Medea: Methuen Student Edition: Methuen Student Edition With Commentary & Notes (Student Editions) - Softcover

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.

Euripides was born near Athens between 485 and 480 BC and grew up during the years of Athenian recovery after the Persian Wars. His first play was presented in 455 BC and he wrote some hundred altogether. His later plays are marked by a sense of disillusion at the futility of human aspiration which amounts on occasion to a philosophy of absurdism. A year or two before his death he left Athens to live at the court of the king of Macedon, dying there in 406 BC. Nineteen of his plays survive, including Hippolytos, The Bacchae, Iphigeneia at Aulis, Hecuba, Medea, and The Trojan Women.