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The earliest playwrights in Western literature with surviving works are the Ancient Greeks.

These early plays were written for annual Athenian competitions among playwrights held around the 5th century BC.

Such notables as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes established forms still relied on by their modern counterparts.

For the Greeks, the playwright was " poeisis " the act of making plays.

So the " poet " had a different connotation than it does today.