The Complete Book of GREEK THEATRE: A Comprehensive Guide to All the Surviving Plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes
About this ebook
The Greek playwrights—Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes—enriched these epic tales, and they continue to inspire artists and creators across all fields: film, opera, ballet, science fiction, and fantasy.
Ancient Greek theater is not merely a dive into old myths; it serves as a mirror reflecting human realities, capable of shedding light on our own times.
In his latest work, internationally renowned scholar of Greek theater, translator and director, Pascal Thiercy, author of The Complete Plays of Aristophanes in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Gallimard, Paris,) invites you on a journey through the 44 surviving plays. With his original and ingenious grouping of tragedies by mythic cycles and comedies in chronological order, he illuminates these masterpieces with a rich critical apparatus, offering a reading that is both enjoyable and scholarly. This approach reveals unexpected and delightful connections with numerous classic plays, films, and operas.
A valuable guide for easily navigating this fascinating yet complex collection. Whether you are a theater enthusiast, historian, mythologist, director, student, or teacher, this book provides the keys to understanding the modern relevance of these ancient stories and situating them within a contemporary framework.
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About the author
Pascal Thiercy is one of the world's leading specialists in ancient Greek theatre. Emeritus Professor, holder of the French Agrégation and Doctor of State, he is the translator of the Complete Plays of Aristophanes for the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Gallimard, Paris) — the standard French reference edition, with full critical apparatus, which has become a landmark in Hellenic studies.
But Pascal Thiercy is also a man of the stage — writer, translator, director, practitioner. He has collaborated with major figures of the European theatre world, including Silvia Monfort and Luca Ronconi, and has himself directed ancient and classical plays performed in France, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Africa.
t is this double life — between the rigour of the scholar and the instinct of the practitioner — that gives his writing its distinctive voice: demanding without being dry, alive without being superficial. When Pascal Thiercy writes about Aristophanes, he knows what these texts do on a page — and what they do on a stage, in front of an audience encountering that name for the very first time.
