Ten Greek Plays in Contemporary Translation

Louis MacNeice was a more significant 20th cent. poet, and a better Greek scholar, both of those together, than nearly any translator of Greek tragedy I can think of. His "Agamemnon" alone justifies this volume. Also unique is C. T. Murphy's "Lysistrata", produced for a Harvard College student production (perhaps not one with Leonard Bernstein incidental music, though that was the rumor when I was Murphy's student at Oberlin). The Sophocles and Euripides translations are serviceable at least. Given that one play in the Oxford Greek Tragedy in New Translations series costs $8 or 9, and that Chicago or Penguin organize by single playwrites, and that the standard theatre history anthologies contain inferior translations in pricier volumes, this remains a terrific value for the money.