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Product Description
Book Description
From perhaps the greatest of the ancient Greek playwrights comes this collection of plays, including Alcestis, Hippolytus, Ion, Electra, Iphigenia at Aulis, Iphigenia Among the Taurians, Medea, The Bacchae, The Trojan Women, and The Cyclops.
@GoldenFarce Good, the gals stand outside my house all the time. The constant chanting is creepy, but all agree: Jason crossing the line!
When he gets home we’ll talk. I’m sure we can work it out. But what’s the best way to approach this? Any advice, anyone? #wackrelationships
From Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less
About the Author
Paul Roche, a distinguished English poet and translator, is the author of The Bible’s Greatest Stories. His other translations include Euripides: Ten Plays (Signet), Oedipus Plays of Sophocles (Meridian) and The Orestes Plays of Aeschylus (Meridian).
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Ancient Greek Look at Human Nature,
By
This review is from: Euripides: Ten Plays (Mass Market Paperback)
The ten plays Paul Roche translated consisted of some of Euripides' finest plays and some of the lesser known plays. I particularly liked Alcestis and Hippolytus and cared less for the last three plays in the book. The one thing that struck me about Euripides is the inconsistency of some of his characters from the way Homer or Sophocles depicted them and his own depiction. Furthermore, in the case of Iphegenia in Aulis and Iphegenia Among the Taurians the character of Iphegenia changes from a heroic figure in Aulis to a bitter one in Taurus. Even the details between the two stories differed. True, they were written in different times but an author ought to keep track of the details of each play. I also felt Roche should have pointed these things out in the introduction to the plays but he did not.Euripides was criticized in his own time while being praised more in modern times for his desire to make his characters conform to the way people behave in real life. Most of Euripides' characters were often flawed such as Iphegenia and Admetus in the play, Alcestes. They were portrayed as basically good people that had a dark side to them. Iphegenia, who came to accept her fate (she was to be sacrificed by her father, Agamemnon, to Artemis in return for a fair wind to Troy) was whisked away by the god to Tauras. In the sequel to the play she became a bitter priestess who sacrificed all Greeks that wandered into the country. Admetus was a man who treated Apollo well when Zeus punished him by making him serve Admetus. Apollo rewarded him by allowing him to live if he could find someone to die in his place. He asked his parents but they refused; only his wife agreed. When she died he mourned her death and truly loved her but he would not allow his parents to mourn because they betrayed him. His father countered by saying that each must take responsibility for their own lives. A good point that Admetus never understood. I believe Euripides challenged his audience to ask themselves what they would do if confronted with similar circumstances. How would one react if you knew you could live if someone else died in your place (the subject of an old Twilight Zone episode, by the way)? In the case of Media (the wife of Jason-who got the Golden Fleece from Media's father) what would you do if you gave up your country and everyone you knew to marry a man and then ten years later you're thrown out of your home? What would you do if you were Phaedra (wife of Theseus in the play Hippolytus) and a god put a spell on you to make you fall in love with your stepson? These are the challenges that Euripides makes to his audience. He does so in an engaging manner with good interaction between the characters. The Chorus plays less of a role than it does with Aescylus or even Sophocles but as a modern reader of these ancient play I find Euripides great entertainment.
1.0 out of 5 stars
Too much Roche - not enough Euripides,
By
This review is from: Euripides: Ten Plays (Mass Market Paperback)
Roche's translations of Euripides' tragedies are intrusive. He adds stage directions and characterizations that influence how the reader views the people in the plays. Readers may believe that these stage directions are from Euripides, but most of them are not. I find it irksome having to differentiate between Roche's interpretation of character and Euripides' text.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent translations. The best Medea I've ever read.,
By realrachel@aol.com (Seattle, Washington USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Euripides: Ten Plays (Mass Market Paperback)
I am a theatre director and playwright. I read every translation of Medea I could find. This 1998 translation by Roche, after twenty years of ripening, is fresh, clear, and strong. He prioritized retaining the ( ( ( s o u n d ) ) ) of the ancient greek, and his poet's ear captured its slippery almost-iambic trimeter perfectly. A powerful, haunting, contemporary translation. "Deep is her sobbing from depths of pain/ Shrill is the answer her suffering gives/ To the news of a woman betrayed/ A love gone wrong..." A mature poet's text, translated by an equally sensitive poet. It doesn't get any better than this.
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