Unit 1 (Drama) is one of the most predictable units in the UGC-NET English paper, and one of the most rewarding. The same periods, plays and question patterns come back year after year, sometimes almost word for word. If you know where the examiners keep looking, you can turn this unit into sure marks.
We went through the recent papers (including December 2024 and June 2026) together with the older previous-year questions, and grouped every drama question by topic. Below are the topics that keep returning, in order of how often they appear, with the exact facts you need for each.
In short: Shakespeare (especially the First Folio and the order of his plays), Restoration comedy (above all The Way of the World), Elizabethan–Jacobean revenge tragedy, medieval drama, and modern British drama from Shaw to Stoppard account for most Unit 1 questions. Most of them come as Match the List and chronology questions.
1Shakespeare: First Folio, chronology and characters
Shakespeare appears in every paper, often in three or four questions at once. Three angles repeat again and again.
The First Folio
A factual question on the First Folio appeared in both December 2024 and June 2026. Learn these four facts:
- Published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death (1616).
- Compiled by his fellow actors John Heminges and Henry Condell.
- Contains 36 plays, about half of which had never been printed before. Pericles is not included.
- It divides the plays into Comedies, Histories and Tragedies, and carries Ben Jonson’s tribute ‘To the memory of my beloved, the Author’.
The order of the plays
Chronology questions on Shakespeare were also repeated in recent papers. Exact dates are disputed, so NTA usually asks about plays that are far apart. This approximate order is enough:
| Period | Key plays (approximate order) |
|---|---|
| Early (1590–1594) | Henry VI 1–3 → Richard III → The Comedy of Errors → Titus Andronicus → The Taming of the Shrew |
| Lyrical (1595–1599) | Romeo and Juliet → A Midsummer Night’s Dream → The Merchant of Venice → Much Ado About Nothing → As You Like It → Julius Caesar |
| Great tragedies (1600–1607) | Hamlet → Twelfth Night → Othello → King Lear → Macbeth → Antony and Cleopatra |
| Late plays (1608–1613) | Coriolanus → Cymbeline → The Winter’s Tale → The Tempest → Henry VIII (with Fletcher) |
Groupings and characters
- Romances (late plays): Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest.
- Problem plays (F. S. Boas’s term): All’s Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida.
- Roman plays: Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus (and the earlier Titus Andronicus).
- Genre traps: Much Ado About Nothing is a romantic comedy, not a problem play; Cymbeline is a romance, not a revenge tragedy. Both points have been tested.
Character questions favour the tragedies: Goneril, Regan and Cordelia (King Lear), Iago, Emilia and Roderigo (Othello), Polonius, Laertes and Horatio (Hamlet). Recent papers also ask you to identify who speaks a famous line, so revise the key speeches of Hamlet and Othello with their speakers.
2Restoration and eighteenth-century comedy
This is the single most reliable block of marks in Unit 1. Questions on Restoration comedy outnumber almost every other drama period in the previous-year papers, and Congreve’s The Way of the World (1700) appeared in both December 2024 and June 2026.
| Play | Dramatist | Characters to remember |
|---|---|---|
| The Way of the World (1700) | William Congreve | Mirabell, Millamant, Lady Wishfort, Fainall, Mrs Marwood, Waitwell, Foible |
| The Country Wife (1675) | William Wycherley | Horner, Margery Pinchwife, Mr Pinchwife |
| The Man of Mode (1676) | George Etherege | Dorimant, Sir Fopling Flutter |
| The Rivals (1775) | R. B. Sheridan | Mrs Malaprop, Lydia Languish, Captain Absolute |
| The School for Scandal (1777) | R. B. Sheridan | Lady Teazle, Joseph and Charles Surface |
| She Stoops to Conquer (1773) | Oliver Goldsmith | Marlow, Kate Hardcastle, Tony Lumpkin |
Also know the ‘proviso scene’ between Mirabell and Millamant in Act IV of The Way of the World, Wycherley’s other comedy The Plain Dealer, and Goldsmith’s essay on ‘laughing’ versus ‘sentimental’ comedy (1773), which explains why he and Sheridan wrote against the sentimental drama of their day. The word malapropism comes from Sheridan’s Mrs Malaprop, and it is a favourite one-line question.
3Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy, especially revenge tragedy
Expect at least one question on the revenge tradition, often as a ‘which of these is not a revenge tragedy’ question.
- Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy (c.1587): the model for the genre, with a ghost, madness and a play-within-the-play.
- Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus and Hamlet.
- John Webster, The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi.
- The Revenger’s Tragedy (1606), now usually attributed to Thomas Middleton (once to Cyril Tourneur).
Alongside these, revise the University Wits (Lyly, Peele, Greene, Lodge, Nashe, Marlowe, with Kyd often added), Marlowe’s four major plays (Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta, Edward II) and Gorboduc (1561) by Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton. Gorboduc was asked again in June 2026: it is the first English tragedy in blank verse.
4Medieval and early Tudor drama
A small topic that gives easy marks, because the facts are few and fixed:
- Mystery (cycle) plays: the York, Chester, Wakefield (Towneley) and N-Town cycles. The ‘Wakefield Master’ wrote The Second Shepherds’ Play.
