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Euripides was in a silly, goofy mood when writing down the plays Medea and Bacchae. Read for CLAS 131.
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Medea, Hippolytus, Heracles, Bacchae
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This anthology includes four outstanding translations of Euripides' plays: Medea, Hippolytus, Heracles, Bacchae. These translations remain close to the original, with extensive introductions, interpretive essays, and footnotes. This series is designed to provide students and general readers with access to the nature of Greek drama, Greek mythology, and the context of Greek culture, as well as highly readable and understandable translations of four of Euripides most important plays. Focus also published each play as an individual edition.
304 pages, Paperback
First published March 1,2002
This edition
- Format
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304 pages, Paperback
- Published
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March 1, 2002 by Focus
- ISBN
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9781585100484
- ASIN
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158510048X
- Language
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English
About the author
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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.
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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Rating(4.3 / 5.0, 24 votes)
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euripides loves an insane woman who hangs herself! she contains multitudes!
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*Note: This book really has a 2.5 star rating!!!
I read 3 of the tragedies in this book-Medea, Hippolytus, and Bacchae. Overall, I was not really impressed by these plays because they are just downright twisted and depressing. There's really nothing else left to say.
I read 3 of the tragedies in this book-Medea, Hippolytus, and Bacchae. Overall, I was not really impressed by these plays because they are just downright twisted and depressing. There's really nothing else left to say.
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Some folks may love their Oedipus Rex, and that's okay, but for my money, Hippolytus is the greatest Greek tragedy you will ever read. Dueling goddesses, a militant virgin, forbidden love, father-son rivalry, court-room drama, a gory messenger speech - this one's got it all. Euripides is the most modern of the 3 tragedians; he's the master of capturing his characters' psychology -- check out Phaedra's soliloquy "Women of Troezen..." or Medea debating whether to do in her kids or not. Who else would write a play with such strict form, filled with emotions and passions that can't be contained? Sophocles said he portrayed people as they should be, but Euripides portrayed them as they are (according to Aristotle). Yep, and double yep. No one but Euripides understands the tragedy of that gap between what we know to be right and what we actually do like this.
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Each of the plays were very interesting and even commented on some element of society today - Medea and modern feminism, Bachae and hubris, Hippolytus and lust, and Heracles and having to endure misfortune. I didn't like the essays explaining the significance of different elements of each of the plays, except for the Heracles one which was quite interesting. Euripides employed many literary elements, commonly using irony and tragedy in each of these plays. Speaking to the tragedy, there is not one play which does not end poorly / tragically for one or more characters which is a stark difference to the stories of today which all (for the most part) have happy endings.
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Greek Tragedy: when your father’s brother’s cousin’s former roommate marries your sister’s half-uncle’s ex-step-brother-in-law, only to discover that he is actually the bastard son of Zeus’ illegitimate liaison with Artemis’ third-cousin’s daughter, which dictates that she murder him, commit suicide, curse her house, and decapitate her son.
I jest, but overdosing on Greek tragedy spoils the effect. There is too much distance, historically and culturally, to empathize with Medea. She is a monstrosity. There is little tragedy here: it is simple atrocity. Her inner conflict is foreign to a world touched by Christianity. The light brought by the knowledge that all persons are made in God’s image makes her murder of her sons for the sake of honor not a noble act of protecting her reputation, albeit at a terrible cost, but a simple act of grotesque and selfish wickedness, a sacrifice to the Moloch of one’s own ego. It inspires neither pity nor sorrow, but horror.
Hippolytus perhaps is closer to us culturally, but not as interesting. It is a tragedy founded on a refusal to communicate clearly and cleanly. The tragic effect depends not on iron cause and effect of circumstance and choice, but on mores against talking openly about desire and obligation. If only the characters would actually talk to each other there would be no tragedy.
The Bacchae seemed at first to be the strangest and least tragic of all, but the more I thought on it and benefited from the translator’s interpretive notes, the more deeply it impressed me. It seems to be not a tragedy, like Oedipus Rex, in which a great man is brought low by fate and choice, but rather the story of a god’s vengeance, total and implacable, against humans for being who and what they are. Bacchus not only has his opponent dismembered, but at the hands of his mother, whom he has driven mad. It looks like a cosmic statement of fear about the overpowering, untamed, feral forces that await humanity just beyond the horizon of our expectations. The play has a ghastly power.
I jest, but overdosing on Greek tragedy spoils the effect. There is too much distance, historically and culturally, to empathize with Medea. She is a monstrosity. There is little tragedy here: it is simple atrocity. Her inner conflict is foreign to a world touched by Christianity. The light brought by the knowledge that all persons are made in God’s image makes her murder of her sons for the sake of honor not a noble act of protecting her reputation, albeit at a terrible cost, but a simple act of grotesque and selfish wickedness, a sacrifice to the Moloch of one’s own ego. It inspires neither pity nor sorrow, but horror.
Hippolytus perhaps is closer to us culturally, but not as interesting. It is a tragedy founded on a refusal to communicate clearly and cleanly. The tragic effect depends not on iron cause and effect of circumstance and choice, but on mores against talking openly about desire and obligation. If only the characters would actually talk to each other there would be no tragedy.
The Bacchae seemed at first to be the strangest and least tragic of all, but the more I thought on it and benefited from the translator’s interpretive notes, the more deeply it impressed me. It seems to be not a tragedy, like Oedipus Rex, in which a great man is brought low by fate and choice, but rather the story of a god’s vengeance, total and implacable, against humans for being who and what they are. Bacchus not only has his opponent dismembered, but at the hands of his mother, whom he has driven mad. It looks like a cosmic statement of fear about the overpowering, untamed, feral forces that await humanity just beyond the horizon of our expectations. The play has a ghastly power.
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*read for greek mythology class*
(3.5)
medea 3.5 slightly anticlimactic but really good banter
hippolytus 3.0
heracles 3.25
bacchae 4.0 probs one of his best works
(3.5)
medea 3.5 slightly anticlimactic but really good banter
hippolytus 3.0
heracles 3.25
bacchae 4.0 probs one of his best works
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Fair translation. Cannot comment much on Medea, Hippolytus and Heracles in relation to the Greek (but readable translations) but the treatment of the Bacchae I found awkward. Referring to Dionysus as "The Stranger" rather than Dionysus was a strange translation choice I found. As I've studied the Greek there were some liberties where I've found a more clear, accurate translation. All in all a great book to read these plays, not the best in my opinion, but will work for reading.
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