The Trojan Women and Other Plays

939 Pages·2009·3.52 MB·English

by  Euripides

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP
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Introduction and Bibliography © Edith Hall 2000
Translation and Notes ©James Morwood 2000
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First published as an Oxford World’s Classics paperback
2001
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Euripides
[Hecuba. English]
Hecuba; The Trojan women;
Andromache/Euripides/translated with explanatory
notes by
James Morwood; with an introduction by Edith Hall.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p.).
1. Euripides—Translations into English. 2. Hecuba
(Legendary character)—Drama.
3. Andromache (Legendary character)—Drama. 4. Troy
(Extinct city)—Drama.
5. Trojan War—Drama. I. Title: Hecuba; The Trojan
Women; Andromache.
II. Morwood, James. III. Euripides. Trojan women.
English.
IV. Euripides. Andromache. English. V. Title: Trojan
women.
VI. Title: Andromache. VII. Title.
PA3975.A2 2000b 882′.01—dc21 00–059816
ISBN-13: 978–0-19–283987-9
ISBN-10: 0–19-283987-X
6
Typeset by Hope Services (Abingdon) Ltd.
Printed in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
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OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS
EURIPIDES
Hecuba The Trojan Women
Andromache
Translated and Edited by
JAMES MORWOOD
Introduction by
EDITH HALL

OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS
THE TROJAN WOMEN AND OTHER PLAYS
EURIPIDES was born in attica (the country whose main city
was Athens) about 485 BCE. By the time of his death in
406 BCE he had written at least eighty plays, which were
performed at the Great Dionysia, the Athenians’ major
drama festival. Seventeen of these survive complete. He
was one of the three outstanding figures—with Aeschylus
and Sophocles—who made fifth-century Athens pre-
eminent in the history of the world drama. While he
lived his apparently reclusive life Euripides was less
successful than the other two tragedians, winning the
festival’s prize only five times. But his vigorous,
immediate, controversial, and flamboyantly theatrical
plays soon become by far the most popular and
frequently revived works in the ancient repertoire. The
universality of the conflicts he explores, and the startling
realism of his characterization, ensure that he has also
been by far the most often adapted, staged, and filmed of
the ancient dramatists from the Renaissance to the