An introduction to all 44 surviving tragedies and comedies of Classical Athens: includes Aeschylus' "Prometheus Bound" Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex" Euripides' "Medea" Aristophanes' "Clouds"
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From the Author
The tragedies and comedies of the Athenian dramatists were essential to the achievement of Classical Athens and the greatness of Ancient Greece. There would have been no Shakespeare without Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes.
Furthermore, Greek Drama is on the exalted level of Shakespeare – profound and splendid, tragic and humorous, moving and unforgettable.
Aeschylus has been called the Father of Western Tragedy and “the most Hebraic” of the Greek playwrights. Only seven of his plays have come down to us. Luckily, Prometheus Bound and the Oresteia trilogy are among them.
Sophocles composed, among other exquisite tragedies, Oedipus Rex and the Antigone. Aristotle praised Oedipus Rex as the greatest of tragedies, a virtully perfect play. Sophocles’ heroine Antigone is Literature’s exemplar of Conscience standing up against Tyranny.
Euripides, brilliant and original, detests and satirizes bullies and hypocrites; sympathizes with women and condemns social customs and attitudes directed against them; casts children as tragic figures, without sentimentalizing. Euripides creates dignified characters from the lowest classes – peasants, slaves, foreigners, beggars, the physically-handicapped.
Aristophanes – It is enough to know that he entered a comedy entitled Knights at the Dionysian festival in 424 BC; and this play attacked with staggeringly abusive, clever and hilarious language the most powerful and ruthless man in Athens; and Aristophanes not only got away with this unscathed, but won first prize in the festival competition.
About the Author
Myron Stagman is a Shakespearean and Classical research scholar, a doctor of English Literature from San Francisco, California. He heartily suggests that everyone, for reasons of personal pleasure as well as cultural enhancement, should become familiar with Ancient Greece, that extraordinary place and time in world history.
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1.0 out of 5 stars
Not worth a penny,
This review is from: Guide to Greek Drama (Paperback)
This must be the worst guide ever (or so far) to Greek drama. For a 2001 book, the cheap printing format (what you would expect from obscure publishers 50-60 years ago) is embarrassing: the font is that of a typewriter; not surprisingly, titles are underlined, rather than italicized; blank and half-full pages are all over the place. The general reader - for whom it is intended - will not only be disappointed, but also misinformed: the introduction couldn't be more miserly; the approach to each work alternates unprofessionally between summary and analysis in a confusing way that hardly helps the newcomer; Stagman's conclusions on the dramatists and their plays are laughably stilted; he latinizes and even changes some titles (OEDIPUS REX, HECUBA, HERCULES MAD); that the authorship of PROMETHEUS BOUND is doubtful isn't even questioned: here, Aeschylus IS the writer; he (Stagman, not Aeschylus) also gets his facts wrong: for him, SUPPLIANTS (rather than - as widely accepted - PERSIANS) is the earliest extant play. This from (I quote from the back cover) 'a Shakespearean and Classical research scholar': I wonder (but won't spend a penny on) what Stagman's Shakespeare publications are like.
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