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Ten Plays by Euripides

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Euripides was the youngest and the least successful of the great triad of Greek tragic poets. Criticized by the conservatives of his time for introducing shabby heroes and immoral women into his plays, his plays were ridiculed by Aristophanes in "The Frogs." His plays exhibited his iconoclastic, rationalizing attitude toward the ancient myths that were the subject matter for Greek drama. For Euripides the gods were irrational and petulant, while heroes had flawed natures and uncontrolled passions that made them ultimately responsible for their tragic fates. Ultimately, your standard Euripides tragedy offers meaningless suffering upon which the gods look with complete indifference (until they show up at the end as the deux ex machina). However, today Euripides is considered the most popular of the Greek playwrights and is considered by many to be the father of modern European drama.

This volume does not include all of the extant plays of Euripides (we believe he authored 92 plays, 19 of which have survived), but what are arguably the ten most important: "Alcestis," "Medea," "Hippolytus," "Andromache," "Ion," "Trojan Women," "Electra," "Iphigenia Among the Taurians," "The Bacchants," and "Iphigenia at Aulis." The translations by Moses Hadas and John McLean are not as literate as you will find elsewhere, but they are eminently functional and make this volume one of the most cost-effective ways of providing students an opportunity to study the work of a great dramatist.

After reading several Euripides tragedies several things emerge in our understanding of his work. First, he has a unique structure for his plays decidedly different from those of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Usually the play begins with a monologue that provides the necessary exposition regarding the situation with which the characters are confronted. At the end of the play a god usually descends from heaven to provide an epilogue to say what happens afterwards (e.g., "Hippolytus"). Second, Euripides is much more interested in the dynamic interaction of his characters than the role of the chorus. The stasimons and occasional monodies are more what exists between scenes for Euripides instead of an opportunity to comment upon the story as with Aeschylus (e.g., "Agamemnon"). Third, the idea that Euripides is a misogynist just does not bear up under even a basic reading of these plays. This misconception might stem from our understanding of the culture of the times, because the "worst" thing you can say about the women of Euripides is that they are realistic characters.

Fourth and most importantly, clearly Euripides is at his best when there is a political agenda embedded in his story. "The Trojan Women" offers a fascinating counterpoint to the reactions of those same characters at the end of the "Iliad" when Hector's body is returned to Troy, but Euripides is not concerned with commenting on Homer but rather on the Athenian destruction of the city of Melos, which had tried to stay neutral in the Peloponnesian War (compare this with Euripides in a patriotic mode in "Andromache"). Much more is made of Euripides irreverence towards the gods (e.g., "The Bacchants"), however I think his greatness lies not in being an atheist but in being a strong advocate of democratic principles (e.g., the treatment of foreigners at the heart of "Medea"). Hadas reinforces this latter idea in his translations, admitting that for the modern reader it might be better to think of Euripides "as a pamphleteer rather than a poet." Still, Hadas emphasizes that despite the parodies provided by Aristophanes, Euripides was a great poet. Furthermore, Hadas is committed to keeping the translations as poetry rather than prose.

But there is also a sense in which Euripides provides psychological insights into his characters as much as Sophocles, who usually gets the edge in that respect because Freud derived the Oedipal and Electra complexes from his writings. Even though there was a limit of only three characters on stage at a time, Euripides would often made one of these characters, such as the nurse in "Hippolytus" or Pylades (friend of Orestes in both "Electra" and "Iphigenia Among the Taurains"), a normal person, who served as a means for showing the profoundly disturbed nature of the tragic hero.

Reading a single Euripides play is not going to make the validity of any or all of these points clear, but if you read most of these ten plays you should come to similar conclusions. I still like to use Euripides in bracket Homer's "Iliad," looking at the way he presages the conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon in "Iphigenia at Aulis," and the fate of "The Trojan Women," but there is much value to studying the plays of Euripides on their own terms. Granted, you can find better (i.e., more "modern") translations, but finding ten Euripides plays in one volume is going to be impossible and/or expensive.

