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By the 4th century BCE, Athenian orators even quoted lines from the tragedians in court, knowing that jurors “liked quotations from tragedy,” in one scholar’s words.

Shakespeare, Ibsen, Chekhov, Beckett, the ancient Greek tragedians and Tennessee Williams were among the voices who originally called out to me.

Among the tragedians, there are extant works from only three: Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.

If the best description of a play had been coined centuries earlier by Shakespeare or a Greek tragedian, Scully would not shy from quoting the master.

“He does not bother about the majestic stride, but moves about completely naturally, not like a tragedian, but like a human being,” a 19th-century critic marveled.