Hecuba, Trojan Women, Andromache [Hardcover]

This is the final in a series of three volumes of a new prose translation of Euripides' most popular plays. In the three great war plays contained in this volume Euripides subjects the sufferings of Troy's survivors to a harrowing examination. The horrific brutality which both women and children undergo evokes a response of unparalleled intensity in the playwright whom Aristotle called the most tragic of the poets. Yet the new battle-ground of the aftermath of war is one in which the women of Troy evince an overwhelming greatness of spirit. We weep for the aged Hecuba in her name play and in theTrojan Women, yet we respond with an at times appalled admiration to her resilience amid unrelieved suffering. And in her name playAndromache, the slave-concubine of her husband's killer, endures her existence in the victor's country with a Stoic nobility. Of their time yet timeless, these plays insist on the victory of the female spirit amid the horrors visited on them by the gods and men during war.

This companion volume to the edition ofMedea; Hippolytus; Electra; Helen, by the same editor and translator, reflects the virtues of the earlier volume. The translation is clear and accessible, and the introduction is informative and useful as it covers a number of topics relevant to understanding Euripides as a playwright and the historical circumstances in which he wrote. --Choice