This book presents an analysis of more than 30 plays written by Irish dramatists and poets that are based on the tragedies of Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus. These plays proceed from the time of Yeats and Synge through MacNeice and the Longfords on to many of today's leading writers. A special feature of the book is that, in order to cater for these who may know little about Greek tragedy, it begins with a chapter entitled 'A Brief Reading of Greek Tragedy', and then, in regard to each Greek play analysed, it presents a mini-essay on that play, before coming to the Irish version(s) of it. Three features of these Irish appropriations stand out. Firstly, there are three methods of using a Greek tragedy: straight translation, which requires us to interrogate the original play; version, which preserves the invariant core of the original, but which can add or subtract material; loose adaptation, which often moves the action into the modern world. Secondly, there is a considerable stress on Sophocles whose emphasis on the theme of recognition resonates in a postcolonial society that must define itself. Thirdly, there is a considerable stress on the experience of women - such as Antigone and Medea - that can relate to the position of women in Irish society after independence.

What Shakespeare Stole From Rome analyses the multiple ways Shakespeare used material from Roman history and Latin poetry in his plays and poems. Three important tragedies deal with the history of the Roman Republic: Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra. From the tragedies of Seneca, Shakespeare took the theme of evil in the ruler, as in Richard III and Macbeth. The comedies of Plautus lie behind the early play The Comedy of Errors. From Ovid, Shakespeare took nearly all his Greek mythology, as in the miniature epic Venus and Adonis. Shakespeare, who knew Latin very well, introduced some 600 new Latin-based words into English.

This book aims to provide a comprehensive, but succinct analysis of the tragedies and comedies written by Greek and Roman dramatists. The book is comprehensive in the ways it deals not just with Greek tragedy of the fifth century BCE, but also with Seneca's tragedies of the first century CE. The book also deals with two types of Greek comedy: the comedy of ideas in Aristophanes, and the later social comedy of Menander, this being appropriated in Rome by the comic dramatists Plautus and Terence. The tragedies and comedies of fifth century Athens do not endorse the official ideology of the city. They raise questions about the position of women, the never ending war with Sparta, the nature of religious belief. Crucial here is the depiction by Euripides and by Sophocles of powerful women characters, female intruders who disrupt the male world: Medea, Antigone, Electra, Lysistrata. Comic drama usually concludes on a positive note: with marriage, with plenty of food and drink.

This study focuses on the ideas of W.B. Yeats and explores his thinking on a wide range of fundamental subjects. Since opposites are central to Yeats’s thought, the book begins with an analysis of this topic. The author then examines Yeats’s views on religion, sex and politics, again scrutinising the opposites at play. The author considers Yeats’s adherence to various anti-empirical belief systems and the transformation of his view of sex as largely a romantic concern to his later more ‘earthy’ perspective. Yeats’s fundamentally Tory political inclinations are examined alongside his regrettable espousal of eugenics. In the second part of the book Yeats’s view of history and of human character in A Vision are analysed. The author discusses Yeats’s two versions of ‘Sophocles’ and his poems on Byzantium. The final chapter on Yeats’s style stresses the pervasive use of embedded phrases and of terminal questions in the poems.