A playwright, also known as a 'dramatist', is a person who writes dramatic literature or drama. These works may be written specifically to be performed by actors or they may be closet dramas or literary works written using dramatic forms but not meant for performance.

The term is not a variant spelling of ''playwrite'', but something quite distinct: the word ''wright'' is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder (as in a ''wheelwright'' or ''cartwright''). Hence the prefix and the suffix combine to indicate ''someone who crafts plays''. The homophone with ''write'' is in this case coincidental.

Early playwrights

The earliest playwrights in Western literature with surviving works are the Ancient Greeks, some of their earliest plays having been written around the 5th century BC. Such notables as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes established forms that are still relied on by their modern counterparts.

While the most famous playwright in the English language is William Shakespeare, whose classic tragedies, comedies, and histories are still being performed hundreds of years after they were written, the term 'playwright' appears to have been coined by Ben Jonson in his Epigram 49, ''To Playwright'',
Jonson, Ben, ''The Works of Ben Jonson'', Boston: Phillips, Sampson, and Co., 1853. page 788 as an insult, to imply an inferior hack-writer for the theatre. He always described himself as a poet. However, it later lost this negative connotation.

Contemporary playwrights

Contemporary playwrights often do not reach the same level of fame or cultural importance that they have in the past, since the theatre is no longer the only outlet for serious drama or entertaining comedies, and must compete with films and television for an audience. In addition, the perilous state of funding for the arts in the U.S. and a growing reliance on ticket sales as a source of income for non-profit theatres has caused many of them to reduce the number of new works they produce. For example, Playwrights Horizons produced only six plays in the 2002-03 seasons, compared with thirty-one in 1973-74Alexis Soloski, The Plays What They Wrote: The Best Scripts Not Yet Mounted on a New York Stage, ''The Village Voice'', May 21 - 27, 2003 . As revivals and large-scale production musicals become the ''de rigueur'' Broadway (and even Off-Broadway) production, it has become much more difficult for playwrights to make a living in the business, let alone become major successes.

However, the most successful playwrights are often high-status figures in their industry, in stark contrast to the status of the screenwriter in Hollywood. While this may be considered to be a result of the more literary approach that has characterised the theatre since its roots in poetry, its also because of the hard fact that according to Dramatists Guild contracts, the playwright has the final say — a situation which leaves less room for the director to be as much of an ''auteur'' as the film director, since the playwright’s vision takes precedence.

Modern Documentary plays

Documentary plays have been a common feature of the theatrical landscape since the middle of the Twentieth Century when they were employed, often tendentiously, in agit-prop or general political protest. These plays demand something different of a playwright, often the editing and reproduction of the other people’s words within a narrative structure.

Recent examples are ''Stuff Happens'', David Hare's 2004 play about the Iraq War, in which many of the speeches were taken verbatim from George W. Bush, Tony Blair et al and the 2006 ''Frost/Nixon'', screenwriter Peter Morgan's version of the 1977 David Frost and Richard Nixon television debates.