What is the title of Poe's only play?

Edgar Allan Poe’s only known play is titled “Politian.”

Poe wrote “Politian” in 1835 while working with the Southern Literary Messenger, but he never completed it. The surviving work appeared in two installments, published in December 1835 and January 1836 under the description “Scenes from an Unpublished Drama.” It is therefore sometimes called an unfinished drama rather than a completed play.

The story is set in sixteenth-century Rome and centers on Politian, the Earl of Leicester. Poe adapted its plot from the real Kentucky Tragedy: the 1825 murder of Kentucky attorney general Solomon P. Sharp by Jereboam O. Beauchamp. Instead of preserving the American setting, Poe transformed the incident into a melodramatic historical romance involving jealousy, revenge, and threatened suicide.

“Politian” is often confused with “The Raven,” “Tamerlane,” or “The Stylus,” but those are not Poe’s only play. “The Stylus” was a planned literary magazine, while “The Raven” and “Tamerlane” are poems. The drama was not performed in Poe’s lifetime and received its first known staging in 1933.