Prometheus Bound/the Suppliants/Seven Against Thebes/the Persians (Penguin Classics)

Rating:
Summary: So I don't like Greek drama - sue me.
Review: Call me an ignoramus if you like, but I just don't like Greek drama. Prometheus Bound is the third one I've tried - after Oedipus Rex and The Clouds - and I've found them all lacking, the tragedies overblown and rigid, the comedy an imposter to the name. It's not an antipathy to antique culture per se - Homer's epics overflow with life, Ovid is a master of imagery, incident and invention, Juvenal's spleen is still bracing. It's just hard for anyone raised on Shakespeare, Wilde, Ionesco or Beckett to actually care about these rudimentary dinosaurs. I'm sure they're not really rudimentary - they must have some complexity and relevance for fusty dons to thrill over them for so many centuries, but I'm hanged if I can spot what they see in them. Just because they were the first doesn't make them the best. I grant that much will be lost in translation, especially the poetry, but as a conflict of ideas rather than people, it seems a didactic, airless, undramatic thing. Not that there aren't merits: for all its philosophy, there is a remarkable physicality to its opening, a still shocking violence I hadn't experienced since The Bald Primadonna. Although there is subsequently little of visual interest, there is a wonderful faith in storytelling, a transmutation of the present moment into the mythological or historical through imagination, that is reminiscent of magic realism. Io's plight is very moving on paper, until you visualise her as a cow perpetually pestered by a wasp, it is very difficult to suppress the giggles. Prometheus' prophecy of ther forthcoming adventures verges on the beautiful, fusing the visionary and the actually painful. In general, though, the antique mindset is too remote for me - I'd rather read Joyce.

Rating:
Summary: Old yet ageless tragedy by "the other Greek tragedian"
Review: In life and death, Aeschylus is overshadowed by Sophocles. The most tragic thing about Aeschylus is the fact that the great majority of his work was lost in the mists of time. Three of these plays are the only surviving members of three different trilogies. The Suppliants is the conclusion of Aeschylus' own Oedipus trilogy, focusing on the final battle of the twice-cursed sons of Oedipus. Not only was this play overshadowed by Sophocles' Antigone, the final few pages are apparently spurious; someone a half century after it was written felt compelled to add Antigone and Ismene to the action, countering the writer's original presentation of the tragedy. The Persians is interesting because it is based on real history, namely the routing of the Persian army by the Athenians at Salamis. Eight years are all that separate the battle and Aeschylus' dramatization of it.

I must say that tragedy is the right word for these plays. I would dub them "poor me" dramas. In each case, one or more characters suffers an ignominious fate and bemoans his/her/their lot in life, sometimes cursing the gods to boot. In Prometheus Bound, the giant Prometheus has been chained to a rock on a mountainside as divine punishment for stealing fire from Hephaestas and giving it to humans. Prometheus is proudly defiant and has a word or two to say to just about every man and god he is exposed to. The Persians must have been received very well by the Athenians because it casts Persia and her king Xerxes in a pitiful light. When a long-overdue messenger arrives home with word that the Persian army has been decimated, the whole community wails and mourns their fate; when the defeated Xerxes arrives, he takes the suffering to yet another level, his pride destroyed and replaced with self-loathing and defeatism. Seven Against Thebes details the attack by Polyneices and his followers on his brother Eteocles and the city of Thebes. While much of the play consists of the naming of the opposing champions to lead the fight at each gate, I was most interested in the dialogue between the chorus of Theban women and Eteocles. The women rush in fright to the statues of the gods, pleading for mercy and grieving over their fate. Eteocles is offended by their defeatist words, saying such talk will spread doubt and fear among the city's defenders and is an injustice reflecting a loss of faith in the gods whose likenesses they are embracing.

I consider The Suppliants the best of these four dramas, as it contains some action whereas the other plays are basically static in setting. The story of Io, a fair maiden turned into a cow/human creature and cursed by a maddening gadfly by Hera due to Zeus' pursuit of her, forms a provocative background to this tale. Io's descendants number 50 women and 50 men, and the lustful men seek to forcibly take their female cousins for wives. The women run to Argos and seek the protection of its king and people, setting the stage for a great battle (which unfortunately takes place in a lost drama).

I enjoyed these dramas, although I can't say I would care to see them presented on stage. For the most part, nothing happens, but everyone is miserable and none too shy to broadcast that misery. There can be no mistaking these plays for comedies, yet they do speak to timeless matters of the human spirit even today.

Rating:
Summary: Old yet ageless tragedy by "the other Greek tragedian"
Review: In life and death, Aeschylus is overshadowed by Sophocles. The most tragic thing about Aeschylus is the fact that the great majority of his work was lost in the mists of time. Three of these plays are the only surviving members of three different trilogies. The Suppliants is the conclusion of Aeschylus' own Oedipus trilogy, focusing on the final battle of the twice-cursed sons of Oedipus. Not only was this play overshadowed by Sophocles' Antigone, the final few pages are apparently spurious; someone a half century after it was written felt compelled to add Antigone and Ismene to the action, countering the writer's original presentation of the tragedy. The Persians is interesting because it is based on real history, namely the routing of the Persian army by the Athenians at Salamis. Eight years are all that separate the battle and Aeschylus' dramatization of it.

