New essays on ancient Greek classics from Ireland's greatest living dramatists and academics That so many Irish playwrights should return to the Greek classics can not really be a surprise. Drama in Ireland is still a means of exploring the issues of family and state; of gender, class and race; of the oppressors and the oppressed. It is political in the broad sense in which the Greeks understood the word, involving everyone - immediate but concentrated through parallel and parable. This collection of provocative essays reveals how some of the great Irish poets and dramatists, of the past and present, have drawn on Greek myths and used these stories, which have travelled across three thousand years, to bring new insights on the world in which we now live. Including essays from, amongst others, Athol Fugard, Seamus Heaney and Tom Paulin Amid Our Troubles looks at the work of such writers as Marina Carr, Brian Friel, Brendan Kennelly, Frank McGuinness and W. B. Yeats.

In this updated and extended edition of The Greek Sense of Theatre, scholar and practitioner J.Michael Walton revises and expands his visual approach to the theatre of classical Athens. From the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides to the old and new comedies of Aristophanes and Menander, he argues that while Greek drama is seen now as a performance-based rather than a strictly literary medium, more attention should still be paid to the nature of stage image and masked acting as part of this conception.

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price Aeschylus' great trilogy of Greek tragedies about the end of the curse on the House of Atreus, The Oresteia comprises Agamemnon, Choephori (Libation-Bearers) and Eumenides (The Furies). A fourth play, Proteus, originally formed part of a tetralogy, but has not survived. The trilogy was first performed at the Dionysia festival in Athens in 458 BC, where it won first prize. This English version of The Oresteia, in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, is translated and introduced by Marianne McDonald and J. Michael Walton.

Translating Classical Plays is a selection of edited papers by J. Michael Walton published and delivered between 1997 and 2014. Of the four sections, each with a new introduction, the first two cover the history of translating classical drama into English and specific issues relating to translation for stage performance. The latter two are concerned with the three Greek tragedians, and the Greek and Roman writers of old and new comedy, ending with the hitherto unpublished text of a Platform Lecture given at the National Theatre in London comparing the plays of Plautus with Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. The volume is an invaluable resource for anyone involved in staging or translating classical drama.

In this updated and extended edition of The Greek Sense of Theatre, scholar and practitioner J.Michael Walton revises and expands his visual approach to the theatre of classical Athens. From the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides to the old and new comedies of Aristophanes and Menander, he argues that while Greek drama is seen now as a performance-based rather than a strictly literary medium, more attention should still be paid to the nature of stage image and masked acting as part of this conception.

Translating Classical Plays is a selection of edited papers by J. Michael Walton published and delivered between 1997 and 2014. Of the four sections, each with a new introduction, the first two cover the history of translating classical drama into English and specific issues relating to translation for stage performance. The latter two are concerned with the three Greek tragedians, and the Greek and Roman writers of old and new comedy, ending with the hitherto unpublished text of a Platform Lecture given at the National Theatre in London comparing the plays of Plautus with Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. The volume is an invaluable resource for anyone involved in staging or translating classical drama.

A student edition of this challenging and popular tragedy with notes and commentary. The most controversial of the Greek tragedians, Euripedes is also the most modern in his sympathies, a dramatist who handles the complex emotions of his characters with extraordinary depth and insight. Wronged and discarded by her husband, Medea gradually reveals her revenge in its increasing horror, while the audience is led to understand the incomprehensible; a woman who murders her own children. Since its first production (431 BC), the play has exerted an irresistible attraction for actors and directors alike. Translated by J.Michael Walton.

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price A tragic tale of duty, retribution and fate. King Agamemnon, on returning from the Trojan Wars, is murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover. Now, to avenge the crime, their daughter Electra must commit one even worse and face the inevitable consequences. This edition of Sophocles' play Electra, in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, is translated and introduced by Marianne McDonald and J. Michael Walton.

The comedies of Platus and Terence are all that survive to us of a great age of Roman comedy theatre. Collected here are four important plays that offer an insight into everyday life in ancient Rome, whilst maintaining a pivotal influence over modern day theatre In "The Haunted House" the intrigues of a clever slave are played out in a virtuoso comic role; Platus's "Casina" is a fast-moving romp through the sexual mores of the Roman upper classes; Terence's more sophisticated "The Eunuch", and "Brothers" are perhaps closer in sentiments to the attitudes of modern comedy and reflect situations with universal appeal.

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.

Six wide ranging classic plays with introduction by the editor The comedies of the Athenian theatre not only lie at the root of Western drama, they also offer a unique insight into everyday life in ancient Greece. This selection of six wide ranging plays includes the comic fantasies of Aristophanes, which combine the ridiculous with serious satirical comment (Birds, Frogs, Women in Power); Menander's The Woman from Samos, a recognisable forebear of today's situation comedy; Euripides ribald satyr play, Cyclops, the only surviving example of the genre, and his Alkestis, a complex romance which gave a new face to comedy. The volume is edited and introduced by J. Michael Walton, Professor of Drama at the University of Hull and founder/director of the Performance Translation Centre there.