I'm an acting teacher, and this is the best translation I've come across. It's very readable and actable. Most other translations focus more on formal equivalency but this one is more of a dynamic equivalency. For an acting student, the text is so immediate and realistic rather than awkward.

Euripides is not a definitive tragedian (in the Aristotelian notion) like his contemporary Sophocles; although he mines the same subject matter, he exhibits a number of stylistic differences and peculiarities. His plays tend to begin with a single character delivering a soliloquy that introduces the background of the story, and he makes frequent use of a "deus ex machina" at the end in order to set things right, or as right as they can be.

The biggest difference between Sophocles and Euripides is their approach to tragedy. Sophocles uses tragedy as an enhancement of nobility, an illumination of heroic dignity and grandeur; to Euripides it is just ugly, crude, and awkward, like a ketchup stain on your shirt. Tragedy elevates the Sophoclean hero to a state of fearsome awe, but it merely reduces the Euripidean hero to an object of pity and even derision. In this sense Euripides is more of a realist and a humanist, and therefore more modern.

Euripides's plays transform classical mythology not into morality lessons but into drama in a very basic, empathic mode. He makes the most of every dramatic situation: Medea, who kills her children to punish her unfaithful husband Jason; Hector's widow Andromache, who is enslaved by Achilles's son Neoptolemus and is accused by his wife Hermione of seducing him; Ion, son of Apollo by the rape of Creusa and attendant at his temple, in a classic plot of mistaken identity; Pentheus, king of Thebes, who is murdered by frenzied Bacchantes, one of whom is his own mother; Iphigenia, who is sacrificed by her father Agamemnon to ensure Greek victory in the Trojan War. There is a very clear path that connects Euripides with the conventions of two and a half millenia of Western literature. He might not have been as famous or as respected as Sophocles, but he is no less important a dramatist.

I will preface this review by stating that I am usually loath to review "the classics". First, they tend to stand on their own merits; second, more qualified reviewers with greater expertise than I as a general reader tend to already do an excellent job reviewing the work long before I arrive on the scene. "Ten Plays by Euripides" is no exception: the works have survived to the present day due to their beauty and genius, and excellent reviews (most notably Mr. Lawrence Bernabo's) have already been posted. But a particularly knuckleheaded review currently stands as the most recent review, prompting me to add my own review in an attempt to add a counterweight to the negative review.

Euripides is in many ways the most "modern" of the ancient Greek dramatists in the way he plunges the psychological depths of his characters ... most of whom stood as "larger than life" figures in the works of his ancestors and contemporaries (e.g. Homer, Aeschylus, and Sophocles) until Euripides humanizes them. As Sophocles is reported to have said, where Sophocles portrayed these characters as "they ought to be", Euripides portrayed them as "they actually were". The full genius of Euripides' characterization cannot be appreciated except for in comparison with the often "larger than life" treatment given by Homer and Aeschylus. Euripides is particularly gifted in his work with female characters such as Clytemnestra, Medea, and Alcestis.

With his surprisingly "modern" treatments of these famous characters and scenes from Greek history and mythology, Euripides ushered in a new era of theater. Echos of Euripides' works can be heard in the great dramatic history of Europe, all the way to the present day. This particular volume contains many of Euripides' best works at a good price with good translations, making it an especially worthwhile purchase.

Some reviewers say that Euripides is not strictly a tragedian in the Greek sense, but a playwright who took Greek drama to a next level of development. I agree, and this can be seen both in structural and styilistic innovations, as well as in the way of treating his subjects, remarkably the Gods, myths, religion and the situation of women. Maybe that's why he was the least successful of the three known Greek "tragedians", the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Structural and styilistic innovations include the opening monologue in which one of the characters explains the situation such as it is at the beginning of the action. Other ones are: a lesser use of the Chorus and the treatment of the final deus-ex-machina. But in my view, the most important aspect of his dramas is the controversial stance he takes against traditions and myths. If Aschylus lives in a world of gods, heroes and titans, and if Sophocles is the great tragedian of Fate, glory, downfall and grandilocuent suffering, for Euripides humans are just humans and the gods are, in the best case, distant, cruel and frivolous entities. With Euripides, it is not so much Fate but every individual's decisions which decide their fortune. He also exposes crudely the disadvantaged situation of women, hand-tied by laws and traditions which preclude their human development. Finally, for him war is not an opportunity for glory, but only destruction, misery and disgrace. War does not purify or ennoble, it just destroys and saddens. In spite of this vision, his plays do not entirely lack a sense of humor, even if it's black humor. Some of the plays included in this volume are:

