Bacchae and Three Other Plays

Bacchae and Three Other Plays
Author: Euripides
Publisher:
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2020-12-20
Genre:
ISBN:

Athenian Tragedy had all but ended with the death of Euripides and in particular with his Bacchae, which is included in this volume and which is often praised by scholars as the best tragedy ever written. This was the very last play he wrote and he did so while he was being hosted by King Archelaus of Macedonia. The play was staged the following year, in 405 BC. Of the surviving nineteen plays (he wrote over ninety) twelve are almost entirely concerned with women. This volume is entirely devoted to that subject: women and the role they play in the lives of men, of their politics and of their daily lives. Women, to Euripides, show the virtues and the ills of a city, his city, his Athens.

Four French Plays

Four French Plays
Author: Jean Racine
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2013-07-04
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0141392096

The 'greatest hits' of French classical theatre, in vivid and acclaimed new Penguin translations by John Edmunds and with editorial apparatus by Joseph Harris. The plays in this volume - Cinna, The Misanthrope, Andromache and Phaedra - span only thirty-seven years, but make up the defining period of French theatre. In Corneille's Cinna (1640), absolute power is explored in ancient Rome, while Molière's The Misanthrope (1666), the only comedy in this collection, sees its anti-hero outcast for his refusal to conform to social conventions. Here also are two key plays by Racine: Andromache (1667), recounting the tragedy of Hector's widow after the Trojan War, and Phaedre (1677), showing a mother crossing the bounds of love with her son. This translation of Phaedra was originally broadcast on Radio Three with a cast including Prunella Scales and Timothy West, and was praised by playwright Harold Pinter. This is the first time it has been published. The edition also includes an introduction by Joseph Harris, genealogical tables, pronunciation guides, critiques and prefaces, as well as a chronology and suggested further reading. After a varied career as an actor, teacher, and BBC TV national newsreader, John Edmunds became the founder-director of Aberystwyth University's department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies. Joseph Harris is Senior Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London and author of Hidden Agendas: Cross-Dressing in Seventeenth-Century France (2005).

Andromache and Other Plays

Andromache and Other Plays
Author: Jean Racine
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Total Pages: 292
Release: 1967
Genre: Andromache (Legendary character)
ISBN: 9780140441956

Jean Racine: Four Greek Plays

Jean Racine: Four Greek Plays
Author: Jean Racine
Publisher: CUP Archive
Total Pages: 244
Release: 1982-04-29
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780521286763

This is the best translation into English of Andromache, Iphigenia, Phaedra and Athaliah.

The Trojan Women and Other Plays

The Trojan Women and Other Plays
Author: Euripides
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 778
Release: 2001-09-20
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0191606189

Hecuba The Trojan Women Andromache In the three great war plays contained in this volume Euripides subjects the sufferings of Troy's survivors to a harrowing examination. The horrific brutality which both women and children undergo evokes a response of unparalleled intensity in the playwright whom Aristotle called the most tragic of the poets. Yet the new battleground of the aftermath of war is one in which the women of Troy evince an overwhelming greatness of spirit. We weep for the aged Hecuba in her name play and in The Trojan Women, yet we respond with an at times appalled admiration to her resilience amid unrelieved suffering. Andromache, the slave-concubine of her husband's killer, endures her existence in the victor's country with a Stoic nobility. Of their time yet timeless, these plays insist on the victory of the female spirit amid the horrors visited on them by the gods and men during war.

Electra and Other Plays

Electra and Other Plays
Author: Euripides
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 324
Release: 1999-01-01
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780140446685

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 seen as a patriotic piece. The Trojan Women is perhaps the greatest of all anti-war dramas; Andromache shows the ferocious clash between the wife and concubine of Achilles’ son Neoptolemos; while Hecabe reveals how hatred can drive a victim to an appalling act of cruelty. Electra develops (and parodies) Aeschylus’ treatment of the same story, in which the heroine and her brother Orestes commit matricide to avenge their father Agamemnon. As always, Euripides presents the heroic figures of mythology as recognizable, often very fallible, human beings. Some of his greatest achievements appear in this volume.

The Andromache and Euripidean Tragedy

The Andromache and Euripidean Tragedy
Author: William Allan
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2003
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780199265763

The Andromache has long been disparaged despite being a brilliant piece of theatre. In this book Dr Allan draws attention to the neglected artistry of this very impressive and intriguing text. Through careful analysis the Andromache emerges as a play that poses fundamental questions, especially about the polarity of Greek and barbarian, and the morality of the gods. Dr Allan shows how the play also challenges revenge as a motive for action, and explores the role of women as wives, mothers, and victims of war, be they Greek or Trojan, victorious or defeated. These are among the central concerns that make the Andromache a moving and thought-provoking tragedy, full of suffering, suspense, and moral interest. This book contributes both to an appreciation of the Andromache in its own right, and to a wider understanding of the variety and quality of Euripides' oeuvre.

The Trojan Women: A Comic

The Trojan Women: A Comic
Author: Euripides
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
Total Pages: 84
Release: 2021-05-25
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 0811230805

A fantastic comic-book collaboration between the artist Rosanna Bruno and the poet Anne Carson, based on Euripides’s famous tragedy A NEW YORK TIMES BEST GRAPHIC NOVEL OF 2021 Here is a new comic-book version of Euripides’s classic The Trojan Women, which follows the fates of Hekabe, Andromache, and Kassandra after Troy has been sacked and all its men killed. This collaboration between the visual artist Rosanna Bruno and the poet and classicist Anne Carson attempts to give a genuine representation of how human beings are affected by warfare. Therefore, all the characters take the form of animals (except Kassandra, whose mind is in another world).

Orestes and Other Plays

Orestes and Other Plays
Author: Euripides
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 483
Release: 2006-02-23
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0141961988

Written during the long battles with Sparta that were to ultimately destroy ancient Athens, these six plays by Euripides brilliantly utilize traditional legends to illustrate the futility of war. The Children of Heracles holds a mirror up to contemporary Athens, while Andromache considers the position of women in Greek wartime society. In The Suppliant Women, the difference between just and unjust battle is explored, while Phoenician Women describes the brutal rivalry of the sons of King Oedipus, and the compelling Orestes depicts guilt caused by vengeful murder. Finally, Iphigenia in Aulis, Euripides' last play, contemplates religious sacrifice and the insanity of war. Together, the plays offer a moral and political statement that is at once unique to the ancient world, and prophetically relevant to our own.