Kategoria BISAC: Drama >> Ancient & Classical

Since it was first performed in Athens in the 420s BC, Oedipus the King has been widely regarded as Sophocles' greatest tragedy and one of the foundation stones of western drama. Taken as a model by Aristotle in his Poetics, it became a yardstick for future generations. Since the play's rediscovery in the Renaissance, audiences - including Sigmund Freud - have found new interpretations and meanings in Sophocles' portrayal of the Theban king, inexorably pursuing the truth, only to discover that he has killed his father and married his mother.

This translation by Don...

In his final play, Sophocles returns to the ever-popular character of Oedipus, the blind outcast of Thebes, the ultimate symbol of human reversal, whose fall he had so memorably treated in the 'Oedipus Tyrannus'. In this play, Sophocles brings the aged Oedipus to Athens, where he seeks succour and finds refuge, despite the threatening arrival of his kinsman Creon, who tries to tempt and then force the old man back under Theban control. Oedipus' resistance shows a fierceness in no way dimmed by incapacity, but he also refuses to aid his repentant son, Polyneices, in his coming attack on...

Woodruff's work with Peter Meineck makes this text one that is accessible to today's students and could be staged for modern audiences. Line notes printed at the bottom of the page bring a reader further quick assistance. . . . The choral odes as rendered here deserve special notice. After giving a succinct analysis of each in his introduction, Woodruff translates the lyrics into English that is both poetic and comprehensible. . . . Woodruff's rendering of the dialogue moves along easily; these are lines that any contemporary Antigone, Creon or Haemon might speak. Antigone's words on the...

An industrial port of a war-torn city. Women survivors wait to be shipped abroad. Officials come and go. A grandmother, once Queen, watches as her remaining family are taken from her one by one. The city burns around them.

Euripides' great anti-war tragedy is published in Don Taylor's translation to coincide with the National Theatre's production directed by Katie Mitchell in the Lyttelton auditorium.

This edition of the play features an introduction by the translator setting the play in its historical and dramaturgical context.

There are seven surviving tragedies by Sophocles. Three of them form the Theban Plays, which recount the story of Thebes during and after the reign of Oedipus. Here, David Slavitt translates the remaining tragedies--the -other four plays: - Ajax, Women of Trachis, Electra, and Philoctetes.

Punchy and entertaining, Slavitt reads Athena's opening line in Ajax as: -I've got my eye on you, Odysseus. Always.- By simplifying the Greek and making obscure designations more accessible--specifying the character Athena in place of -aegis-wearing goddess, - for...