page_title: List of assassinations in fiction
section_title: Plays and operas
hierarchical_section_title: List of assassinations in fiction / Plays and operas
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Pierre Corneille Source: 1881 Young Folks' Cyclopedia of Persons and Places, John D. Champlin. (Henry Holt, Baltimore, Maryland, USA)
context_page_description: Assassinations have formed a major plot element in various works of fiction. Passing mentions are omitted.
  Assassination can be regarded as the murder of a prominent person for a motive which is broadly public and political rather than merely personal or financial.
  Assassinations in fiction have attracted scholarly attention. In Assassinations and Murder in Modern Italy: Transformations in Society and Culture, as well as analyzing Italian assassinations in their historical and cultural contexts, Stephen Gundle and Lucia Rinaldi explore the films, plays, other works of fiction, and art that the act of assassination has inspired. Nick Cullather has discussed "The Movie Version" of John F. Kennedy's assassination.
  This list prefers to highlight less familiar cultural artifacts, while trying not to itemize every Ian Fleming or Agatha Christie title, or every Mafia film. The historical–historically based or historically inspired–takes precedence over the purely fictional and sensational.
context_section_description: William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3 (1590) — play about English King Henry VI
  Christopher Marlowe, Edward II (1592) — play about English King Edward II
  William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (probably 1599) — play about Julius Caesar
  William Shakespeare, Hamlet (between 1600 and summer 1602) — play about Hamlet
  William Shakespeare, Macbeth (between 1603 and 1606) — play about King Duncan
  Lope de Vega, Fuente Ovejuna (between 1612 and 1614) — play about the village of Fuente Ovejuna
  Pierre Corneille, Cinna (1639) — play about Augustus and Cinna
  Jean Racine, Britannicus (1669) — play about Britannicus
  Takeda Izumo, Miyoshi Shōraku, and Namiki Senryū, Kanadehon Chūshingura (1748) — puppet play about the Forty-seven Ronin
  Friedrich Schiller, Mary Stuart (1800) — play about Mary, Queen of Scots and Queen Elizabeth I
  Zacharias Werner, Attila, König der Hunnen (1809) — tragedy about Attila the Hun
  Victor Hugo, Le roi s'amuse (1832) — scathing, banned play about French King Francis I (and, indirectly, King Louis-Philippe)
  Eugène Scribe and Daniel Auber, Gustave III, ou Le bal masqué (1833) — opera about Swedish King Gustav III
  In Polish poet Juliusz Słowacki's 1833 play Kordian, the teen title hero plots to assassinate Russian Tsar Nicholas I—but fails to carry through.
  Giuseppe Bardari and Gaetano Donizetti, Maria Stuarda (1835) — opera based on Schiller's play
  Lőrinc Tóth, Die beiden Lászlós (a.k.a. Két László, Both Laszlos) (1839) — play about Ulrich of Celje and László Hunyadi
  Antonio García Gutiérrez, Simón Bocanegra (1843) — play about Simone Boccanegra
  Béni Egressy and Ferenc Erkel, Hunyadi László (1844) — opera about Ulrich of Celje and László Hunyadi, based on Lőrinc Tóth's play
  Temistocle Solera (and Francesco Maria Piave) and Giuseppe Verdi, Attila (1846) — opera based on Werner's tragedy
  Francesco Maria Piave and Giuseppe Verdi, Macbeth (1847) — opera based on Shakespeare's tragedy
  Francesco Maria Piave and Giuseppe Verdi, Rigoletto (1851) — opera based on Hugo's Le roi s'amuse, with a fictional Duke of Mantua replacing French King Francis I
  Francesco Maria Piave and Giuseppe Verdi, Simon Boccanegra (1857) — opera based on García Gutiérrez's play
  Antonio Somma and Giuseppe Verdi, Un ballo in maschera (1859) — opera about Swedish King Gustav III
  Michel Carré and Ambroise Thomas, Hamlet (1868) — opera based on Shakespeare's tragedy
  Henrik Ibsen, Emperor and Galilean (1873) — play about Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate
  Richard Wagner, Götterdämmerung (1876) — opera about the hero Siegfried
  Alfred Lord Tennyson, Becket (188?) — play about Thomas Becket
  Modest Mussorgsky, Khovanshchina (1880) — opera about Ivan Khovansky
  Oscar Wilde, Salomé (1891) — tragedy about John the Baptist and Salome
  Abraham Goldfaden, Judith and Holofernes (1892)
  August Strindberg, Gustaf III (1902) — play about Swedish King Gustav III
  Richard Strauss, Salome (1905) — opera based on Wilde's tragedy
  Eugene O'Neill, The Emperor Jones (1920) — play about a Caribbean dictator
  Bertolt Brecht, The Life of Edward II of England (1924) — play about English King Edward II
  Kathleen de Jaffa and Louis Gruenberg, The Emperor Jones (1933) — opera based on O'Neill's play
  Oscar Ryan et al., Eight Men Speak (1933) — play about Tim Buck
  Albert Camus, The Just Assassins (1949) — play about Russian Grand Duke Sergei
  T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral (1935) — play about Thomas Becket
  Ildebrando Pizzetti, Assassinio nella cattedrale (1958) — opera about Thomas Becket
  Jean Anouilh, Becket or The Honour of God (1959) — play about Thomas Becket
  Peter Weiss, Marat/Sade (1963) — musical play about Jean-Paul Marat
  Peter Shaffer, The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1964) — play about Atahualpa
  Felix Lützkendorf, Dallas, 22. November (1965) — play about John F. Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald
  Manuel Mujica Laínez and Alberto Ginastera, Bomarzo (1967) — opera based on Mujica Laínez's novel
  James Prideaux, The Last of Mrs. Lincoln (1972) — play about Abraham Lincoln
  Carlisle Floyd, Willie Stark (1981) — opera based on Robert Penn Warren's novel All the King's Men, in turn inspired by the 
caption: Corneille
exif: {}