I must say that tragedy is the right word for these plays. I would dub them "poor me" dramas. In each case, one or more characters suffers an ignominious fate and bemoans his/her/their lot in life, sometimes cursing the gods to boot. In Prometheus Bound, the giant Prometheus has been chained to a rock on a mountainside as divine punishment for stealing fire from Hephaestas and giving it to humans. Prometheus is proudly defiant and has a word or two to say to just about every man and god he is exposed to. The Persians must have been received very well by the Athenians because it casts Persia and her king Xerxes in a pitiful light. When a long-overdue messenger arrives home with word that the Persian army has been decimated, the whole community wails and mourns their fate; when the defeated Xerxes arrives, he takes the suffering to yet another level, his pride destroyed and replaced with self-loathing and defeatism. Seven Against Thebes details the attack by Polyneices and his followers on his brother Eteocles and the city of Thebes. While much of the play consists of the naming of the opposing champions to lead the fight at each gate, I was most interested in the dialogue between the chorus of Theban women and Eteocles. The women rush in fright to the statues of the gods, pleading for mercy and grieving over their fate. Eteocles is offended by their defeatist words, saying such talk will spread doubt and fear among the city's defenders and is an injustice reflecting a loss of faith in the gods whose likenesses they are embracing.

I consider The Suppliants the best of these four dramas, as it contains some action whereas the other plays are basically static in setting. The story of Io, a fair maiden turned into a cow/human creature and cursed by a maddening gadfly by Hera due to Zeus' pursuit of her, forms a provocative background to this tale. Io's descendants number 50 women and 50 men, and the lustful men seek to forcibly take their female cousins for wives. The women run to Argos and seek the protection of its king and people, setting the stage for a great battle (which unfortunately takes place in a lost drama).

I enjoyed these dramas, although I can't say I would care to see them presented on stage. For the most part, nothing happens, but everyone is miserable and none too shy to broadcast that misery. There can be no mistaking these plays for comedies, yet they do speak to timeless matters of the human spirit even today.

Rating:
Summary: Some of Aeschylus's bothersome plays
Review: Prometheus Bound is one of the most tragic and would likely bother most people about his fate and the uptmost arrogance of Strenght. Oh, how furious he makes me! ::Rips into Strength's face:: The way he spoke to Hephestus is appalling and I do cast his hardness and his pitilessness at him! And the how the Egyptain threatens the Suppliant maids is too much. There is too much harshness in these plays. Unless you like plays that are heavy, and please don't let what I say stop you, stay away from this.

Rating:
Summary: So I don't like Greek drama - sue me.
Review: Vellacott has supplied us with excellent translations with commentaries on the four non-Oresteian plays. The seven plays of Aeschylus should be read by every college-level student, irrespective of their major (I'm in the sciences and I have enjoyed them). The popular "Prometheus Bound" is concerned with the conflict between force and injustice on one side and intelligence, justice, and altruism on the other. The Titan Prometheus, who has stolen fire from heaven and given it to Earth's mortal inhabitants, is being punished for his presumption by being bound to a rock on Mount Caucasus and tortured. He can foretell the future, but refuses to tell Zeus the secret of Zeus' downfall. "The Persians" is the least read play; probably because it has very little action. But, I like it. It is the oldest surviving play based on an event of recent history. The play was first produced in 472 B. C., only eight years after the Battle of Salamis. The speech by the Messenger in the play is the earliest known historical account of that battle. A disgraced Xerxes follows the Messenger. Interestingly, this play also contains the earliest known appearance by a ghost in a drama. "The Suppliants" is the first play of a trilogy, has very little action, and is merely a prologue to the two missing members of the trilogy. The fifty daughters of Danaus are fleeing from the fifty sons of Aegyptus, their cousins. The daughters seek sanctuary from Pelasgus, King of Argos. The play, and probably the trilogy, focuses on when city-states should give sanctuary to others. "Seven Against Thebes" is a retelling of the war between the sons of Oedipus, Eteocles and Polyneices. They were to supposed to share power in Thebes but have quarrelled. Eteocles seizes power and Polyneices goes to get help from Adrastus, King of Argos, and six other kings. Eteocles sends champions to fight the six kings at six of the gates of Thebes. The seventh gate is left to Eteocles. However, that is the gate to which his brother comes. Eteocles feels that he has no choice but to fight and further incur the wrath of the gods by shedding kindred blood. Eteocles had an "out" of his predicament but he choses not to use it. "When the gods send destruction there is no escape."