The name comes from the Attic theater, where tetralogies were meant to be played in one sitting at the Dionysia. In more recent times, Shakespeare wrote two tetralogies, the first consisting of the three Henry VI plays and Richard III, and the second consisting of Richard II, the two Henry IV plays, and Henry V. Richard Wagner's "Der Ring der Nibelungen" - the 'Ring Cycle' - is also referred to as a tetralogy.

The word "tetralogy" is not commonly used in the marketing of collections of works. The term "quadrilogy" has also been used, basing the prefix on Latin prefix quadri- instead of the Greek prefix. The musical term "quartet" is also used, as well as "legacy." The Alien and Batman series, each consisting of four films, have been released in collections titled The Alien Legacy and The Batman Legacy. The Alien and Die Hard series have also been released in sets under the title The Alien Quadrilogy and The Die Hard Quadrilogy.

Famous tetralogies

Literary works

• A. S. Byatt's Frederica Quartet (The Virgin in the Garden,Still Life,Babel Tower and A Whistling Woman)
• Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet
• Maggie Furey’s Artefacts of Power
• Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun and Book of the Long Sun
• Jonathan Bayliss's Gloucesterman
• Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter quartet
• Terry Brooks's The Heritage of Shannara quartet
• Yaşar Kemal's İnce Memed
• Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle
• Henry de Montherlant's Les Jeunes Filles
• Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers
• T. H. White's The Once and Future King
• Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End
• John Updike's ''Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit is Rich, Rabbit at Rest)
• Paul Scott's Raj Quartet
• William Shakespeare's sequence of history plays: Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, Henry V
• Claude Royet-Journoud's Le Renversement, La Notion d'Obstacle, Les Objects contiennent l'infini, and Les Natures indivisibles (poetry published between 1972 and 1997)
• Yukio Mishima's The Sea of Fertility
• E. E. Smith's Skylark series
• Harry Turtledove's Settling Accounts
• Tamora Pierce's The Song of the Lioness
• Sergei Lukyanenko's Watch series
• S. M. Stirling's Emberverse series (Dies the Fire, The Protector's War, A Meeting at Corvallis)

Movies

• Alien Quadrilogy
• Die Hard
• Indiana Jones franchise
• Jaws
• The Karate Kid
• Lethal Weapon
• Saw
• Rambo
• Rebuild of Evangelion
• Scary Movie
• Tremors

Music

• Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, a series of four epic music dramas.
• Coheed and Cambria's The Amory Wars concept albums.
• Thrice's The Alchemy Index Vols. I & II and The Alchemy Index Vols. III & IV

Video games

• .hack//Games
• Grand Theft Auto (although, in theory, the series has more than four games, albeit only four 'numbered' games)
• Metal Gear Solid (series)
• Monkey Island
• Devil May Cry (series)
• Metroid (series) The original Metroid series, not the Prime Sub Trilogy or the spinoffs

Historical works

• A History of the English-Speaking Peoples by Winston Churchill.

A series of four novels is also called a quartet.

The 20th Century Fox marketing team coined the nonstandard synonym "quadrilogy" for the release of their Alien DVD box set The Alien Quadrilogy and the Die Hard DVD box set The Die Hard Quadrilogy. This uses the Latin numerical prefix quadri-/quadr-, instead of the usual Greek tetra-, with the Greek -logy.

See also

• Sequel
• Duology
• Trilogy
• Heptalogy