Very important tragedies, best translation, although I prefer the original one in ancient Greek!

satyrs be h*rny

It's an interesting read, don't get me wrong, but I was not what I was expecting nor hoping for in this book. Although, I did find his interpretation of Helen quite refreshing.

The Cyclops was really funny.

Heracles is definitely my favorite here ♥️

and Iphigenia, boi,

This collection of oddities elbowed its way into the queue because I was getting ready for another excellent Theater of War production, n  n    Hercules in Pennsylvanian  n. Bryan Doerries, the Theater of War director and translator, made choices in his translation of this wrenching drama about how the greatest Greek hero saves his family and then destroys it in fit of madness in order to make us think about gun violence. Heracles is undone by what we would call mental illness (it's a lot more personal than that in the Greek mindscape, to be certain, a madness inflicted by Hera, H's implacable divine namesake and foe), but also by the deadly ease and power of the can't-miss bow that Doerries' translates as his "invincible weapon." Some of the Theater of War productions have been hit and miss, but this, like their Oedipus, was extremely powerful. The play itself is very evocative of Ajax: both are bifurcated narratives in which a physically indomitable but slightly simple hero is destroyed by delusions and a childlike inability to reign in ordinary frustration and disappointment. I very much liked the value placed on friendship and loyalty by this play, and I have already found the speech by Theseus about despair being for cowards to be personally useful.

Heracles was the only real tragedy on offer in this volume. The Cyclops, which depicts the blinding of Polyphemus by Odysseus and his crew, is the only extant "satyr play. Every poet competing in the Dionysia would submit a trilogy complemented by a thematically-linked, bawdy comedy performed by horse-men wearing tails and exaggerated phalluses. The Cyclops is legitimately funny, which is far more than I can say for any of the Aristophanes that I've read. The incident in the Odyssey, while pathetic, is also funny. Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie certainly didn't invent black comedy.

Helen and Iphigenia at Tauris are almost identical plays with the premise that a key figure in the Trojan War saga is actually whisked away from danger to safety in an exotic locale and is magical substitute is inserted in her place. An entirely guiltless Helen whiles away the war at a temple in Egypt and, after losing a decade of his life an putting lofty Ilion to the torch to get her back, he accepts her crazy story without a blink. It does kinda explain (well that, and the fact that she plies everyone with dope) the oddly convivial scene in the Odyssey when pseudo-Mentor and Telemachus visit Sparta. The Atreides brothers are clearly grudge-holders. I always wondered what Helen could possibly have said on the trip back to make Menelaus so well-disposed to her again.

Repeating myself, I know, but.... What can I say? All of the well-known Greek playwrights are important reading, both for their historical significance as well as the fact that they're excellent plays. They haven't remained famous for 2,400 years because they're not worthy of it.

Heracles and Iphigenia slay, fuck Agamemnon

Iphagenia in Taurus was worth reading, and it makes an interesting melodrama, not really a tragedy. This volume does contain the only Satyr play to survive complete from the three great Athenian tragedians.

Cyclopes: 3/5
Heracles: 4/5
Iphigenia In Tauris: 4.5/5
Helen: 4.5/5

Good but--

This collection contains the only satyr play apparently surviving, Cyclopes, a non-Aristotelian tragedy, Heracles, and two romance plays, Iphigenia in Tauris and Helen, which share an almost identical plot, where a woman who thought was dead is actually alive in a foreign land farm from Greece, is then reunited with her brother/husband, escapes the foreign land by trickery, and divinity coming to their aid at the end à la deus ex machina.

Cyclopes is short and vulgar, and could be funny (depending on your sense of humor), which is what satyr plays are supposed to be. I thought it was okay. The two romance plays are, ipso facto not tragedies, but are nonetheless enjoyable in their own way (e.g., I really didn't want anything bad to happen to Iphigenia and Helen, though if it were a tragedy, it would've happened mercilessly to my further paradoxical schadenfreud, but which contradictory wishes kept me on my toes throughout the plays almost like a drug addict trying to quit the evil habit only to be confronted with numerous temptations of the panacean withdrawal-ending shot that is dangling just out of his reach).

So it turns out that Heracles is the only real tragedy (if we can concede that tragedy is something really sad) included in this book. But the plot is a bit too immature, making children-loving Heracles go mad by a too-easy supernatural cause and for really no reason (well, I don't know if Hera's insane jealousy over her almighty husband's one-night-stand (or one long night the length of usual three, if you want to be picky about it) affair with Alcmene who bore Heracles constitutes a legit reason to 1)try to kill Heracles with a snake when he was an infant; 2)make Heracles and not Zeus or Alcmene do twelve missions impossible; and 3)make Heracles, as opposed to, again, not Zeus or Alcmene, kill his wife and three children who really had absolutely nothing to do with Zeus's romping affair). So basically, Heracles saves his children and wife, and suddenly go mad out of the blue (well Madness - duh - the goddess is "responsible") and kill them all. It's just a bit too naive and coerced to be even plausible. But hey, gods were as real as humans in those days, so what can we say?

So though it was a fun read, this collection lacks the juicy meat of breast-beating, hand-wringing, and hair-tearing tragedy (like Medea or Hecuba), and so it gets a 2.5.

Especially enjoyed Iphigenia in Tauris -- what does it mean to be "dead"?

I might fill in more stuff later but:

The Cyclops - 4 Stars
Heracles - 5 Stars
Iphigenia in Tauris - 5 Stars
Helen - 4 Stars

I felt that Helen suffered by being included directly after Iphigenia, mostly because in many ways they are the same play, in that they share a lot of plot points. Even with that being said though, I do feel Iphigenia is stronger in terms of composition.