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3 stars for Andromache and The Trojan Women, 4 stars for Hecuba. Man. None of them deserved any of that.
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Hecuba, Trojan Women, Andromache
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This is the final in a series of three volumes of a new prose translation of Euripides' most popular plays. In the three great war plays contained in this volume Euripides subjects the sufferings of Troy's survivors to a harrowing examination. The horrific brutality which both women and children undergo evokes a response of unparalleled intensity in the playwright whom Aristotle called the most tragic of the poets. Yet the new battle-ground of the aftermath of war is one in which the women of Troy evince an overwhelming greatness of spirit. We weep for the aged Hecuba in her name play and in the Trojan Women, yet we respond with an at times appalled admiration to her resilience amid unrelieved suffering. And in her name play 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.
216 pages, Hardcover
First published April 19,2001
This edition
- Format
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216 pages, Hardcover
- Published
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April 19, 2001 by Oxford University Press
- ISBN
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9780198150930
- ASIN
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0198150938
- 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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The translation leans more towards theatrical production but it doesn't leave out important details from the original Greek. I read this as part of a paper for an MA in Classics. If you are looking to entertain yourself with 5th century BC works of Greek Drama--especially those that are based in closer character portrayal, Euripides is the one for you. Reading this translation along side Micheal Caconyannis movie of The Trojan Women, is close save for a couple of scenes. The 1940's translation used for the script is hard to get one's hands on these days.
How and why Polyxena and Astyanax must be sacrificed is a central part of all three plays and never fails to wind up the tension. A surprising page turner!
How and why Polyxena and Astyanax must be sacrificed is a central part of all three plays and never fails to wind up the tension. A surprising page turner!
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The plays get increasingly interesting, given that they were written and performed in Athens during the Peloponnesian War. Andromache is fairly straightforward and includes Spartan characters acting badly. In Hecuba we see criticisms of demagoguery and the abuse of persuasion from the title character, and in Trojan Women Euripides seems to openly criticize the Athenians' contemplation of the slaughter of the men of Melos and the enslavement of the Melian women and children. Ruth Scodel, writing in the introduction, says that the play was written "late enough that the likely outcome was known--and the massacre had taken place by the time the play was performed" (x).
The notes and introduction in this edition are very helpful.
The notes and introduction in this edition are very helpful.
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goodbye troy
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I am reading just Hecuba and the Trojan Women- there is so much heartbreak in the aftermath of the Greek vs Troy war, and so many dead and mourned, that this is a very sobering subject. Though written over a thousand years ago- the subject is still relevant and the pain of the women who lost relatives, position, their honor and their home is real. I am reading Hecuba and the Trojan Women for a classics book club so I am interested in finding out ho
w others viewed these plays.
w others viewed these plays.
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Between the Scylla of prose translations (the current Oxford World's Classics and Penguin) and the Charybdis of poets' re-creations (Oxford's series The Greek Tragedies in New Translations) sails Diane Arnson Svarlien, for whom accuracy and poetry are possible.
DAS reports in detail on the verse features of the original and what equivalence she has found in English. To read in rhythm is like water on the burn of other scholars' prose translations.
There is still a disconcerting colloquialism, but I'm pinning that on Euripides.
DAS reports in detail on the verse features of the original and what equivalence she has found in English. To read in rhythm is like water on the burn of other scholars' prose translations.
There is still a disconcerting colloquialism, but I'm pinning that on Euripides.
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