Euripides: Trojan Women (Companions to Greek and Roman Tragedy)

174 Pages·2008·0.963 MB·English

by  Barbara Goff

Euripides: Trojan Women
BLOOMSBURY COMPANIONS
TO GREEK AND ROMAN TRAGEDY
Series editor: Thomas Harrison
Aeschylus: Agamemnon Barbara Goward
Aeschylus: Persians David Rosenbloom
Aeschylus: Seven Against Thebes Isabelle Torrance
Euripides: Bacchae Sophie Mills
Euripides: Heracles Emma Griffiths
Euripides: Hippolytus Sophie Mills
Euripides: Ion Laura Swift
Euripides: Iphigenia at Aulis Pantelis Michelakis
Euripides: Medea William Allan
Euripides: Orestes Matthew Wright
Euripides: Phoenician Women Thalia Papadopoulou
Euripides: Suppliant Women Ian C. Storey
Euripides: Trojan Women Barbara Goff
Seneca: Phaedra Roland Mayer
Seneca: Thyestes P.J. Davis
Sophocles: Ajax Jon Hesk
Sophocles: Electra Michael Lloyd
Sophocles: Philoctetes Hanna Roisman
Sophocles: Women of Trachis Brad Levett
BLOOMSBURY COMPANIONS
TO GREEK AND ROMAN TRAGEDY
Euripides:
Trojan Women
Barbara Goff
LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway
London New York
WC1B 3DP NY 10018
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www.bloomsbury.com
First published in 2009 by Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.
Reprinted by Bloomsbury Academic 2013
© Barbara Goff 2009
Barbara Goff has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identi(cid:2) ed as Authors of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or
retrieval system, without prior permission in writing
from the publishers.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting
on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this
publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: PB: 978-0-7156-3545-2
E-pub: 978-1-4725-2122-4
E-pdf: 978-1-4725-2121-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Contents
Acknowledgements 7
1. Contexts 9
‘What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?’ 9
What’s Hecuba to us? 11
Athens in 415 17
Tragedy in 415 21
Melos in 416 27
2. The Play 36
The gods 36
Hekabe 43
The chorus 45
Talthybios 47
Kassandra 49
Andromache 56
Helen 63
Astyanax 72
3. Twentieth-century Receptions 78
Jean-Paul Sartre, Les Troyennes 80
Michael Cacoyannis, Trojan Women 85
Andrei Serban, Fragments of a Greek Trilogy, and
Tadashi Suzuki, Trojan Women 87
Tony Harrison, Common Chorus II 91
Brendan Kennelly, The Trojan Women 104
Charles Mee, The Trojan Women 2.0: a love story 109
Ellen McLaughlin, The Trojan Women, and
Karen Hartman, Troy Women 115
Femi Osofisan, The Women of Owu 122
5
Contents
Notes 137
Guide to Further Reading 153
Bibliography 157
Glossary 165
Chronology 167
Index 169
6
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Tom Harrison, who invited me to write
this book, and Deborah Blake of Duckworth, who has once
again proved herself a model editor. I would like here to
acknowledge also my abiding debts to family, friends, col-
leagues and students; and to honour in particular the staff of
the Joint Library/Institute of Classical Studies Library, Senate
House, London, who do an excellent job in sometimes difficult
circumstances.
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1
Contexts
‘What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?’1
Euripides’ Trojan Women has regularly been acclaimed as a
drama of extraordinary power in depicting the sorrows of war.
For some, the focus on war has seemed excessive; the play has
often been dismissed as ‘one long lament’.2 Others, particularly
in more recent years, have sensed that the play’s figuring of
war’s devastation – the loss of homes, families, hope – addresses
with disturbing precision their own struggles. The play pro-
vokes strong reactions.
Trojan Women is interested in much else besides lamenta-
tion. The quotation above from Hamlet, centring on Hekabe, the
fallen queen of Troy, suggests that part of its fascination lies in
the complex sympathy between those on stage and those who
spectate. Trojan Women invites us both to identify with its
characters and to stand back and judge them – and in the
process to judge ourselves. A more recent response than that of
Hamlet, Mary Renault’s fictional account of a fourth-century
BCE performance of Trojan Women, evokes both the play’s
power to move the audience and its self-awareness. Caught
between the play’s emotions and his professional responsibili-
ties, the actor playing a dead child speaks: 3
Soon after came my cue to be brought on, dead (cid:2) The
chorus called out the dreadful news to my grannie Hekabe;
lying, eyes shut (cid:2) I prayed Dionysos not to let me sneeze.
There was a pause which because I could not see seemed
to last for ever. The whole theatre had got dead silent,
9