Very interesting plays! Hopefully I can manage to remember the details for my midterm! :)

I can see where Shakespeare got his inspiration!

Now this is drama!

1) Alcestis
2) Medea
3) Hippolytus
4) Andromache
5) Ion
6) Trojan Women
7) Electra
8) Iphigenia among the Taurians
9) The Bacchants
10) Iphigenia at Aulis

Not my favorite translation, but a bargain for ten plays.

Since this is ten whole plays, I feel justified in my lengthy response. In fact, these ten plays led to a whole string of related reading: Linda Hogan’s American Medea Indios, John Camp’s Archaeology of Athens with its descriptions of Classical theaters, and of course Anne Carson’s translations and essays. I’m on a bit of a kick.

Sophocles was my first love, and at first I was sadly disappointed in Euripides by comparison. I remember copying large swaths of Sophocles’ choral odes into notebooks in high school, just because they were so beautiful. Euripides is much less pretty. In fact, he’s kind of famed for being downright unpoetic in places. But ten plays later, I have a much greater appreciation of Euripides’ other gifts as a playwright.

There is a moment in The Trojan Women, just after Cassandra has been taken away and Hecuba has fainted and then revived to recount her sorrows. Hecuba refuses the offer to be helped up, and so presumably begins her story lying on the ground. I could feel the details even though Euripides doesn’t mention them: the damp, chilly air of an overcast morning, the small clump of grass under the muscle on the left side of the spine, the small motion of her head from side to side to shift the little stones underneath it. The red dust settling in her hair. The bright, bright sky she speaks to as she lies on her back. That feeling like you just fell off your bike, hurting everywhere, wanting to cry and fighting desperately not to cry. What an incredible gift with words, to provide just enough detail that readers fill in the gaps with their own experiences. It makes the whole reading experience richer than if he had described the scene more thoroughly. Euripides is genius about that balance—he also provides background information and stage directions as part of the dialogue, but so unobtrusively that you hardly notice.

The literature of Greece is much like the fractured and fleshed-out fairy tales enjoying such supersonic popularity lately. These poets work from spare, strong stories that everyone already knows, and they supplement the existing plot with emotional content. So you see the same characters (same gods, kings, wives) and hear the same stories (Electra, the sack of Troy) over and over, but each writer’s take on the dramatic content is a little different. So Euripides’ Achilles is very different from Homer’s, even if they had the same skeleton of information to work with.

In general I am amazed at how vastly different Euripides’ versions are from Homer’s. Euripides kind of hates Helen’s guts, whereas Homer cuts a lot more slack to the quintessential bad girl. Euripides views the Trojan War as an unalloyed disaster from every perspective. When you read all these plays in tandem, it’s great to see people who were maligned by their victims in the last play eventually become sympathetic characters themselves. Even Helen eventually gets to defend herself. Make no mistake—Euripides’ Helen has a lawyer’s brain behind that pretty face. You could get no better counsel for the defense. I know this girl, the girl who gets what she wants by intelligently and unapologetically playing the system. I meet people like that a lot. Hating them is easy to do and hard to justify.

I also have a huge appreciation, now, for the structure of a Greek drama. I love how they invented the Broadway musical, and perhaps did it better than Broadway. Definitely a lot more going for the Greeks plot-wise. I love the juxtaposition of the lyrical, beautiful piece with the action piece—who says you can’t have it all? I like how Euripides makes the choral members actual characters with a reason to be present, compared to Sophocles’ singers who kind of drop out of the sky. And of course, the chorus leader's endearing way of saying exactly what you the audience wanted to point out.

I think the Greeks got it right in a lot of ways. These plays, especially The Bacchae, have such nuanced understanding of two-sidedness. The way opposites can be simultaneously true, like Bacchus as the bringer of joy and prosperity and also the purveyor of horrific, ironic cruelty and ruin. Most Greek gods are like that, and the proper response is respect. This is not such a bad response to a universe of powerful, capricious forces and people. It’s not so foolish to teach your children that the things you want most—love, fame, prosperity, power—can turn on you in the blink of an eye.

Not bad for the library book sale find.

I owned this book years ago but gave it away in a move. A few weeks ago I saw this copy in a charity bin so I picked it up for $1. Not sure what I was thinking, trying to read one of these plays with no academic support or context or background in Greek. Particularly The Bacchae. Might read more, but probably not.

I adore Euripides and have read all existing plays. I've also read many of them in different translations. I give this book 1 star not because of the plays but because of Roche who inserts his own interpretations and stage directions, which at times completely change the play. For example, at the end of The Trojan Women, the directions show Hecuba falling down dead but there is nothing in the text that indicate this. I find that unforgivable in a translation. Yes, sometimes a translator or editor has to make a critical judgment because of lost text, unreadable sections, or no clear 1-to1 translation, but Roche went beyond that. So read Euripides, but find a translation that is true to the playwright. I recommend Ian Johnston's free e-texts.

Acquired 1989
The Word, Montreal, Quebec

My favorite of the big three- less bombastic than Sophocles and Aeschylus. Almost modern sounding at times. Willing to mix some humor into his tragedies. And Roche's translation works very well.

I only read "Medea." This tragedy is probably more exciting on stage, but I have my doubts. The prose translation is dull and unremarkable.

La primera vez que leí teatro griego, me pareció la cosa más estéril y foránea que había encontrado. Sin embargo, ahora debo reconocer que encontré algunas frases que me llenaron de gozo. No obstante, no será nunca mi literatura favorita.