This second collection of Tony Harrison's poetry for the stage contains his adaptations of Molière, Racine and Victor Hugo. Included are the plays The Misanthrope, Phaedra Britannica and The Prince's Plays.The volume contains introductions, written by Tony Harrison, to each of the plays.

This is the first book-length study of the classicism of Tony Harrison, one of the most important contemporary poets in England and the world. It argues that his unique and politically radical classicism is inextricable from his core notion that poetry should be a public property in which communal problems are shared and crystallised, and that the poet has a responsibility to speak in a public voice about collective and political concerns. Enriched by Edith Hall's longstanding friendship with Harrison and involvement with his most recent drama, inspired by Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris, it also asserts that his greatest innovations in both form and style have been direct results of his intense engagements with individual works of ancient literature and his belief that the ancient Greek poetic imagination was inherently radical. Tony Harrison's large body of work, for which he has won several major and international prizes, and which features on the UK National Curriculum, ranges widely across long and short poems, plays, translations and film poems. Having studied Classics at Grammar School and University and having translated ancient poets from Aeschylus to Martial and Palladas, Harrison has been immersed in the myths, history, literary forms and authorial voices of Mediterranean antiquity for his entire working life and his classical interests are reflected in every poetic genre he has essayed, from epigrams and sonnets to original stage plays, translations of Greek drama and Racine, to his experimental and harrowing film poems, where he has pioneered the welding of tightly cut video materials to tightly phrased verse forms. This volume explores the full breadth of his oeuvre, offering an insightful new perspective on a writer who has played an important part in shaping our contemporary literary landscape.

Tony Harrison's v. was written during the Miners' Strike of 1984-85 when he visited his parents' grave in a Leeds cemetery and found it vandalised by obscene graffiti. Channel Four's film of v. prompted extreme political and media reaction documented in the book's second edition (1989).

This volume provides an in-depth comparative study of translation practices and the role of the poet-translator across different countries and in so doing, demonstrates the need for poetry translation to be extended beyond close reading and situated in context. Drawing on a corpus composed of data from national library catalogues and Worldcat, the book examines translation practices of English-language, French-language, and Italian-language poet-translators through the lens of a broad sociological approach. Chapters 2 through 5 look at national poetic movements, literary markets, and the historical and socio-political contexts of translations, with Chapter 6 offering case studies of prominent and representative poet-translators from each tradition. A comprehensive set of appendices offers readers an opportunity to explore this data in greater detail. Taken together, the volume advocates for the need to study translation data against broader aesthetic, historical, and political trends and will be of particular interest to students and scholars in translation studies and comparative literature.

Tony Harrison's sixth collection includes a foreword by Lee Hall. The book contains Harrison's translation of Euripides's Hecuba, which inaugurated the modern amphitheatre of Delphi in 2005; the remarkable Fram, which opened at the National Theatre in 2008; and Iphigenia in Crimea, after Euripides, which premiered on BBC Radio 3 to mark Tony Harrison's eightieth birthday in 2016.'Tony is that incredibly rare beast: as great a playwright as he is a poet.' Lee Hall 'I am convinced that Tony Harrison is one of the truly great poets writing in English today.' Melvyn BraggHecuba 'Harrison's urgent translation never lets us forget the aching topicality of Euripides' study of the powerful and the powerless.' Guardian Fram'Harrison brings gloriously rich life to the stage, by turns funny and rending. His couplets are a feast for rhyme junkies.' Financial Times'As visually resplendent a piece of theatre as you will see all year. The words more than hold their own, however, expressing in rhymes to be relished that poetry might yet, if not lead us out of the darkness, at least make us feel ashamed we're still stuck in it.' Sunday Times Iphigenia in Crimea Set in Sebastapol, 1854, inthe midst of the Crimean war, a lieutenant decides to stage an all-male production of Euripides's tragedy. After initial raucous incredulity, the atmosphere changes as the men commit themselves to the drama until, as it draws to a close, ancient and modern worlds collide and warfare resumes in earnest.

Tony Harrison and the Classics comprises fifteen chapters examining the lasting importance of Tony Harrison's classical education, the extent of the influence of Greek and Roman texts on his subjects, themes, and styles, his contribution to knowledge and understanding of classical literature, his popularization of classical works, and his innovative treatment of classical drama in plays which have been performed globally. Harrison's work fosters debates about the role and perception of the classics and adaptations of classical literature in relation to education, 'high' and 'popular' culture, accessibility, and reception. A unifying theme of the collection is the way in which Harrison finds in classical literature fruitful matter for the articulation and dramatization of his longstanding preoccupations: language, class, access to art, and the causes and effects of war. Through his adaptations and translations, Harrison uses classical drama to stage interventions in modern politics, but neither idealizes nor romanticizes the ancient world, depicting inequality, bigotry, greed, and brutality.

This wide-ranging Companion to Modern British and Irish Drama offers challenging analyses of a range of plays in their political contexts. It explores the cultural, social, economic and institutional agendas that readers need to engage with in order to appreciate modern theatre in all its complexity. An authoritative guide to modern British and Irish drama. Engages with theoretical discourses challenging a canon that has privileged London as well as white English males and realism. Topics covered include: national, regional and fringe theatres; post-colonial stages and multiculturalism; feminist and queer theatres; sex and consumerism; technology and globalisation; representations of war, terrorism, and trauma.