- Morality plays: The Castle of Perseverance, Mankind and Everyman, with personified virtues and vices.
- Interludes: John Heywood’s short comic pieces.
- First English comedies: Ralph Roister Doister (Nicholas Udall) and Gammer Gurton’s Needle.
5Modern British and Irish drama
Twentieth-century drama is tested mostly through play–dramatist matching. The names that recur are:
- G. B. Shaw: the most frequently asked modern dramatist. Know his Plays Unpleasant (Widowers’ Houses, The Philanderer, Mrs Warren’s Profession) and Plays Pleasant (Arms and the Man, Candida, The Man of Destiny, You Never Can Tell), plus Man and Superman, Saint Joan and Back to Methuselah.
- Tom Stoppard: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Real Inspector Hound, Jumpers, Travesties, Arcadia.
- T. S. Eliot’s verse plays: Murder in the Cathedral (1935), The Family Reunion, The Cocktail Party, The Confidential Clerk, The Elder Statesman.
- Oscar Wilde: Lady Windermere’s Fan, An Ideal Husband, The Importance of Being Earnest.
- John Osborne and the ‘Angry Young Men’: Look Back in Anger (1956), with Jimmy Porter. Osborne was asked in June 2026.
- Beckett, Pinter and the Absurd: Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Krapp’s Last Tape; Pinter’s ‘comedy of menace’ (The Birthday Party, The Caretaker, The Homecoming). The label ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ comes from Martin Esslin.
- Irish dramatic revival: Synge (Riders to the Sea, The Playboy of the Western World) and O’Casey (Juno and the Paycock).
6Other areas on the syllabus
These come up less often, but one question from them is common, so a short list of facts is worth keeping ready.
- Greek drama and Aristotle: the six parts of tragedy in the Poetics (plot, character, thought, diction, song, spectacle), hamartia, catharsis, peripeteia and anagnorisis.
- European drama: Ibsen (A Doll’s House, Ghosts), Chekhov, Pirandello and Brecht’s epic theatre and ‘alienation effect’.
- American drama: Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman), Tennessee Williams (A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie) and Edward Albee.
- African drama: Wole Soyinka, the first African winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1986). Know The Lion and the Jewel (1959), A Dance of the Forests (written for Nigerian independence, 1960), The Road and Death and the King’s Horseman (1975), which blends Yoruba ritual with tragedy.
- Indian drama: Girish Karnad (Tughlaq, Hayavadana, Nagamandala), Vijay Tendulkar (Ghashiram Kotwal, Silence! The Court Is in Session), Badal Sircar (Evam Indrajit) and Mahesh Dattani (Final Solutions, Tara).
How the questions are asked
| Question type | What it usually tests in Unit 1 |
|---|---|
| Match List I with List II | Play ↔ dramatist, character ↔ play |
| Chronology | Order of Shakespeare’s plays, or of plays from different centuries |
| Statement I and II | Genre facts (e.g. romance vs revenge tragedy), First Folio details |
| Assertion–Reason | Why a play belongs to a movement (Absurd, Restoration, morality) |
| Line identification | Who speaks a famous line from Hamlet, Othello or King Lear |
A 7-day revision plan for Unit 1
- Day 1: First Folio facts and the Shakespeare chronology table above.
- Day 2: Characters and famous lines from Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth.
- Day 3: Restoration and eighteenth-century comedy, with the character table.
- Day 4: Revenge tragedy, the University Wits, Marlowe and Gorboduc.
- Day 5: Medieval drama, and Shaw’s pleasant and unpleasant plays.
- Day 6: Eliot, Wilde, Osborne, Beckett, Pinter, Stoppard; then Indian and American drama.
- Day 7: Take a timed Unit 1 test and revise every question you got wrong.
Test yourself on Unit 1 now
Our free 25-question Drama test follows the real NTA pattern, with an explanation for every answer.
Take the Free Drama TestSee the November MarathonFrequently asked questions
How many questions come from Unit 1 (Drama) in UGC-NET English?
NTA does not fix a number for each unit, but drama questions appear in every paper. With 100 questions spread over 10 units, you should expect several drama questions directly, plus more through comprehension passages and mixed chronology questions.
Which dramatist is asked most often?
Shakespeare, by a wide margin. After him, Restoration comedy (Congreve, Wycherley, Etherege), Shaw and Stoppard come up most often.
Do previous-year questions really repeat?
Yes. In recent papers, questions on the First Folio, the chronology of Shakespeare’s plays and the characters of The Way of the World appeared again in almost the same form. Solving previous-year papers is one of the best uses of your time.
Is Indian drama important for UGC-NET English?
It is part of the syllabus and appears in some papers, usually as a play–dramatist match. Karnad, Tendulkar, Sircar and Dattani are the essential names.
Next: Most Repeated Topics in UGC-NET English Unit 2 (Poetry).
Want to go further? Read our guide to the full UGC-NET English syllabus and practise with the previous year question papers.
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