Published in the new Methuen Classical Dramatists series

A dramatist whose trademark was the unexpected, Euripides has constantly challenged and intrigued audiences, from Athens of the fifth century BC to the present. The three plays in this volume demonstrate Euripides' versatility. Hippolytos (which was turned into Phedre by Racine), deals with sexual passion, incest and abstinence; Suppliants (a version of the Antigone story) sets the play in Eleusis and dramatises the moment when the mothers of the dead sons of Oedipus beg Theseus to go to Thebes and demand their sons' bodies for burial. In Rhesos, all the confusion of sentry duty, the intrigue of spies and intruders, disguises and deceptions are crammed into a single night when the fortunes of war turn against the Trojans by a mixture of devious behaviour and sheer bad luck.

Four of Aeschylus' greatest plays reissued in the new Classical Greek Dramatists series

Includes the Oresteia trilogy, a key sequence of plays within the Western dramatic tradition - widely studied in schools and universities. Agamemnon tells the tale of the king's return from the battle of Troyto find that his wife has laid out a red carpet to welcome him that will, ironically, lead him to his death; The Libation Bearers continues the saga into the next generation with Orestes and Electra seeking justice for their dead father whilst in the Eumenides, the traces of inherited bloodlust are laid to rest by the figure of Athene. Translated with an introduction and notes from J. Michael Walton - the series editor for the Greek classics and reissued in the new Methuen Classical Greek Dramatists series in stylish, new and modern jackets.

Published in the new Methuen Classical Dramatists series Euripides' searching, poetic voice probes the waste and suffering of war in these plays which are set wake of the Trojan defeat to reflect the playwright's changing attitude to the real war between Athens and Sparta in his own day - 4th century BC. Hecuba is a play of ghosts and shadowy death; The Women of Troy is a searing indictment of the aftermath of defeat; Iphigenia at Aulis shows a human tragedy at the heart of the mechanics of war; and Cyclops is a satyr play which offers a comic antidote to the tragedies.With an introduction by J. Michael Walton

Sophocles' greatest plays reissued in the new Classical Greek Dramatists series. Introduced by series editor J Michael Walton Includes the surviving complete plays: Ajax which plots the downfall of Odysseus's greatest Trojan enemy - who slaughters a whole herd of cattle before killing himself; Women of Trachis in which the seemingly docile Deianira prepares a lethal homecoming for her womanising husband Heracles; in Electra the son and daughter of the ill-starred Agamemnon plan their revenge on their usurping stepfather and mother and finally Philoctetes in which Sophocles brilliantly explores the themes of pain, love and the betrayal of trust.

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price The story of Andromache, widow of the Trojan hero Hector. Some years after the fall of Troy, Andromache is living as a slave to Neoptolemus, by whom she has a child. When Neoptolemus' fiercely jealous young wife, Hermione, finds she is unable to conceive, she threatens to murder Andromache, and the struggle between the two women turns quickly into a bitter feud. This edition of Euripides' Andromache, in the Drama Classics series, is translated and introduced by Marianne McDonald and J. Michael Walton.

In considering the practice and theory of translating Classical Greek plays into English from a theatrical perspective, Found in Translation, first published in 2006, also addresses the wider issues of transferring any piece of theatre from a source into a target language. The history of translating classical tragedy and comedy, here fully investigated, demonstrates how through the ages translators have, wittingly or unwittingly, appropriated Greek plays and made them reflect socio-political concerns of their own era. Chapters are devoted to topics including verse and prose, mask and non-verbal language, stage directions and subtext and translating the comic. Among the plays discussed as 'case studies' are Aeschylus' Agamemnon, Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus and Euripides' Medea and Alcestis. The book concludes with a consideration of the boundaries between 'translation' and 'adaptation', followed by an appendix of every translation of Greek tragedy and comedy into English from the 1550s to the present day.

In considering the practice and theory of translating Classical Greek plays into English from a theatrical perspective, Found in Translation, first published in 2006, also addresses the wider issues of transferring any piece of theatre from a source into a target language. The history of translating classical tragedy and comedy, here fully investigated, demonstrates how through the ages translators have, wittingly or unwittingly, appropriated Greek plays and made them reflect socio-political concerns of their own era. Chapters are devoted to topics including verse and prose, mask and non-verbal language, stage directions and subtext and translating the comic. Among the plays discussed as 'case studies' are Aeschylus' Agamemnon, Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus and Euripides' Medea and Alcestis. The book concludes with a consideration of the boundaries between 'translation' and 'adaptation', followed by an appendix of every translation of Greek tragedy and comedy into English from the 1550s to the present day.

Published in the new Methuen Classical Dramatists series. Always controversial, Euripides' plays are now celebrated for the subtlety of their characterisation and their unorthodox dramatic style. This volume contains three of his finest tragedies: Medea, the abandoned wife, who murders her own children; The Phoenician Women, a further twist in the story of Oedipus and Jocasta; and Bacchae, a macabre and complex play, about the power and irrationality of Dionysos. These translations are by David Thompson and J. Michael Walton.With an introduction by J. Michael Walton

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price Euripides' version of the Ancient Greek myth of revenge on a murdering parent. Electra's brother Orestes returns to avenge the murder of his father, Agamemnon, by his mother Clytemnestra. This edition of Electra, in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, is translated and introduced by Marianne McDonald and J. Michael Walton.