Agamemnon
by Aeschylus
Collectors Edition! There is a particular scene in "Agamemnon" that I always want to point to in order to show students the genius of Aeschylus as a tragic playwright. To really appreciate any of these ancient plays you really have to have an understanding the peculiar structure of the classic Greek drama. The better understanding you have of this structure, as well as the key elements of tragedy as delineated by Aristotle in his "Poetica," the more you can appreciate any of these plays, but "Agamemnon" in particular. The play is the first drama of the Orestia trilogy, the only extant trilogy to survive from that period; of course, since Aeschylus was the only one of the three great tragic poets whose trilogies told basically a story in three-parts. Sophocles and Euripides would tell three different but thematically related stories in their own trilogies (the Theban trilogy of Sophocles is an artificial construct). In "Agamemnon" it has been ten years since he sailed away to Troy, having sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia in order to get fair winds (the tale is best told by Euripides in "Iphigenia at Aulis"). For ten years Agamemnon's wife Clytemnestra, the half-sister of Helen, has been waiting for his return so she can kill him. In the interim she has taken Agamemnon's cousin Aegithus as a lover.
Literature & FictionClassics
RELEASED2012
PUBLISHERCreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
LENGTH64
LANGUAGEEN
Aeschylus was an ancient Greek playwright. He is often recognized as the father of tragedy and is the earliest of the three Greek tragedians whose plays survive, the others being Sophocles and Euripides.
Agamemnon
by Aeschylus
Collectors Edition! There is a particular scene in "Agamemnon" that I always want to point to in order to show students the genius of Aeschylus as a tragic playwright. To really appreciate any of these ancient plays you really have to have an understanding the peculiar structure of the classic Greek drama. The better understanding you have of this structure, as well as the key elements of tragedy as delineated by Aristotle in his "Poetica," the more you can appreciate any of these plays, but "Agamemnon" in particular. The play is the first drama of the Orestia trilogy, the only extant trilogy to survive from that period; of course, since Aeschylus was the only one of the three great tragic poets whose trilogies told basically a story in three-parts. Sophocles and Euripides would tell three different but thematically related stories in their own trilogies (the Theban trilogy of Sophocles is an artificial construct). In "Agamemnon" it has been ten years since he sailed away to Troy, having sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia in order to get fair winds (the tale is best told by Euripides in "Iphigenia at Aulis"). For ten years Agamemnon's wife Clytemnestra, the half-sister of Helen, has been waiting for his return so she can kill him. In the interim she has taken Agamemnon's cousin Aegithus as a lover.
Literature & FictionClassics
RELEASED2012
PUBLISHERCreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
LENGTH64
LANGUAGEEN
Aeschylus was an ancient Greek playwright. He is often recognized as the father of tragedy and is the earliest of the three Greek tragedians whose plays survive, the others being Sophocles and Euripides.
