Euripides Hecuba

Author: 
Year:
Pages:84
ISBN:0-7734-8974-6
978-0-7734-8974-5
Price:$99.95 + shipping
(Click the PayPal button to buy)
Topical, accessible, and vigorous, Euripides' Hecuba is a play of strong women, broken vows, political and familial disaster, human suffering and revenge. This translation of Hecuba starts with the play's conflicts and chooses from a whole range of registers to render the characters. This mixture of dictions faithfully captures the Euripidean practice of mixing genres, his shifting of identities, his shrewd portrayal of political negotiation, his both fierce and playful irony. The rhythms of contemporary speech guide the formation of the characters. Finally, the line-breaks give shape to the play, be it on the page, staged, or read aloud. Yet they also respect the pauses, emphases, and repetitions in the Ancient Greek meter, syntax, and word order.

Reviews

"Euripides' bleak and unrelenting tragedy of human sacrifice, slavery and exile, infanticide and brutal blinding comes alive with all the superficial civility, raw emotions, lyrical imagery and complex rhythms of the Greek original. . . . KG's translation of Euripides' Hecuba betrays the author's dual allegiance and background, the two worlds of her Greek heritage and language and of the practical theater and performance. The result is a masterful translation which captures both the beauty and the horror of the Greek original and deserves performance on a modern stage." -- James T. Svendsen

Other Theater Books