Six Greek Tragedies
Persians; Prometheus Bound; Women of Trachis; Philoctetes; Trojan Women; Bacchae
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A single-volume edition of the major Greek tragedies
In a period of sixty-six years, three Athenian playwrights produced a series of tragedies which became a touchstone for drama for the next two and a half thousand years. The six plays in this volume include Aeschylus' Persians (472 BC), the earliest surviving Greek tragedy and only surviving 'history' play; his Prometheus Bound, perhaps the most deeply mythological of all tragedies, presenting an archetype of the human condition; Sophocles' Women of Trachis, a deeply poignant piece, portraying Heracles' death through his wife's mistake; his strange Philoctetes, which presents a fascinating moral debate and a young man's realisation of the importance of loyalty to his own ideals; Euripides' Trojan Women, the greatest anti-war play ever written; and his intangible Bacchae, a play full of paradoxes which functions at many different levels.
The volume is edited and introduced by Marianne McDonald, Professor of Theatre and Classics, University of California, San Diego, and J. Michael Walton, Professor of Drama at the University of Hull.
Kenneth McLeish
Kenneth McLeish studied Classics and Music at Worcester College, Oxford. Once a full-time translator, author and dramatist, he published extensively including The Good Reading Guide, Shakespeare's People, The Theatre of Aristophanes, Companion to the Arts in the Twentieth Century, Myth, The Listener's Guide to Classical Music and Crucial Classics (both with Valerie McLeish) and The Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought (as general editor).
His original plays and his translations - from ancient Greek drama, as well as from Strindberg, Ibsen Moliere and Strindberg - have been widely performed, most notably by the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company.
More by Kenneth McLeish
Marianne McDonald
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Marianne McDonald is a teacher, historian, playwright, and philanthropist. Her work as a scholar involves interpretation and preservation of Greek and Irish texts. Her plays draw inspiration from ancient Greek dramas. Her accolades are many, and include: induction into the Royal Irish Academy in 1994; and the Distinguished Professor of Theatre and Classics award from the University of California, San Diego, in 2013.
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