The Women of Troy (Modern Plays) - Softcover

Euripides, .

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1408103869 ISBN 13: 9781408103869

Publisher: Methuen Drama, 2007

Synopsis

An industrial port of a war-torn city. Women survivors wait to be shipped abroad. Officials come and go. A grandmother, once Queen, watches as her remaining family are taken from her one by one. The city burns around them.

Euripides' great anti-war tragedy is published in Don Taylor's translation to coincide with the National Theatre's production directed by Katie Mitchell in the Lyttelton auditorium.

This edition of the play features an introduction by the translator setting the play in its historical and dramaturgical context.

About this title

Review:

Written shortly after the Athenians had butchered the men and enslaved the women of the Sparta-aligned island of Melos, Women of Troy was clearly intended as a conscience-provoking metaphor about the arrogance of power and the hideous aftermath of war, and it doesn't take much imagination to see it as directly applicable to our own times. --Guardian

About the Author:

Euripides (484-406 BC) was a Greek dramatist. The last major tragic playwright of the classical world, he has also been called ""the first modern"". Euripides was not highly successful in his lifetime, winning the first of only five victories at the Dionysia at the age of 43. By the end of the 19th century, however, Euripides was the most acclaimed Greek playwright. And, when the Royal Shakespeare Company presented a ten-play cycle The Greeks in 1980, seven of the works were by Euripides. Only 17 of his 92 plays survive. These include Medea, The Bacchae and Electra. Euripides's innovations included the deus ex machina and the formal prologue. He used simple everyday language, bringing a new realism to the stage. Although contemporaries accused him of killing tragedy, he humanized drama by adding elements of sentiment, romance, and even comedy. He was the first to argue against the social inferiority of women, and the first to show women in love. He was also the first to explore such subjects as madness and repression. A recluse, he shunned Athenian civil and social affairs, and in later life would sit all day in a cave on Salamis overlooking the sea as he contemplated and wrote ""something great and high"". In 408 BC Euripides was exiled for his unorthodox views to Macedonia, where he died less than two years later. According to tradition, when the Spartans arrived to burn Athens, they desisted after a reminder that this was Euripides's city.

About this edition

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1408103869
• ISBN 13: 9781408103869
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 78