Ancient, Classical & Medieval Books

PREFACE The sense of difficulty, and indeed of awe, with which a scholar approaches the task of translating the Agamemnon depends directly on its greatness as poetry. It is in part a matter of diction. The language of Aeschylus is an extraordinary thing, the syntax stiff and simple, the vocabulary obscure, unexpected, and steeped in splendour. Its peculiarities cannot be disregarded, or the translation... more...

SCENE I. A common apartment in the Castle of Fotheringay. HANNAH KENNEDY, contending violently with PAULET, who is aboutto break open a closet; DRURY with an iron crown. KENNEDY.How now, sir? what fresh outrage have we here?Back from that cabinet! PAULET.Whence came the jewel?I know 'twas from an upper chamber thrown;And you would bribe the gardener with your trinkets.A curse on woman's... more...

Introduction[1] 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... more...

The Spectacle here presented in the likeness of a Drama is concerned with the Great Historical Calamity, or Clash of Peoples, artificially brought about some hundred years ago. The choice of such a subject was mainly due to three accidents of locality. It chanced that the writer was familiar with a part of England that lay within hail of the watering-place in which King George the Third had his... more...

INTRODUCTION This is the first of the series of three Comedies—'The Acharnians,' 'Peace' and 'Lysistrata'—produced at intervals of years, the sixth, tenth and twenty-first of the Peloponnesian War, and impressing on the Athenian people the miseries and disasters due to it and to the scoundrels who by their selfish and reckless policy had provoked it, the consequent... more...

PREFACE. In the selection of my last Shakespearean revival at the Princess’s Theatre, I have been actuated by a desire to present some of the finest poetry of our great dramatic master, interwoven with a subject illustrating a most memorable era in English history. No play appears to be better adapted for this two-fold purpose than that which treats of Shakespeare’s favorite hero, and England’s... more...

INTRODUCTION. Two of the dramas contained in this volume are the most celebrated of all Calderon's writings. The first, "La Vida es Sueno", has been translated into many languages and performed with success on almost every stage in Europe but that of England. So late as the winter of 1866-7, in a Russian version, it drew crowded houses to the great theatre of Moscow; while a few years... more...

INTRODUCTION 'The Birds' differs markedly from all the other Comedies of Aristophanes which have come down to us in subject and general conception. It is just an extravaganza pure and simple—a graceful, whimsical theme chosen expressly for the sake of the opportunities it afforded of bright, amusing dialogue, pleasing lyrical interludes, and charming displays of brilliant stage effects and... more...

THE TROJAN WOMEN In his clear preface, Gilbert Murray says with truth that The Trojan Women, valued by the usage of the stage, is not a perfect play. "It is only the crying of one of the great wrongs of the world wrought into music." Yet it is one of the greater dramas of the elder world. In one situation, with little movement, with few figures, it flashes out a great dramatic lesson, the... more...

SCENE ICromwell'shouse at Ely, about the year 1639. An early summer evening. The window of the room opens on to a smooth lawn, used for bowling, and a garden full of flowers.Oliver'swife,Elizabeth Cromwell, is sitting at the table, sewing. In a chair by the open windowMrs. Cromwell, his mother, is reading. She is eighty years of age.Mrs. Cromwell:Oliver troubles me, persuading everywhere.... more...