Heracles and Other Plays — Euripides

Euripides wrote about timeless themes of friendship and enmity hope and despair duty and betrayal The first three plays in this volume are filled with violence or its threat while the fourth Cyclops is our only surviving example of a genuine satyr play with all the crude and slapstick humour that characterized the genre There is death in Alcestis which explores the marital relationship of Alcestis and Admetus with pathos and grim humour but whose status as tragedy is subverted by a happy ending The blood soaked Heracles portrays deep emotional pain and undeserved suffering its demand for a more humanistic ethics in the face of divine indifference and callousness makes it one of Euripides more popular and profound plays Children of Heracles is a rich and complex work famous for its dialogues and monologues in which the effects of war on refugees and the consequences of sheltering them are movingly explored In Cyclops Euripides takes the familiar story of Odysseus escape from the Cyclops Polyphemus and turns it to hilarious comic effect

Euripides was one of the most popular and controversial of all Greek tragedians and his plays are marked by an independence of thought ingenious dramatic devices and a subtle variety of register and mood He is also remarkable for the prominence he gave to female characters whether heroines of virtue or vice In the ethically shocking Medea the first known child killing mother in Greek myth to perform the deed in cold blood manipulates her world in order to wreak vengeance on her treacherous husband Hippolytus sees Phaedras confession of her passion for her stepson herald disaster while Electras heroine helps her brother murder their mother in an act that mingles justice and sin Lastly lighter in tone the satyr drama Helen is an exploration of the impossibility of certitude as brilliantly paradoxical as the three famous tragedies This new translation does full justice to Euripidess range of tone and gift for narrative A lucid introduction provides substantial analysis of each play complete with vital explanations of the traditions and background to Euripidess world

Euripides wrote about timeless themes of friendship and enmity hope and despair duty and betrayal The first three plays in this volume are filled with violence or its threat while the fourth Cyclops is our only surviving example of a genuine satyr play with all the crude and slapstick humour that characterized the genre There is death in Alcestis which explores the marital relationship of Alcestis and Admetus with pathos and grim humour but whose status as tragedy is subverted by a happy ending The blood soaked Heracles portrays deep emotional pain and undeserved suffering its demand for a more humanistic ethics in the face of divine indifference and callousness makes it one of Euripides more popular and profound plays Children of Heracles is a rich and complex work famous for its dialogues and monologues in which the effects of war on refugees and the consequences of sheltering them are movingly explored In Cyclops Euripides takes the familiar story of Odysseus escape from the Cyclops Polyphemus and turns it to hilarious comic effect