Eight Great Tragedies

Presenting the complete texts of eight of the world’s greatest plays, this important volume illuminates the changing concept of tragedy from Sophocles to O’Neill.
 
Some of the world’s greatest dramas unfold on these pages. In the powerful and famous plays of Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripedes, Oedipus makes his disastrous marriage, Prometheus struggles against Zeus to break his painful chains, and the Love Goddess, Aphrodite, takes her revenge on the Theban prince who slighted her. Shakespeare’s King Lear suffers at the hands of his two evil daughters. The great Scandinavian dramatists Ibsen and Strindberg fearlessly present stories of infidelity and social disease, while Desire under the Elms, Eugene O’Neill’s savage picture of primitive desires in modern New England, rounds out this excellent anthology. Including important essays by noteworthy critics and philosophers, this book is an ideal companion to the editors’ Eight Great Comedies.
 
Featured Plays:
Prometheus Unbound (Aeschylus)
Oedipus the King (Sophocles)
Hippolytus (Euripedes)
King Lear (William Shakespeare)
Ghosts (Henrik Ibsen)
Miss Julie (August Strindberg)
On Baile’s Strand (William Butler Yeats)
Desire under the Elms (Eugene O’Neill)
 
Also includes essays by Aristotle, Hume, Emerson, Tillyard, Richards, and Krutch.Eight Great TragediesGeneral Introduction

Part One: The Tragedies
Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound, translated by E. A. Havelock
Sophocles: Oedipus the King, translated by J. T. Sheppard
Euripides: Hippolytus, translated by F. L. Lucas
William Shakespeare: King Lear
Henrik Isben: Ghosts, translated by William Archer
August Strindberg: Miss Julie, translated by C. D. Locock
William Butler Yeats: On Baile's Strand
Eugene O'Neill: Desire under the Elms

Part Two: The Essays
Aristotle: From The Poetics, translated by L. J. Potts
David Hume: Of Tragedy
Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Tragic
E. M. W. Tillyard: From Shakespeare's Problem Plays
I. A. Richards: From Principles of Literary Criticism
Joseph Wood Krutch: From The Tragic Fallacy
A Note on the Greek Theater

Bibliography

Sylvan Barnet wrote numerous texts analyzing the works of Shakespeare as well as the writing craft. He was the general editor for Signet Classics Shakespeare as well as professor emeritus at Tufts University. He died in 2016.

Morton Berman is professor emeritus of English as Boston University.

William Burto served as the chair of the Department of English as Lowell State College, which became University of Massachusetts-Lowell. He wrote several texts focusing on the poetry of Shakespeare. He died in 2013.