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Title: Ten Plays by Euripides by Euripides ISBN: 0-553-21363-6 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 August, 1990 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Ten plays by Euripides, the first playwright of democracy
Comment: Euripides was the youngest and the least successful of the great triad of Greek tragic poets. Criticized by the conservatives of his time for introducing shabby heroes and immoral women into his plays, his plays were ridiculed by Aristophanes in "The Frogs." His plays exhibited his iconoclastic, rationalizing attitude toward the ancient myths that were the subject matter for Greek drama. For Euripides the gods were irrational and petulant, while heroes had flawed natures and uncontrolled passions that made them ultimately responsible for their tragic fates. Ultimately, your standard Euripides tragedy offers meaningless suffering upon which the gods look with complete indifference (until they show up at the end as the deux ex machina). However, today Euripides is considered the most popular of the Greek playwrights and is considered by many to be the father of modern European drama.
This volume does not include all of the extant plays of Euripides (we believe he authored 92 plays, 19 of which have survived), but what are arguably the ten most important: "Alcestis," "Medea," "Hippolytus," "Andromache," "Ion," "Trojan Women," "Electra," "Iphigenia Among the Taurians," "The Bacchants," and "Iphigenia at Aulis." The translations by Moses Hadas and John McLean are not as literate as you will find elsewhere, but they are eminently functional and make this volume one of the most cost-effective ways of providing students an opportunity to study the work of a great dramatist.
After reading several Euripides tragedies several things emerge in our understanding of his work. First, he has a unique structure for his plays decidedly different from those of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Usually the play begins with a monologue that provides the necessary exposition regarding the situation with which the characters are confronted. At the end of the play a god usually descends from heaven to provide an epilogue to say what happens afterwards (e.g., "Hippolytus"). Second, Euripides is much more interested in the dynamic interaction of his characters than the role of the chorus. The stasimons and occasional monodies are more what exists between scenes for Euripides instead of an opportunity to comment upon the story as with Aeschylus (e.g., "Agamemnon"). Third, the idea that Euripides is a misogynist just does not bear up under even a basic reading of these plays. This misconception might stem from our understanding of the culture of the times, because the "worst" thing you can say about the women of Euripides is that they are realistic characters.
Fourth and most importantly, clearly Euripides is at his best when there is a political agenda embedded in his story. "The Trojan Women" offers a fascinating counterpoint to the reactions of those same characters at the end of the "Iliad" when Hector's body is returned to Troy, but Euripides is not concerned with commenting on Homer but rather on the Athenian destruction of the city of Melos, which had tried to stay neutral in the Peloponnesian War (compare this with Euripides in a patriotic mode in "Andromache"). Much more is made of Euripides irreverence towards the gods (e.g., "The Bacchants"), however I think his greatness lies not in being an atheist but in being a strong advocate of democratic principles (e.g., the treatment of foreigners at the heart of "Medea"). Hadas reinforces this latter idea in his translations, admitting that for the modern reader it might be better to think of Euripides "as a pamphleteer rather than a poet." Still, Hadas emphasizes that despite the parodies provided by Aristophanes, Euripides was a great poet. Furthermore, Hadas is committed to keeping the translations as poetry rather than prose.
But there is also a sense in which Euripides provides psychological insights into his characters as much as Sophocles, who usually gets the edge in that respect because Freud derived the Oedipal and Electra complexes from his writings. Even though there was a limit of only three characters on stage at a time, Euripides would often made one of these characters, such as the nurse in "Hippolytus" or Pylades (friend of Orestes in both "Electra" and "Iphigenia Among the Taurains"), a normal person, who served as a means for showing the profoundly disturbed nature of the tragic hero.
Reading a single Euripides play is not going to make the validity of any or all of these points clear, but if you read most of these ten plays you should come to similar conclusions. I still like to use Euripides in bracket Homer's "Iliad," looking at the way he presages the conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon in "Iphigenia at Aulis," and the fate of "The Trojan Women," but there is much value to studying the plays of Euripides on their own terms. Granted, you can find better (i.e., more "modern") translations, but finding ten Euripides plays in one volume is going to be impossible and/or expensive.
Rating: 5
Summary: More a dramatist, less a tragedian
Comment: Euripides is not a definitive tragedian (in the Aristotelian notion) like his contemporary Sophocles; although he mines the same subject matter, he exhibits a number of stylistic differences and peculiarities. His plays tend to begin with a single character delivering a soliloquy that introduces the background of the story, and he makes frequent use of a "deus ex machina" at the end in order to set things right, or as right as they can be.
The biggest difference between Sophocles and Euripides is their approach to tragedy. Sophocles uses tragedy as an enhancement of nobility, an illumination of heroic dignity and grandeur; to Euripides it is just ugly, crude, and awkward, like a ketchup stain on your shirt. Tragedy elevates the Sophoclean hero to a state of fearsome awe, but it merely reduces the Euripidean hero to an object of pity and even derision. In this sense Euripides is more of a realist and a humanist, and therefore more modern.
Euripides's plays transform classical mythology not into morality lessons but into drama in a very basic, empathic mode. He makes the most of every dramatic situation: Medea, who kills her children to punish her unfaithful husband Jason; Hector's widow Andromache, who is enslaved by Achilles's son Neoptolemus and is accused by his wife Hermione of seducing him; Ion, son of Apollo by the rape of Creusa and attendant at his temple, in a classic plot of mistaken identity; Pentheus, king of Thebes, who is murdered by frenzied Bacchantes, one of whom is his own mother; Iphigenia, who is sacrificed by her father Agamemnon to ensure Greek victory in the Trojan War. There is a very clear path that connects Euripides with the conventions of two and a half millenia of Western literature. He might not have been as famous or as respected as Sophocles, but he is no less important a dramatist.
Rating: 5
Summary: Best translation I've read!
Comment: I'm an acting teacher, and this is the best translation I've come across. It's very readable and actable. Most other translations focus more on formal equivalency but this one is more of a dynamic equivalency. For an acting student, the text is so immediate and realistic rather than awkward.
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Title: The Oresteia by Aeschylus, Robert Fagles, W. B. Stanford ISBN: 0140443339 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: February, 1984 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Three Theban Plays, The by Sophocles, Robert Fagles, Bernard MacGregor Walke Knox ISBN: 0140444254 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 03 January, 2000 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: The Complete Plays of Sophocles by Sophocles ISBN: 0553213547 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 April, 1991 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: The Odyssey of Homer by Richmond Lattimore ISBN: 0060931957 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 June, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Four Plays by Aristophanes: The Clouds, the Birds, Lysistrata, the Frogs by Aristophanes, William Arrowsmith ISBN: 0452007178 Publisher: New American Library Pub. Date: November, 1984 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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