thinks. In Toma Melentijević’s house, even the old furniture has its place in the family. His friend Sima has a programme for retirement that would turn every passing incident into entertainment. Toma prefers the garden, the poultry and a quiet cup of coffee.
Branislav Đ. NušićDramaeBook