Five Great Greek Tragedies

Sophocles

Contents ( 14)

DOVER · THRIFT · EDITIONS

Five Great Greek Tragedies

SOPHOCLES, EURIPIDES

and

AESCHYLUS

DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

Mineola, New York

DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

GENERAL EDITOR: PAUL NEGRI

Performance

This Dover Thrift Edition may be used in its entirety, in adaptation or in any other way for theatrical productions, professional and amateur, in the United States, without fee, permission, or acknowledgement. (This may not apply outside of the United States, as copyright conditions may vary.)

Copyright

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2004, is a new collection of plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. A new introductory Note has been prepared for this edition.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Five great Greek tragedies / Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus.

p. cm. — (Dover thrift editions)

Contents: Prometheus bound /Aeschylus — Oedipus rex / Sophocles — Electra/ Sophocles — Medea / Euripides — Bacchae / Euripides.

eISBN-13: 978-0-486-11388-3

1. Greek drama (Tragedy) — Translations into English. 2. Mythology, Greek — Drama. I. Sophocles. II. Euripides. III. Aeschylus. IV. Series.

PA3626.A2 2004

882’0108 — dc22

2004041436

Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation
43620903
www.doverpublications.com

Note

Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the most important playwrights in fifth-century Greece, can be said to have “invented” Greek tragedy as we know it today.

Greek drama at the time of Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.) was derived from choral song and dance. Beside the chorus, only one actor appeared in a given scene. Aeschylus’ great contribution was to add a second actor, thereby vastly increasing the dramatic possibilities. Prometheus Bound, believed to be one of his last plays, was written as the first play in a trilogy; unfortunately, the other two plays were lost.

Sophocles (born ca. 496 B.C., died after 413) wrote 123 plays, only seven of which survive. The violence of his plays rises out of intense emotional agony, and signifies nothing less than the psychological rebirth of the hero

The youngest of the three, Euripides (ca. 485 B.C. to ca. 406 B.C.) is represented by the largest number of extant plays (nineteen, as compared with seven each for Aeschylus and Sophocles). He is, in the opinion of many scholars, the cruelest of the three in his view of the indifference or vindictive-ness of the gods.

Sources of the Text

Prometheus Bound is an unabridged republication of the English translation by George Thomson, M. A., as it appeared in Aeschylus, The Prometheus Bound, edited by George Thomson, first published by the Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 1932.

Electra is an unabridged republication of the play Electra and Oedipus Rex is an unabridged republication of the play Oedipus Tryrannus, both from the volume The Dramas of Sophocles Rendered in English Verse Dramatic & Lyric by Sir George Young, as published by J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., London, in 1906. (The Dent edition was the second, the first having been published by George Bell & Sons, London, in 1888). In this edition, Sir Geoge’s own notes (exclusively concerned with problems of the Greek text and its interpretation) have been omitted, and several new, very brief footnotes have been added.