Saturday, October 7, 2017

Poor Euripides :(

As we all know, Euripides wasn't very well regarded in his time. He is said to have written around 92 plays but only won the Dionysia festival five times. In fact, Medea only got the bronze award, which I read was pretty bad because he only really had two other rivals (Sophocles and Euphorion, the son of Aeschylus). I also found out that he was ridiculed by fellow playwright Aristophanes and lived a large part of his life in isolation. Eventually, he was so fed up with Athens and their rejection of his ideas that he moved to Macedonia, where he soon died from an attack of wild dogs (?).

Another thing I found was that Aristotle declared that Euripides was a much lesser tragedian than Sophocles, mainly because he didn't follow convention as closely. But, I think this is really interesting because Euripides' plays didn't follow the standard hero and tragedy characteristics but they did so much more. They exposed Athenians to progressive ideas such as rights for women and slaves (although, Athens didn't take it too well) and introduced social agenda into his works. So, I think it's cool how what Euripides lacked in traditional convention he made up with a different kind of agenda. He disregarded the Athenian standard for a good play and paved the way for his own, unique style. 

Sorry your life kind of sucked Euripides; at least people appreciate you now :(.

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