The Complete Plays: Andromachê. Hêkabê. Suppliant women. Êlektra. The madness of Heraklês

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Smith and Kraus, 2005 - Athens (Greece) - 316 pages
Library Journal, June 2006These brisk and earthy new translations of 19 plays by Euripides?among them Alkestis and Hippolytos?give David Grene and Richmond Lattimore?s The Complete Greek Tragedies: Euripides(1959) a run for its money. In each volume, Mueller (theater, Univ. of California, Los Angeles; translator, Luigi Pirandello: Three Major Plays) offers concise introductions that set Euripides and his plays in their time and include descriptions of various forms of theater, the use of masks and music, and the centrality of Dionysus?information valuable both to the newcomer and to the performer. The ?Note on Translation? outlines purposes and methods (summed up in the words of St. Jerome: ?I have always aimed at sense, not words?), and the bibliography includes works published from 1907 to 1996. Exemplifying the plays in the set is Medeia. In a 1944 translation by Rex Warner in the Grene/Lattimore volumes, the language is roundabout (e.g., ?I would not have spoken or touched him with my hands?); Mueller?s translation, which speaks vigorously to modern audiences, is much more direct (e.g., ?No, not one word, not one touch?). The paperback version belongs in college and university libraries. At $70 per volume, the hardcover edition had better be bound in Moroccan leather, the title stamped in gold leaf on the spine.-Larry Schwartz, Minnesota State Univ. Lib., Moorhead

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Contents

Euripides and the Athenian Theater of His Time
1
The Plays
13
A Note on the Translation
34
Copyright

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