Catalog of Plays

Plays in the CR/I Catalog are posted individually by title (use the SEARCH function) and listed below, alphabetically by playwright. They are also grouped by other factors (period, genre, etc.) in the drop-down Categories list (in left sidebar) under Digital Scripts. All are available for anyone to download and read; those protected by copyright require a password.

The list begins with those that don’t.

PLAYS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN

No Password Required.

Scripts published before 1930 (as of 2025) have outlived their copyright protection and can be used by anyone for nothing. To read any or all of these plays, just click the link; the script will appear. Download it to your reader, share it with your friends.

The list of plays requiring passwords begins below, at Copyright Protected Plays

Anthologies

Complete Greek Tragedies and Comedies from the Internet Classics Archive provides links to all the extant play by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Menander.

The York Cycle (in Middle English); The York Cycle (modernized version)

The Coventry Cycle (in Middle English)

The Wakefield Cycle (in Middle English)

Straight Plays

#Musicals below. Click here.

Aeschylus: Oresteia (Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides); Oresteia (Robert Lowell translation); The Persians; The Seven Against Thebes; The Suppliant Women; Prometheus Bound

Anonymous: Everyman
The Second Shepherds Play
Pierre Pathelin

Aristophanes: The Birds; The Frogs; Acharnians; Knights; Lysistrata; The Wasps; The Clouds; Plutus (Wealth); Peace

Aphra Behn: The Rover

Edward Bulwer-Lytton: Money

Lord Byron: Manfred

Calderon de la Barca: Life is a Dream

Karel Capek: R. U. R.

Anton Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard; The Seagull; Uncle Vanya; The Three Sisters

George M Cohan: Seven Keys to Baldpate

William Congreve: The Way of the World

Marc Connelly: The Green Pastures

Owen Davis: Icebound

Alonzo Delano: A Live Woman in the Mines

John Dryden: All for Love

Albert R Dulin: Sitting for Suzie; Doctor Rocket’s Last Night on Earth (with Arthur Duke Ernsberger)

David Edgar: The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby

George Etherege: The Man of Mode

Euripides: Bacchae; Electra; Orestes; Medea; Hippolytus; Alcestis; Andromache; The Trojan Women; Ion

David K Farkas: Nine 10-Minute Plays

Georges Feydeau: A Flea in Her Ear

Henry Fielding: The Tragedy of Tragedies

Zona Gale: Miss Lulu Bett

Susan Glaspell: Alison’s House; The People

Nikolai Gogol: The Government Inspector

Carlo Goldoni: The Servant of Two Masters

Oliver Goldsmith: She Stoops to Conquer

George Gray: The Dog Man of Brignoles; Implausible Truths

Paul Green: In Abraham’s Bosom

Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim: Paphnutius

Hatcher Hughes: Hell-Bent fer Heaven

Henrik Ibsen: The Master Builder, Hedda Gabler, An Enemy of the People, Peer Gynt; Pillars of Society; Brand; Ghosts

Alfred Jarry: Ubu Roi; Copelin Translation

Douglas William Jerrold: Black-Eyed Susan

Ben Johnson: Volpone

George Kelly: Craig’s Wife; The Show-Off

G E Lessing: Nathan the Wise

Maurice Maeterlinck: Pélléas and Mélisande; The Blue Bird; The Intruder

Edgar Lee Masters: Spoon River Anthology (the book)

W. Somerset Maugham: The Constant Wife

Menander: The Grouch

Moliere: Tartuffe; The Misanthrope; The Miser; The Imaginary Invalid

Eugene O’Neill: Beyond the Horizon; Anna Christie; The Emperor Jones; The Hairy Ape; Marco Millions; All God’s Chillun Got Wings; Desire Under the Elms; Lazarus Laughed; The Great God Brown; Strange Interlude; Mourning Becomes Electra; Ah, Wilderness!; The Iceman Cometh; A Moon for the Misbegotten; A Touch of the Poet; Long Day’s Journey Into Night; Diff’rent; The First Man; Gold

Alexander Ostrovsky: The Storm

Plautus: Five Plays: Aulularia (The Pot of Gold), Captivi (The Prisoners), Menaechmi (The Brothers), Miles Gloriosus (The Swaggering Soldier), Pseudolus (The Cheat); More Plautus (dual language)

Alexander Pushkin: Boris Gudunov

Jean Racine: Andromache

Elmer Rice: Street Scene; The Adding Machine

Leon Rippy: Bad Day in Becky; Skinny Minutes

T W Robertson: Caste

Mr. S: Gammer Gurton’s Needle

Friedrich Schiller: The Maid of Orleans

Lucius Anneaus Seneca: Oedipus

William Shakespeare: Complete Works (courtesy MIT Shakespeare Library); Complete Works (courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library)

G. B. Shaw: Man and Superman; Major Barbara; Mrs. Warren’s Profession; Candida; Saint Joan; The Devil’s Disciple; John Bull’s Other Island, Back to Methuselah, The Doctor’s Dilemma; Too True to Be Good; Widowers’ Houses; Passion, Poison, and Petrifaction; Arms and the Man; Androcles and the Lion; You Never Can Tell; Short Plays; Captain Brassbound’s Conversion; Caesar and Cleopatra; Three Plays for Puritans

Richard Brinsley Sheridan: The School for Scandal

Sophocles: Oedipus Rex; Antigone; Oedipus at Colonus; Ajax; Electra; Philoctetes; Women of Trachis

J. M. Synge: Playboy of the Western World

Tom Taylor: The Ticket-of-Leave Man

Terence: Andria (The Girl from Andros); Heauton Timorumenos (The Self-Tormentor); Eunuchus (The Eunuch); Phormio; Hecyra (The Mother-In-Law); Hecyra (in verse); Adel p hi (The Brothers)

Leo Tolstoy: The Power of Darkness

Voltaire: Oedipe

Ivan Turgenev: A Month in the Country

Nicholas Udall: Ralph Roister Doister

Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest, A Woman of No Importance; Lady Windermere’s Fan

Jesse Lynch Williams: Why Marry?

William Wycherly: The Country Wife

Musicals

For some reasons, both scripts and original cast recordings of a good many musicals are available to the public on the internet. Here are the few we’ve played with over the years.

Michael Bennett, et al: A Chorus Line

Kellen Blair and Joe Kinosian: Murder for Two

George S Kaufmann & Morrie Ryskind: Of Thee I Sing

Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey: Next to Normal

Frank Loesser and Abe Burrows: How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

Lin-Manuel Miranda: Hamilton

Joseph Robinette, Benj Pasek, and Justin Paul: A Christmas Story: the Musical

Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Joshua Logan: South Pacific; Oklahoma!

Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine: Sunday in the Park with George

Jerome Weidman, George Abbott, Jerry Bock, and Sheldon Harnick: Fiorello!

Return to Public Domain

Copyright Protected Plays

Each of the hundreds of titles below was published after 1930 and is protected by copyright. When you click one, the post for that script appears, with a note stating: “This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below.”

Cold Reads provides these scripts explicitly for one time only readings by small groups of players: no audience; no money changing hands, in compliance with Fair Use allowance in the law.

So.

Scroll down through the catalog and pick a play to read, then click PASSWORD REQUEST (under CATALOG OF PLAYS above) to read our policy and fill out a simple form affirming your agreement with it, to protect us from those (unlike you) would violate our trust.