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‘The Troades’ of Euripides
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
Extract
It is a commonplace that Greek drama is more intellectual than modern. We look for marks of this intellectualism in the speeches, the dialogue, the characterization, the method of supplying relief of tension in the most tragic situations, and the maintaining of the old convention by which action takes place off the stage, so that the interest of the audience is sustained by vividness and clarity of narrative rather than by actual portrayal of incident; but we seldom look for it in the actual construction of the dramas. Yet here too it can be seen. A good example is Euripides' Troades, which is but a poorly constructed play, if judged by standards which require a play to have a plot founded on incident, but not so poorly constructed if a theme be allowed to take the place of a plot.
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1939
References
page 102 note 1 Contrast Aristotle, Poetics, 1450. The fact that Aristotle, a critic writing at a later date than any of the three great writers of tragedy, should have made certain generalizations as to their methods does not remove the possibility of Euripides having in this play developed some entirely different qualities latent in Greek drama. Whether or not he was justified artistically in so doing must be judged from results, not from rules laid down by any critic. Moreover, it should be noticed that, true to Aristotle's dictum, incidents are of the utmost importance in the working out of the theme of this play. The structure, however, depends on a spiritual connexion rather than on the mere development of one incident from another.
page 103 note 1 Cf. Plato, , Republic, 360Google Scholar D–362 c, and Aristotle, , Nichomachean Ethics, 1100.Google Scholar