Earlier this month, I went with a friend to a college production of the Ellen McLaughlin modernized adaptation of Euripides' Helen, often billed as a "fresh take on Euripides' tragicomedy". I didn't find it awful, although I think many of the modern aspects made the play less interesting, and I'm not sure, based on memory, how tragicomical the original is. But, much as I like Euripides, my favorite Greek playwright, it has been years and years since I've actually picked up the Helene and read it. So after some searching, I found the version I have on my shelf, Three Great Plays of Euripides: Medea, Hippolytus, and Helen, translated by Rex Warner. I'm definitely not averse to re-reading the Hippolytus, and have actually been intending for a while to re-read the Medea, so the Three Great Plays will be the next fortnightly book.
It's worth keeping in mind that Greek tragedies were not actually written to be separate. The major Greek tragedies that we have were all parts of a set of four, each set consisting of a tragic trilogy and a more farcical satyr play. This set would be performed at a great religious festival in a competition in which they would be judged. It is a good reminder of how little we have of ancient Greek tragedy. Of all the writers who composed tragedies for the competitions over many years, we only have complete tragedies from three -- Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides -- and only one satyr-play at all has survived (Euripides' Cyclops). Granted, there seems a general recognition that these were the best, but we don't even have most of theirs. Euripides competed himself in the Dionysian festival from 455 BC to 408 BC (although his final plays were performed posthumously in 405 BC, where they won first prize), winning first prize five times. He wrote at least ninety plays; we have nineteen, one of which is not known certainly to be Euripides'. The extant plays are often divided into two groups, the Select plays and the Alphabetical plays, because the two primary sources we have for them, and the reason why these plays are extant, consist of a single school anthology (the Select plays) and one volume of a multi-volume alphabetical complete works of Euripides (the Alphabetical plays). (Medea and Hippolytus are Select plays and Helen is an Alphabetical play.)
Medea is the only surviving play of its set, which included the tragedies Philoctetes and Dictys and the satyr play Theristai; it was submitted to the City Dionysia festival in 431 BC, making it one of Euripides' earliest plays. In that festival, Euripides won third prize.
Hippolytus, sometimes known as Hippolytus Stephanopohoros to distinguish from another play with a similar title, was submitted to the City Dionysia in 428 BC. As far as I know, we don't have the titles that went with the other plays in the set, but the set won first prize, usually regarded as well deserved -- Hippolytus has a reputation for being a well constructed tragedy.
Helen was submitted to the City Dionysia in 412 BC. We know the title of one of the others in its set (Andromeda), because some fragments survive and it is often referred to (Andromeda seems to have been one of those works that is both widely loved and widely mocked). We don't know about the others, although some people have suggested on thematic grounds that Iphigenia among the Taurians, which is another extant play, might have been the third. That's very speculative, but it's not impossible. As an Alphabetical, it's a pure accident of history that it survived; unlike the Select plays, we don't have it because someone thought it was especially good, but just because its volume of the collected works survived. The set did not win a prize.
So this fortnight will be devoted to "the most tragic of poets", as Aristotle called him.
