Classical Dramatists
12 total works
Linked by their common setting in Thebes, Antigone, Oedipus the King, and Oedipus at Colonus stand at the fountainhead of world drama. This volume presents a new, and accurate yet poetic and playable translation by playwright Don Taylor, who has also directed plays for a BBC-TV production.
Published in the new Methuen Classical Dramatists series The three plays in this volume straddle the borders between comedy and tragedy. Alkestis is a moving "romance" with death; it has parallels to Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. Helen, an alternative version of the tragic portrayal of the Trojan War, shows Helen "relocated in a delightful comedy" (Observer) - as an innocent victim of her own beauty, hidden in Egypt by the gods while her image has been abducted by Paris. In Ion, a father who thought he was childless discovers his son, and a son who thought he was motherless finds his mother.
The Greek fleet assembles at the bay of Aulis in readiness to launch an attack on Troy, but the wind suddenly drops and the ships stand idle. Don Taylor's translation is faithful to Euripides' original, and the play confronts us with themes of war and humanity, as valid today as when written over two thousand years ago.
The best-selling author's adaptation of one of Euripides' great tragedies In time of war unspeakable unthinkable things are done...Edna O'Brien's critically acclaimed adaptation of the Euripides play dramatises the sacrifice of Agamemnon's daughter to the cause of his campaign to win back Helen of Troy."O'Brien gives force and clarity to a notoriously corrupt text; what impresses is the swift narrative drive of this seventy-five minute version and the vigour and irony of O'Brien's language" Guardian"Edna O'Brien's silky new version of Euripides" Daily Mail "O'Brien's adaptation is loyal and respectful" Sunday Times "Eloquent and compelling" Sunday Telegraph
A single-volume edition of the major Greek tragedies In a period of sixty-six years, three Athenian playwrights produced a series of tragedies which became a touchstone for drama for the next two and a half thousand years. The six plays in this volume include Aeschylus' Persians (472 BC), the earliest surviving Greek tragedy and only surviving 'history' play; his Prometheus Bound, perhaps the most deeply mythological of all tragedies, presenting an archetype of the human condition; Sophocles' Women of Trachis, a deeply poignant piece, portraying Heracles' death through his wife's mistake; his strange Philoctetes, which presents a fascinating moral debate and a young man's realisation of the importance of loyalty to his own ideals; Euripides' Trojan Women, the greatest anti-war play ever written; and his intangible Bacchae, a play full of paradoxes which functions at many different levels.The volume is edited and introduced by Marianne McDonald, Professor of Theatre and Classics, University of California, San Diego, and J. Michael Walton, Professor of Drama at the University of Hull.
Six wide ranging classic plays with introduction by the editor The comedies of the Athenian theatre not only lie at the root of Western drama, they also offer a unique insight into everyday life in ancient Greece. This selection of six wide ranging plays includes the comic fantasies of Aristophanes, which combine the ridiculous with serious satirical comment (Birds, Frogs, Women in Power); Menander's The Woman from Samos, a recognisable forebear of today's situation comedy; Euripides ribald satyr play, Cyclops, the only surviving example of the genre, and his Alkestis, a complex romance which gave a new face to comedy. The volume is edited and introduced by J. Michael Walton, Professor of Drama at the University of Hull and founder/director of the Performance Translation Centre there.