Aeschylus, a playwright, developed what we now term drama when he wrote a play with two performers and a chorus representing the ordinary people or the gods. Sophocles and Euripides were two more renowned Greek playwrights. 19th-century English playwright William Shakespeare is generally regarded as the inventor of modern theater. After Shakespeare, other writers continued to develop drama including Jean Baptiste Jules Richepin in France, John Fletcher in England, and Thomas Middleton and George Farquhar in Ireland. In 1662, Pierre Corneille created a new genre of drama called "tragedy" which influenced future French, American, and Spanish theatre writers. In 1770, David Garrick popularized Shakespeare's works on stage, which inspired other writers across Europe and America to create their own dramas. The first professional American actors arrived in New York City around this time and began performing on stage. These actors needed a script that could be performed repeatedly without repeating itself so as not to confuse the audience members who came every week for new material. This led to the creation of the novel which can be seen as another form of drama. In 1836, Henry Irving debuted his version of Hamlet on stage and it became an instant success.