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Euripides turned to playwriting at a young age, achieving his first victory in the Athens' City Dionysia dramatic competitions in 441 BC. He would be awarded this honor three more times in his life, and once more posthumously. His plays are often ironic, pessimistic, and display radical rejection of classical decorum and rules. In 408 BC, Euripides left war-torn Athens for Macedonia, upon the invitation of King Archelaus, and there he spent his last...

The Seagull is Anton Chekhov's brilliant four-act play that is considered a monumental work of drama, and one of the most sublime literary examinations of the complexities of love and friendship. First performed over a century ago, this play remains one of the most widely staged productions throughout the world. The four protagonists in The Seagull are all artists; Trigorin is a well-established writer, Arkadina is a renowned yet aging actress, her...

First performed in 1882, "Ghosts" is the controversial and tragic play by the famed Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It is the story of Helen Alving, a wealthy widow who was unhappily married to her unfaithful husband. Helen has tried to shelter her son, Oswald, from the corrupting influence of his father's immoral behavior and has sent him away only to discover that he is suffering from syphilis inherited from his father. Oswald has also unfortunately...

Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him; of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived complete. Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances....

In Miss Julie, a willful young aristocrat, whose perverse nature has already driven her fiancé to break off their engagement, pursues and effectively seduces her father's valet during the course of a Midsummer's Eve celebration. The progress of that seduction and the play's stunning denouement shocked Swedish audiences who first attended the play in 1889. Despite its controversial debut, this now-classic drama, inspired by the new ideas of naturalism...

"The Electra of Euripides has the distinction of being, perhaps, the best abused, and, one might add, not the best understood, of ancient tragedies. "A singular monument of poetical, or rather unpoetical perversity;" "the very worst of all his pieces;" are, for instance, the phrases applied to it by Schlegel. Considering that he judged it by the standards of conventional classicism, he could scarcely have arrived at any different conclusion. For it...

Blinded and disgraced, Oedipus dwells quietly in Thebes until the kingdom is roiled by discord attributed to his presence and the curse put upon him by the gods. The citizens banish their erstwhile sovereign to years of lonely exile. Finally, the aging king finds refuge in a sacred olive grove at Colonus, near Athens. Oedipus is a towering tragic figure whose final years comprise a moving portrayal of the perseverance of human dignity in the face...

"Ion" interprets the legend of the orphan Ion, who was conceived from the rape of Creusa by the god Apollo. Creusa is determined to keep the rape secret, and leaves the baby for dead. The baby is rescued by Hermes, and raised by a Pythian Priestess in Delphi. Many years later, when Creusa and her husband Xuthus visit the oracles at Delphi, the mother and son are reunited under false pretenses. The ensuing story of betrayal, revenge and reconciliation...

Ajax Sophocles - Ajax is enraged because Achilles' armor was awarded to Odysseus, rather than to him. He vows to kill the Greek leaders who disgraced him. Before he can enact his extraordinary revenge, though, he is tricked by the goddess Athena into believing that the sheep and cattle that were taken by the Achaeans as spoil are the Greek leaders. He slaughters some of them, and takes the others back to his home to torture, including a ram which...

Iolaus, Heracles' nephew and his companion during his Twelve Labours but now an old man, is in hiding with Heracles' fatherless children at the altar of the temple of Zeus at Marathon, near Athens. They have been moving from city to city, as Iolaus tries to protect them from the vengeful King Eurystheus of Argos, who has vowed to kill them. A herald from Eurystheus appears calling on them once more to return to Argos to face the consequences, and...