<%@LANGUAGE="JAVASCRIPT" CODEPAGE="1252"%> playwrights

Euripides

Life: 480--406/07B.C.

He was born on Salamis where as an adult he had an office in a cave. His parents were wealthy but the comic playwrights claim his mother sold vegetables in the market place. He had two wives. He did not have a major career in political life. He was a priest in the cult of Zeus at Phyle. In 408 B.C. he left Athens for the court of the Macedonian king, Archelaus. He produced plays and wrote his last works (The Bacchae and Iphigenia in Aulis) in Macedonia. He also died there.

Euripides wrote 92 plays but won first place only 5 times. His plays were considered controversial for their portrayal of women, sexual obsession and madness. They are known to have featured new, more elaborate music. He continued Sophocles' use of three actors and he invented an expository prologue delivered by one character who is often a deity.

Surviving plays:

438 B.C. Alcestis 431 B.C. Medea

429/27B.C. The Children of Herakles

428 B.C. Hippolytus 430/24 B.C. Andromache

425 B.C. Hecuba 423/20 B.C. Madness of Herakles

421 B.C. The Suppliants 419/16 B.C. Ion

415 Trojan Women 414/12 Iphigenia among the Taurians

413 B.C. Electra 412 B.C. Helen

411/9 B.C. Phoenician Women 408 B.C. Orestes

405 B.C. The Bacchae 405 B.C. Iphigenia in Aulis (produced posthumously)

Undated: Rhesus, The Cyclops (satyr play), fragment of Hypsipyle discovered in 1908

 

 

Euripides

Medea by another playwright