Read more
Informationen zum Autor Moses Hadas Klappentext In power! passion! and the brilliant display of moral conflict! the drama of ancient Greece remains unsurpassed. For this volume! Professor Hadas chose nine plays which display the diversity and grandeur of tragedy! and the critical and satiric genius of comedy! in outstanding translations of the past and present. His introduction explores the religious origins! modes of productions! structure! and conventions of the Greek theater! individual prefaces illuminate each play and clarify the author's place in the continuity of Greek drama. Leseprobe 1 Aeschylus AGAMEMNON The trilogy called Oresteia, of which Agamemnon is the first play, deals with the succession of crimes and their retribution in the house of Atreus. The series had started, before the action of Agamemnon begins, when Atreus had unfairly kept his brother Thyestes from the throne of Argos. In Agamemnon Thyestes' son Aegisthus and Agamemnon's wife Clytemnestra murder Agamemnon and seize his throne. In Choephoroe , the second play of the trilogy, Orestes avenges his father Agamemnon's murder by murdering Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. In Eumenides , the third play, hereditary blood vengeance is ended when a newly instituted court acquits Orestes. Other crimes antecedent to its action are involved in the problems of Agamemnon : the abduction of Helen, the war of reprisal against Troy, Agamemnon's sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia to raise the winds for the Greek fleet becalmed at Aulis. It was during Agamemnon's absence at Troy that Aegisthus and Clytemnestra formed their illicit relationship and plotted his murder. The tragedy of Agamemnon involves war and politics as well as a domestic triangle, and in none of its aspects is an unqualified right opposed to an unqualified wrong. It was wrong for Trojan Paris to abduct Helen, and right for the crime to be punished; but Helen was an evil woman, and Argives murmured at the slaughter of their young men in a war for an evil woman's sake. The chorus, consistently loyal to Agamemnon, elaborates, on the horror of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, the waywardness of Helen, and the cost of the war in Argive blood. The dissatisfaction of the Argives as well as his hereditary claim provide at least the appearance of justification for Aegisthus' usurpation. Nor is the behavior of Clytemnestra, who is at once described as a woman with the temper of a man, wholly without justification. Agamemnon had earned her hatred, she says, when he wantonly sacrificed her first-born; he had been unfaithful to her in his stay at Troy, and had even brought Cassandra home with him as a concubine; and finally, she was not herself the murderer but only the instrument of fate. In the end she hopes for a peaceful rule for herself and Aegisthus. The rich and subtle poetry of Agamemnon is a perfect medium for its problems and insights. Recurrent images and verbal patterns create implicit connections in themes separate in time and place and provide psychological background for the action in hand. The tone of foreboding is set by the nameless watchman speaking on the roof of the palace at dawn, and the old men of the chorus weave a psychological backdrop in their majestic ode on the moral implications of the Trojan War and the sacrifice of Iphigenia, a backdrop elaborated by subsequent lyrics on the curse of Helen and the horrors of war and by Cassandra's prophetic danse macabre when she steps from Agamemnon's chariot. The swiftness and the drama of the action is introduced by the beacon speech. Spectacle itself produced high drama in the carpet scene, which not only supplies full and complete characterization of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra but communicates utter doom when Agamemnon treads the blood-colored carpet across the wide orchestra and into the palace doors which close behind h...
