Medea has been abandoned by her husband. Jason, for whom she has sacrificed so much, has left her for a younger woman. His new bride is the daughter of the most powerful man in Corinth and Medea and her children are to be forced to leave the state and become refugees. But Medea is not a woman to accept such disrespect passively.
Medea has been abandoned by her husband. Jason, for whom she has sacrificed so much, has left her for a younger woman. His new bride is the daughter o...
Four plays which exemplify his interest in flawed, characters who defy the expectations of Greek society The four tragedies collected in this volume all focus on a central character, once powerful, brought down by betrayal, jealousy, guilt and hatred. The first playwright to depict suffering without reference to the gods, Euripides made his characters speak in human terms and face the consequences of their actions. In Medea, a woman rejected by her lover takes hideous revenge by murdering the children they both love, and Hecabe depicts the former queen of Troy, driven mad by the...
Four plays which exemplify his interest in flawed, characters who defy the expectations of Greek society The four tragedies collected in t...
Euripides, wrote Aristotle, 'is the most intensely tragic of all the poets'. In his questioning attitude to traditional pieties, disconcerting shifts of sympathy, disturbingly eloquent evil characters and acute insight into destructive passion, he is also the most strikingly modern of ancient authors.
Written in the period from 426 to 415 BC, during the fierce struggle for supremacy between Athens and Sparta, these five plays are haunted by the horrors of war - and its particular impact on women. Only the Suppliants, with its extended debate on democracy and monarchy, can be...
Euripides, wrote Aristotle, 'is the most intensely tragic of all the poets'. In his questioning attitude to traditional pieties, disconcerting shif...
The plays of Euripides have stimulated audiences since the fifth century BC. This volume, containing Phoenician Women, Bacchae, Iphigenia at Aulis, Orestes, and Rhesus completes the new editions of Euripides in Penguin Classics.
Features a general introduction, individual prefaces to each play, chronology, notes, bibliography, and glossary
The plays of Euripides have stimulated audiences since the fifth century BC. This volume, containing Phoenician Women, Bacchae, Iphigenia at Aulis, Or...
"Using to the full the last half century's great accessions to the comparative study of religion, Dodds] has given a coherent and convincing reconstruction of the Dionysiac background--and, indeed, foreground--of the play, illustrating it with many instructive non-Greek and modern parallels.... Equally instructive and stimulating is the acute analysis of the play's dramatic elements, its characters, scenes, conflicts, actions, speeches.... This edition far surpasses its predecessors in vitality, sympathy, and scope."--W.B. Stanford, Hermathena LXV. Including a comprehensive discussion of the...
"Using to the full the last half century's great accessions to the comparative study of religion, Dodds] has given a coherent and convincing reconstr...
Euripides wrote about timeless themes, of friendship and enmity, hope and despair, duty and betrayal. The first three plays in this volume are imbued with an atmosphere of violence, while the fourth, Cyclops, is our only surviving example of a genuine satyr play, with all the crude and slapstick humor that characterized the genre. Alcestis shows various reactions to death with pathos and grim humor while the blood-soaked Heracles portrays deep emotional pain and undeserved suffering. Children of Heracles deals with the effects of war on refugees and the consequences of sheltering them. ...
Euripides wrote about timeless themes, of friendship and enmity, hope and despair, duty and betrayal. The first three plays in this volume are imbued ...
A dramatist whose trademark was the unexpected, Euripides has constantly challenged and intrigued audiences, from Athens of the fifth century BC to the present. The three plays in this volume demonstrate Euripides' versatility. Hippolytos (which was turned into Phedre by Racine), deals with sexual passion, incest and abstinence; Suppliants (a version of the Antigone story) sets the play in Eleusis and dramatises the moment when the mothers of the dead sons of Oedipus beg Theseus to go to Thebes and demand their sons' bodies for burial. In Rhesos, all the confusion of sentry duty, the...
A dramatist whose trademark was the unexpected, Euripides has constantly challenged and intrigued audiences, from Athens of the fifth century BC to...
Always controversial, Euripides' plays are now celebrated for the subtlety of their characterisation and their unorthodox dramatic style. This volume contains three of his finest tragedies: Medea, the abandoned wife, who murders her own children; The Phoenician Women, a further twist in the story of Oedipus and Jocasta; and Bacchae, a macabre and complex play, about the power and irrationality of Dionysos. These translations are by David Thompson and J. Michael Walton. With an introduction by J. Michael Walton
Always controversial, Euripides' plays are now celebrated for the subtlety of their characterisation and their unorthodox dramatic style. This volu...
The most controversial of the Greek tragedians, Euripedes is also the most modern in his sympathies, a dramatist who handles the complex emotions of his characters with extraordinary depth and insight.
Euripedes's play is based on the myth of Jason and Medea, but gives it a decidedly feminist slant. Many critics have read the play as the first example of feminist theatre, seeing Medea as a feminist heroine. Others have argued that Euripedes is showing us how a woman shouldn't behave. All the action of the play takes place in Corinth, and Jason has left Medea in order to marry...
The most controversial of the Greek tragedians, Euripedes is also the most modern in his sympathies, a dramatist who handles the complex emotions o...