Diane Arnson Svarlien's translation of Euripides' Andromache, Hecuba, and Trojan Women exhibits the same scholarly and poetic standards that have won praise for her Alcestis, Medea, Hippolytus. Ruth Scodel's Introduction examines the cultural and political context in which Euripides wrote, and provides analysis of the themes, structure, and characters of the plays included. Her notes offer expert guidance to readers encountering these works for the first time.

This is the final in a series of three volumes of a new prose translation of Euripides' most popular plays. In the three great war plays contained in this volume Euripides subjects the sufferings of Troy's survivors to a harrowing examination. The horrific brutality which both women and children undergo evokes a response of unparalleled intensity in the playwright whom Aristotle called the most tragic of the poets. Yet the new battle-ground of the aftermath of war is one in which the women of Troy evince an overwhelming greatness of spirit. We weep for the aged Hecuba in her name play and in the Trojan Women, yet we respond with an at times appalled admiration to her resilience amid unrelieved suffering. And in her name play Andromache, the slave-concubine of her husband's killer, endures her existence in the victor's country with a Stoic nobility. Of their time yet timeless, these plays insist on the victory of the female spirit amid the horrors visited on them by the gods and men during war.

Children, lead this old woman outside. A slave like the rest of you, She once was your queen. Troy has fallen to the Greeks, and Hecuba, its beloved queen, is widowed and enslaved. She mourns her great city and the death of her husband, but when fresh horrors emerge, her grief turns to rage and a lust for revenge. A savage indictment of the devastation of war, Hecuba is brought to life in this thrillingly visceral new version. Hecuba premièred at the Donmar Warehouse, London in September 2004.

The center of the play is Hecuba, the exiled queen of Troy, and her sorrow at the death of her family and her city at the end of the Trojan War. In Euripides' play, the ladies of Troy are depicted after their city has been taken over, their husbands have been killed, and their remaining families have been sold into slavery. Athena and Poseidon, two Greek gods, are talking about how to punish the Greek soldiers for tolerating Ajax the Lesser's rape of Cassandra as the story opens.Upon her arrival, the widowed princess Andromache finds that her youngest daughter, Polyxena, had been killed by her mother's enemies.The Greek authorities are worried that the little kid would one-day exact revenge on his father Hector. She is still alive, as is made clear in the book's conclusion.Many of the Trojan ladies mourn the loss of the land that gave them a good upbringing throughout the book. Hecuba in particular makes it clear that Troy had been her home her entire life, only for her to see herself as an elderly grandmother witnessing the destruction of Troy, the deaths of her husband, her children, and her grandchildren before being sold into slavery by Odysseus.

The play explores the folly of war, focussing on the trials of the royal family of the fallen city of Troy (Hecuba, Andromache and their children) as they mourn their past and current sufferings, and the continued assault of the Greeks on the survivors as they look to sacrifice two of the royal progeny, Polyxena and Astyanax.

There's no decent way to say an indecent thing An industrial port of a war-torn city. Women survivors wait to be shipped abroad. Officials come and go. A grandmother, once queen, watches as her remaining family are taken from her one by one. The city burns around them. First performed in 415BC, the play focuses on the human cost of war and the impact of loss. This new Student Edition of The Women of Troy includes a commentary and notes by Emma Cole, which looks at the Trojan War as represented in Greek literature and myth; the context in which Euripides was writing and within which the play was first performed; how it would have been originally staged and dramaturgical challenges met; as well as recent performance history of the play, including Katie Mitchell's iconic 2007 production at the National Theatre. Euripides' great anti-war play is published here in Don Taylor's classic translation.