The Rhesus of Euripides

The Rhesus of Euripides

EURIPIDES: Hippolytus; Bacchae; Aristophanes' 'Frogs.' By Prof. Gilbert Murray. With an Appendix on The Lost Tragedies of Euripides, and an Introduction on The Significance of the Bacchae in Athenian History, and 12 Illustrations. [Fifth Edition. This short play needs rather a long introduction. It has had the bad fortune to become a literary problem, and almost all its few readers are so much occupied with the question whether it can be the work of Euripidesand if not his, whose?that they seldom allow themselves to take it on its merits as a stirring and adventurous piece, not particularly profound or subtle, but always full of movement and life and possessing at least one or two scenes of great and penetrating beauty. The outlines of the Rhesus Question are these.The Rhesus appears in the MSS. of Euripides; we know from the Athenian Didascaliae, or Records of Performances, that Euripides wrote a play of the name; some passages in it are quoted by early Alexandrian writers as from "the Rhesus of Euripides;" no passage is quoted under any other name. This seems about as strong as external evidence need be. Yet the ancient introduction to the play mentions that "some think the play spurious," and expresses the odd opinion that "it suggests rather the Sophoclean style." Further, it tells us that, besides the present opening scene, there were extant two different prologues, one of which was "quite prosy and perhaps concocted by the actors." This seems to show that the Alexandrian scholars who tried for the first [Pg vi] time to collect the complete works of Euripides, some two centuries after his death, found this play current as "Euripides' Rhesus," but that it was credited with three different openings and that its style was felt to be somehow peculiar. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 35170
Author: Euripides, 480? BCE-406 BCE
Release Date: Feb 4, 2011
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Translator: Murray, Gilbert, 1866-1957