These plays are cool. Iphegenia in Tauris is pretty neat. But I love the Helen drama.

Read for school/Master's Program. The Cyclops feels more like an Astrophanes play, and Iphigenia in Tauris and Helen are practically the same story. Heracles, out of all these plays, was the best.

These plays are part of the Comolete Greek Tragedies, abd can also be found in the Great Books of the Western World.

Ancient Greek Drama is always spectacular. This being said, this particular set of plays covers more niche, obscure events in mythology. The stories are well told, but you can see Euripides experimenting with dramatic styles and patterns throughout. Euripides has better works, but no one could question the value of any of his plays.

*the only thing that i've read from this is Helen, though i've also read The Bacchae & Trojan Women as well, but i can't remember in what book.

The most complete rundown of which Euripides plays I've read can be found here. There's also a thing I wrote called Greek Playwrights 101 or something like that.

Below are notes from when I was just starting to learn about this stuff, so my enthusiasm was great but my knowledge...well honestly it hasn't gotten much better.

BEST EURIPIDES PLAYS

That I've Read
Medea
Hippolytos

That I'm Guessing About
Iphigenia (wtf, there are two of these? I think Tauris is supposed to be better?)
Alcestis
Heracles (and Children Of?)
Hecabe
Elektra
Helen
Bacchae

TOP TEN according to one collection:
"Alcestis," "Medea," "Hippolytus," "Andromache," "Ion," "Trojan Women," "Electra," "Iphigenia Among the Taurians," "The Bacchants," and "Iphigenia at Aulis."
TOP TEN according to Signet:
Alcestis, Hippolytus, Ion, Electra, Iphigenia at Aulis, Iphigenia Among the Taurians, Medea, The Bacchae, The Trojan Women, and The Cyclops.
TOP X according to fuckin' Harold Bloom:
Cyclops, Heracles, Alcestis, Hecuba, Bacchae, Orestes, Andromache, Medea, Ion, Hippolytus, Helen, Iphigenia at Aulis

On all three:
Alcestis, Medea, Hippolytos, Bacchae, Iphigenia (Aulis)

Two votes out of three: Ion, Trojan Women, Elektra, Iphigenia (Taurians), and Cyclops, which is the only surviving satyr play and therefore I'm totally reading it.

Okay, here's some fuckin' fascinating info from this syllabus at some college or other:

Besides being greater in number, the surviving plays of Euripides provide some of the most important information known about Greek tragedy in general. The nineteen dramas extant come down to us via two very different paths. One group, called the select plays (Alcestis, Andromache, Bacchae, Hecuba, Hippolytus, Medea, Orestes, Phoenician Women, Rhesus and Trojan Women), were the ten prescribed as required reading in the late Greek and Byzantine school system—all fourteen of the tragedies we have by Sophocles and Aeschylus belong to the same category—which is to say, all of these plays are acknowledged classics.

The other group are called the alphabetic plays (Electra, Helen, Heracles, Heracles' Children, Hiketes [The Suppliants], Ion, Iphigenia in Aulis, Iphigenia among the Taurians, and Kyklops [Cyclops]), because they come most likely from one part (volume two?) of a complete set of Euripides' work, originally organized in roughly alphabetical order. These are all dramas having titles that begin with the letters E to K—in Greek, eta to kappa—or roughly the second fourth or fifth of the alphabet. From this alone it seems safe to assume that they were preserved not because literature teachers saw them as the most effective drama to read in the classroom but by chance when, no doubt, a lone volume from a complete edition of Euripides turned up at some point in history and was integrated into the ten "select plays."

Awesome, right? Super interesting. The rest of that essay-thing is probably worth reading at some point too.

On all three above lists and also "select" list:
Alcestis, Medea, Hippolytos, Bacchae

Three out of four: Iphigenia (Aulis), Trojan Women

Basically there's no fuckin' consensus at all about any of this. Who woulda thought it'd be so, like, controversial? I even started a Listopia list to try to crowdsource an answer. (Of course, idiots will fuck that list up in like a day.)

I own Alcestis and Cyclops (the satyr play) in Volume Five. Volume One (the other one I own) kinda doesn't look to have anything else important in it.

Only read Helen in this one. It operates based on a different version of the myth in which Helen isn't a villain but was rather whisked away to Egypt. The rest of the play is equally fanciful, making for one of the least tragic tragedies of all time. (Though not exactly for that reason,) it didn't really do much for me.

The Cyclops - William Arrowsmith - 3 stars
Heracles - William Arrowsmith - 4 stars
Iphigenia in Tauris - Witter Bynner - 4 stars
Helen - Richard Lattimore - 3 stars

4.5