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Medea and Other Plays

euripides richard rutherford john davie

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This selection of plays shows Euripides transforming the titanic figures of Greek myths into recognizable, fallible human beings. Medea, in which a spurned woman takes revenge upon her lover by killing her children, is one of the most shocking of all the Greek tragedies. Medea is a towering figure who demonstrates Euripides' unusual willingness to give voice to a woman's case. Alcestis is based on a magical myth in which Death is overcome, and The Children of Heracles examines conflict between might and right, while Hippolytus deals with self-destructive integrity.

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,-0428
Places
greece, 

This edition

Format
256 pages, Paperback
Published
April 29, 2003 by Penguin Books
ISBN
9780140449297
ASIN
0140449299
Language
English

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About the author

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euripides

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Euripides (Greek: Ευριπίδης) (ca. 480 BC–406 BC) was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him, but the Suda says it was ninety-two at most. Of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived more or less complete (Rhesus is suspect). There are many fragments (some substantial) of most of his other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined—he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes, and Menander.
Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. This new approach led him to pioneer developments that later writers adapted to comedy, some of which are characteristic of romance. He also became "the most tragic of poets", focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown. He was "the creator of ... that cage which is the theatre of William Shakespeare's Othello, Jean Racine's Phèdre, of Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg," in which "imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates". But he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw.
His contemporaries associated him with Socrates as a leader of a decadent intellectualism. Both were frequently lampooned by comic poets such as Aristophanes. Socrates was eventually put on trial and executed as a corrupting influence. Ancient biographies hold that Euripides chose a voluntary exile in old age, dying in Macedonia, but recent scholarship casts doubt on these sources.

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Community Reviews

Rating(3.8 / 5.0, 100 votes)
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100 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
-HippySnob-
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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I did. enjoy it but the characters were all kinda the worst?

Medea: Overdramatic and needs to sort out her life priorities. Yes she’s a woman in an oppressive society and whatnot so yes i feel a certain amount of sympathy but there’s a point at which one has to say actually no, no i do not believe it is okay to kill your children when your husband marries someone else. Neither do i believe that killing your husband’s new wife is acceptable. I think i could sum up my thoughts in a simple : kill = bad

Jason: So to start with i pity him because imagine having married this gal, realised she’s batshit crazy, and then when you marry a gal you actually love she comes out and kills her and your children. But then he started going all sexist on her… lost a few brownie points there. Then lost many more when he claimed his motives were to help the children, yet he did not bring them with him. And he cannot claim that his wife wouldn’t have liked it because in his words, he can persuade her of anything. All in all, not a swaggy guy.

Creon: I feel we can call this idiot the trigger for all the problems in the play. if he’d exiled medea immediately, nothing bad could have happened… but then again, can we really blame him for seeing the best in medea and having that little bit of human compassion? No not really. okay so never mind it’s all medea’s fault

overall… i don’t know… what an odd story… a little unrealistic…
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Profile Image for Kimberly .
walkingbroccoli
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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I’ve been feeling the ancient Greeks calling to me and when I heard Natalie Haynes say that Medea by Euripides was her favorite play of all time I couldn’t resist so I took a break from the International Booker and Desmond Elliott Prize lists and read the four plays in this volume: Medea, which is as good as Natalie Haynes said it is, in which Jason explains why he married a princess after Medea sacrificed everything for him and helped or rather won the challenges to set to him, and Medea explains why she committed the unthinkable crime for which she is famous; Hecabe which features Agamemnon and Odysseus dealing with a mother’s justified grief and anger; Electra, in which the question of revenge and justice is weighed when Electra and her brother Orestes discuss killing their mother to avenge their father; and Heracles (aka Hercules) which was surprisingly to me about faith in the existence of the gods.
All plays were brilliant and again I see why they are classics and why my dad loved them so much.

Highly recommended
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Profile Image for Kimberly .
Sqooked
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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The translation was nice, though I would have appreciated more substantial introduction/notes sections. Then again, I definitely got my money’s worth ($3 for a very old paperback that looks like it went through a toaster oven)
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Kowala
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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Hippolytus

Those Greeks and their myths. It started with Euripides in the fifth century. Hippolytus loved nothing better than to ride his horse (his name: the breaker of the horse).

Love, he had no interest, and jealous Aphrodite was so angry that she needed to teach him a lesson: she made his step mother Phaedra fall in love with Hippolytus.

The poor woman was beside herself. Phaedra was driven to her to own tragedy. When her husband, noble Theseus learned what happened, he turned on his own son. No questions asked. The weakness of humans: lust, anger, pride, resentment, treachery.

Double tragedy; more blood is spilled. The goddess Artemis intervenes. Humans be dammed because the gods can toy with them. Silly humans.

Great collection with excellent translations.
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Profile Image for Kimberly .
Elydaline
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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I picked this book of plays by Euripides primarily for Medea, so that will earn the brunt of my review.

Medea is one kick-ass, crazy bitch. Period. Having read Jason and the Golden Fleece  and thoroughly enjoyed it I was excited to read more about Medea, particularly her story after helping Jason find the Golden Fleece. Talk about one spurned lover! After Jason leaves Medea for a Greek princess, Medea goes a little bye-bye and decides the best way for her to express her distaste is to kill off her children. Someone get that lady a diary or a canvas or something! Girl, there are better ways of creatively expressing your feelings than going straight for the spawn. I'm just sayin'.

Really though, she's not a woman to be trifled with and while I love her story I'm a little peeved with Euripides for portraying yet another woman on the crazy side of things. The Big E had a habit of being somewhat misogynistic and that's obvious here, even in his attempt to be a big boy and tell the story from the woman's point of view.

In contemporary stories Medea might be referred to as Emily Valentine from the early seasons of Beverly Hills, 90210. She had no children, so she went all firebug instead. But the premise is the same. Mostly.

The other plays in this small collection were pretty okay. The second best is Aclestis where the title character spends a great deal of time dying, her husband mourning, and Death being duped. All in all, good times. The other plays did not hold up in my opinion, but really it's hard to compete with Medea, both the woman and the play. I'm digging this girl. Though not someone I wish to aspire to become, her psychosis is incredibly fascinating. (And if during this fascination I cut my hair short, dye it blond so my roots are always showing and start driving a motorcycle and getting all cow-eyed for Brandon Walsh after slipping drugs into his drink, please intervene. Thanks.)
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