"Alcestis", a good example of Euripides's anti-tragedy which begins sad and ends joyful. Alcestis volunteers to die instead of her husband, Admetus (whose own parents refuse to sacrifice for him). Admetus has to be one of the most despicable characters in literature. In the end, a drunk Hercules saves the woman and all ends well (more or less).

"Medea" is the terrifyingly cruel story of Jason's wife, who goes mad at his infidelities and punishes him by murdering their children. Chilly.

"Hippolytus", which is more properly a tragedy in the old style. Here the gods do intervene decisively: Aphrodite inspires in Phaedra a lustful love for her stepson, Hippolytus. When the boy finds out about it, he sternly rejects the idea and Phaedra kills herself. She lefts behind a letter accusing Hippolytus of having tried to seduce her, which brings about the boy's death.

"Andromache", a drama about jealousy in which Hector's widow is about to die at the hands of her raptor's wife (the raptor is Neoptolemus, Achilles's son). In the end, she is saved by the wisdom and mercy of Achilles's father.

"Ion", apocryhphal son of Apollo, who is adopted by another man and made priest of his true father's temple (he ignores his true lineage).

"The Trojan Women", where the cruel deaths of Priamus's children are told.

"Electra", very different from the one written by Aeschylus where Electra is a hysterical crazy. Here, she is a cold and firm avenger.

"Ifigenia among the Taurus", where the supposedly sacrificed daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra appears as the guardian of Artemisa's temple in the country of the Taurus, nowadays Crimea. Her brother Orestes arrives to the place with his friend Pilades, escaping from the cruel Erinnis (deities in charge of punishing parricide or matricide). His goal is to steal the statuette of the godess in order to perform some ritual of atonement for his sins. Brother and sister recognize each other and run away together. This isn't either a proper tragedy, but more of a farce.

Euripides laid down the basis for what would be modern drama. The plays are quite good and relevant and so completely recommended.

One of the playwrights from the triad of great dramatists that comprised Greek tragedy,Euripides is considered to be the most modern of all of them in the depiction of his subject matter,& it is here that one can clearly see true humanity abound:immoral women,devious & cunning people,gods with human frailties,etc.Euripides touches on themes common of his time,which claims an ineffaceable hold on humanity even up to now;the helplessness of man in the face of fate,the attitude & relationships of people towards one another & with their gods.The language at times(especially with its oratorical phrases)is dated,but the compelling & convincing dialogues are truly moving,& the playwright handles with effortless ease the conveyance of the heightened sense of drama.But the real delight is in the awareness that reading works almost 2,500 years old & finding still a lot of common traits among the people of this time & of that is a marvel in the realization of the unity of man's soul through the centuries.

10 beautiful and powerful plays by a man whose genius can still be felt today

I had read some of his work in another version and wasn't very impressed.
I am holding him to the standards of the really great authors
of his own day. It is said in the beginning that he was killed by the kings dogs
( By implications that he had offended the king and they were turned on him?).
His tragedy isn't tragic enough, and he rewrites the Trojan war as it pleased him in his age 1000 years later.
In many ways he seems a toned down Greek with less passion and blood on stage and more political insinuations.
Only about half his plays survive and reading these I realize that they were probably worse?
I did find one interesting note in Alcestis that suggest that three days in the grave wasn't a Hebrew superstition, but a Greek one.