The choros, originally danced in a circle by temple virgins, is the centrepiece of the developing Greek theatre

Frenzied dances, in honour of the god Dionysus, become part of Greek theatre - deriving probably from the northeast, in Thrace

Thespis, traditionally considered the first actor, wins the drama competition in Athens

Aeschylus wins the prize for tragedy at the City Dionysia in Athens

Sophocles wins the prize for tragedy in Athens, defeating Aeschylus in the competition

Euripides enters the drama contest at the City Dionysia in Athens for the first time

Aristophanes wins first prize in Athens for his comedy The Acharnians

Socrates is now sufficiently prominent to be satirized in Clouds, a comedy by Aristophanes

The theatre at Epidaurus is the earliest and best surviving example of a classical Greek stage and auditorium

Plautus and Terence, in the second and third century BC, create a Roman drama based on Greek originals

The first known mystery play, the Mystery of Adam, takes place outside a church somewhere in France

Tannhäuser is one of the Minnesinger, the German equivalents of the French troubadours

Kanami and Zeami Motokiyo please the shogun with their theatrical performance, and his patronage begins the tradition of Japan's No theatre

The English mystery cycles are performed by trade guilds, on carts pulled from audience to audience around the city

The Italian players of the commedia dell'arte first feature in the records in this year

James Burbage builds London's first theatre and calls it the Theatre

Marlowe's first play, Tamburlaine the Great, introduces the swaggering blank verse of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama

After tentative beginnings in the three parts of Henry VI, Shakespeare achieves his first masterpiece on stage with Richard III

The Globe, where many of Shakespeare's plays are first performed, is built on Bankside in London

Shakespeare's central character in Hamlet expresses both the ideals of the Renaissance and the disillusion of a less confident age

William Shakespeare's name appears among the actors in a list of the King's Men

Ben Jonson writes The Masque of Blackness, the first of his many masques for the court of James I

The satirical voice of the English playwright Ben Jonson is heard to powerful effect in Volpone

Shakespeare's last completed play, The Tempest, is performed

The Globe catches fire during a performance of Shakespeare's last play, Henry VIII