Euripides Medea and Other Plays

[megustaleer]

  Original threadmust have got lost, but I found this copy of my original opening post while culling old documents from my mac:

The plays included are:
Alcestis
Medea
The Children Of Heracles
Hippolytus

There is an introduction to the plays written by Richard Rutherford, which explains a little of the history and form of Greek drama, and sets the tragedies of Euripides in relation to the works of the earlier dramatists,Aeschylus and Sophocles. My total lack of a classical education made reading the introduction hard work.

Fortunately, the preface thet Rutherford has written for each of the plays was far more accessible, and greatly assisted my understanding of each story, which is often difficult when reading a playscript.

My only previous experience of Euripedes was playing Andromache in an AmDram production of ‘The Women of Troy’, many years ago.
The translation we used was somewhat stylised and formal, Davie’s translation is much more like natural speech, which makes the plays far more comprehensible to the modern ear.
Whether or not this detracts from the dramatic impact of the play I am not qualified to say, but it certainly made it easier to understand from the page, and I would be quite keen to see them in production at some time.

[Biochemisty-n-Classics]

I almost bought this today!  I will read it soon though and I'm glad you posted this because I was trying to find an edition that would make the work more accessible to me.