This volume includes major theoretical writings on drama from the Greeks, through the Renaissance up to the late seventeenth century, compiled and edited for students of drama and theatre. There are substantial extracts from twenty-eight writers including Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Scaliger, Castelvetro, Guarini, Sidney, Jonson, Corneille, Racine, Dryden and Congreve. The compilers have chosen writers who present detailed arguments about issues that are sill relevant to our understanding of drama and theatre. Many of the texts have been freshly translated and all have newly been annotated and introduced by the compilers, who draw attention to recurrent themes by a system of cross-references. Michael Sidnell's useful introduction explores the issues which frequently concern these writers and practitioners: the nature of imitation, the relation of dramatic text to live performance, the effect of stage action on audience emotion and behaviour - issues which still concern critics and theorists of drama today. Later volumes will cover the period from Diderot to Victor Hugo, modern dramatic theory and performance theory.

This volume complements D.J. Conacher's two earlier studies of Aeschylus, Aeschylus' 'Prometheus Bound' (1980) and Aeschylus' 'Oresteia' (1987), and completes his literary commentary on the extant plays of Aeschylus. In this volume Conacher provides a detailed running commentary on the three earlier plays (The Persians, The Seven against Thebes, and The Suppliants), as well as an analysis of their themes, structure and dramatic techniques and devices. In two more general studies he reviews Aeschylus' dramatic uses of the chorus and of imagery. Conacher's close readings of the text and sensitive analysis of the main problems in the plays will be of benefit to students, especially those encountering these plays for the first time, either in Greek or in translation. He also provides a thorough overview of the various interpretative and philological problems and opinions encountered in Aeschylean scholarship, which will be of interest to senior scholars as well as students.

This volume includes major theoretical writings on drama from the Greeks, through the Renaissance up to the late seventeenth century, compiled and edited for students of drama and theatre. There are substantial extracts from twenty-eight writers including Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Scaliger, Castelvetro, Guarini, Sidney, Jonson, Corneille, Racine, Dryden and Congreve. The compilers have chosen writers who present detailed arguments about issues that are sill relevant to our understanding of drama and theatre. Many of the texts have been freshly translated and all have newly been annotated and introduced by the compilers, who draw attention to recurrent themes by a system of cross-references. Michael Sidnell's useful introduction explores the issues which frequently concern these writers and practitioners: the nature of imitation, the relation of dramatic text to live performance, the effect of stage action on audience emotion and behaviour - issues which still concern critics and theorists of drama today. Later volumes will cover the period from Diderot to Victor Hugo, modern dramatic theory and performance theory.

This work describes how Euripides provides, in specific plays, a variety of original treatments of well-known views of his contemporaries, the Sophists. The emphasis is on Euripides as the creative virtuoso of dramatic ideas rather than as a philosopher. Euripides' adaptation covers a range of dramatic styles and approaches, from the tragic treatment of the nature in "Hippolytus," to the near parody of Sophistic views on sense-perception in "Helen."