United States or Nicaragua ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Poet and dramatist, s. of Sir John G., and descended from Sir William G., the famous Chief Justice to Henry IV., he was ed. at Camb., and entered Gray's Inn 1555. While there he produced two plays, both translations, The Supposes from Ariosto, and Jocasta from Euripides. He had, nevertheless, to go to Holland to escape from the importunities of his creditors.
But there is another Greek, the poet Euripides, who, without advancing any theory about the proper position of women, yet displays so intimate an understanding of their difficulties, and so warm and close a sympathy with their griefs, that some of his utterances may stand to all time as documents of the dumb and age-long protest of the weaker against the stronger sex.
In Euripides we find a similar recognition of the ascent of mankind to a civilised state, from primitive barbarism, some god or other playing the part of Prometheus.
If any critic falls on me for putting inarticulate sounds in a dialogue as above, I answer, with all the insolence I can command at present, "Hit boys as big as yourself" bigger, perhaps, such as Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes; they began it, and I learned it of them sore against my will.
Contemporary with Sophocles was Euripides, born in 480 B.C., the last of the three great masters of the drama the three being embraced within the limits of a single century. Under Sophocles the principal changes effected in the outward form of the drama were the introduction of a third actor, and a consequent limitation of the functions of the chorus.
No one accused Euripides of plagiarism for having imitated in one of the choruses of "Iphigenia" the second book of the Iliad; on the contrary, people were very grateful to him for this imitation, which they regarded as a homage rendered to Homer on the Athenian stage. Virgil never suffered a reproach for having happily imitated, in the Æneid, a hundred verses by the first of Greek poets.
The Delphic Oracle had made pronouncement: Sophocles is wise; Euripides is wiser; but Socrates is the wisest of mankind. Sometimes, you see, the Delphic Oracle could get off a distinctly good thing. But Socrates, with his usual sense of humor, had never considered himself in that light at all; oldish, yes; and funny, and ugly, by all means; but wise!
I could wish that the wedding of Pylades had been celebrated on the stage, and that a good round sum of money had been paid to the peasant on the spot; then everything would have ended to the satisfaction of the spectators as in an ordinary comedy. Not, however, to be unjust, I must admit that the Electra is perhaps the very worst of Euripides' pieces.
The interest of the play for Browning lay especially in three things the pure self-sacrifice of the heroine, devotion embodied in one supreme deed; and no one can heighten the effect with which Euripides has rendered this; secondly, the joyous, beneficent strength of Herakles, and this Browning has felt in a peculiar degree, and by his commentary has placed it in higher relief; and thirdly, the purification and elevation through suffering of the character of Admetos; here it would be rash to assert that Browning has not divined the intention of Euripides, but certainly he has added something of his own.
For while he yet swayed and jolted upon the back of the restive Hannibal, and even endeavored to discuss with the fair young scholar who rode beside him, the "Melanippe" of Euripides, the same fair scholar who, in spite of all her Greek learning was only a mischievous and sometimes very rude young girl faced him with a sober countenance.
Word Of The Day