Aeschylus' "Oresteia," Sophocles' "Oedipus" plays, Euripides' "Medea" and "Bacchae," and Aristophanes' "Birds" and " Lysistrata" are discussed in this lively and scholarly volume. The author's experience teaching these plays to gifted high school students makes this volume particularly useful. The drama festivals, the adaptations of myth, the relevance of Aristotelian criteria, and the political and cultural background of each play are described fully, and the nature of tragedy and comedy, plot construction, stagecraft, theme, character, imagery and individual odes and speeches are...