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The Trojan Women and Other Plays

euripides james morwood edith hall

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This volume of Euripides' plays offers new translations of the three great war plays The Trojan Women, Hecuba and Andromache, in which the sufferings of Troy's survivors are harrowingly depicted. With unparalleled intensity, Euripides, whom Aristotle called the most tragic of poets, describes the horrific brutality that both women and children undergo during war. Yet, in the war's aftermath, this brutality is challenged and a new battleground is revealed where the women of Troy evince an overwhelming greatness of spirit.

We weep for the aged Hecuba in her name play and in Trojan Women, while at the same time we admire her resilience amid unrelieved suffering. Andromache, the slave-concubine of her husband's killer, endures her existence in the victor's country with a stoic nobility. Of their time yet timeless, these plays insist on the victory of the female spirit amid the horrors visited on them by the gods and men during war.

224 pages, Paperback

First published September 20,2001

This edition

Format
224 pages, Paperback
Published
November 19, 2001 by Oxford University Press
ISBN
9780192839879
ASIN
019283987X
Language
English

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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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Rating(4.1 / 5.0, 45 votes)
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45 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
baked_orange
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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These three plays show both the immediate and long-term impact of war on women. It's hard to determine who suffered more - Hecuba or Andromache. Hecuba and The Trojan Women occur immediately after the Trojan War while still in the land of Troy. Andromache takes place a little later on in Greece, and shows the life of a slave woman. These are incredible tragedy plays with so many deep connections, themes, and ideas.
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ThatWheatFlour
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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Ever see those newsreels of the last days for U.S. forces in Vietnam? Evacuating some of the local citizens who had helped us, but, without enough room for them all, leaving some behind to fend for themselves at the hands of the Viet Cong. Horrible stuff. That's what The Trojan Women reminded me of; all the last horrible details at the end of a war, seen from the losing side. Hecuba, queen of Troy, suddenly widowed, now facing a life of slavery to the Greeks and the unpleasant futures of her children -- she stands vividly depicted here, every inch a queen, every bit a woman, and thoroughly tragic and too intelligent to let the audience avoid even one little bit of the grim and grisly aspects her fate. Sounds rough, and it is, but also so bright with truthful characterizations and conflicts that it is still an excellent read. That Euripides was able to have this play performed at one of the Athens festivals just before the city-state was committing to a terribly misjudged assault on Sicily is remarkable. Also remarkable is that this play was written over 2,400 years ago and is still convincing and gripping. Customs have changed (a little), but people have not.
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taffydmonkey
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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These three plays all explore the aftermath of the fall of Troy for the women who survived it. These are bleak, harrowing tales, even by the standard of Greek tragedy, and they have some beautifully crafted female characters (with the exception of one play, but we'll get there).
An excellent collection.

Well... for the most part.

Hecuba
★★★★★
Hecuba tells the story of the former queen of Troy, Hecuba, and the death of two of her children. The first half of the play shows us the horrific sacrifice of her daughter Polyxena at the tomb of Achilles, the second the aftermath of the cruel and senseless murder of her youngest son, Polydorus, at the hand of the Trojan royal couple’s old guest-friend, Polymestor, the king of Thrace. It’s a harrowing tale of trauma and greed, of senseless violence and broken trust, and how all these things turn humans into beasts. It’s a tale where old friends become bitter enemies and enemies become reluctant allies.
Odysseus in this play is a vile toad, Agamemnon a spineless wimp, whereas Hecuba and her Trojan women get to be total BAMFs. Of course I’m a fan.

The Trojan Women
★★★★★
Unquestionably the bleakest play of the three, The Trojan women, like Hecuba before it, is set immediately after the fall of Troy, as the captive women of the city are awaiting their fates.
Once again, Hecuba is at the very center of the story, but we also see the fates of Cassandra, Polyxena, Helen, Andromache and, perhaps most famously, Andromache’s baby son, Astyanax.
Helen gets a pretty incredible defense speech, and of course I love that for her. Still, I think one of my favourite moments comes, once again, from Cassandra, whose wild and shockingly jubilant “celebration” of her impending “marriage” to Agamemnon at first seems wildly out of place and inappropriate, but turns into such a darkly satisfying moment once you realize the reason for her triumphant attitude.

Andromache
★★☆☆☆
I… genuinely don’t know what to make of this one.
Although named after her, the plot seems to forget about Andromache about halfway through the play. There’s not really much of a cohesive plot, and while I can see some of the things Euripides is doing with the format, it did not work for me at all.
Hermione’s character makes no sense, especially with the sudden 180 she does from catty, jealous would-be-murderess into tragic heroine. Both Hermione and Menelaus are such cartoony villains, and it means that the stakes just don’t feel as high, especially when compared to the first two plays of the collection. Also, I’m sorry, but you can not make me feel an ounce of sympathy for Neoptolemus as a tragic hero. Especially not in a story centering Andromache.
This one was just a massive letdown, and does not come anywhere close to Hecuba or The Trojan Women.

Now, I do feel like it'd be unfair to knock of a star just because of Andromache, so I'm gonna give this 5 stars for the first two plays and just... pretend the third one didn't happen.
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Tetragon
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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One of the notes in this edition says that Odysseus and his talent for deceit are usually viewed unfavourably in Greek tragedy, compared to in Homer; and that this would have been very pronounced in The Trojan Women, as it was performed right after the now-lost play Palamedes, in which Odysseus took a villainous role. Of the three plays in this volume, he only actually appears onstage in Hecuba. And even then, it's only for a couple of minutes, to deliver a speech and be vaguely duplicitous. Which is kind of a shame, but I bet he at least looked like a snack when he told Hecuba that her last surviving daughter needed to be sacrificed on Achilles's tomb :/
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JacobekTheEnd
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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Fantastic collection of plays depicting the gruesome and timeless experience women face during the fallout of war. Mothers lamenting the murder of their sons and the theft of their daughters. Wives who witness the slaughter of their husbands and children. Their cities burned and themselves sold into slavery and taken to foreign lands. Revenge and bloodshed and lamentation in an endless cycle.

Greece has suffered a pestilence, yes, a pestilence
It crossed over the sea from Troy, yes, to our fertile fields,
And fell like a thunderbolt, dripping bloodshed on the Greeks.
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