Benny and his friend Griffin at Ocean Beach in San Francisco.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Christine's New Seminar: Greek Plays

For reasons best known to myself (and too dull to tell anyone else), I've decided to start a reading program of Greek plays.

I'm not overly familiar with Greek plays — I studied a few in school, all tragedies, notably "Medea" and "Antigone." I didn't realize there were plays that weren't about insanely stubborn women. Antigone wanted to bury her brother, so by Zeus she was gonna do it if it killed her -- which, of course, it did. Medea was mad because her man left her and instead of suing him for every last drachma and making his life miserable for years, she killed everyone in sight except the guy himself and flew away in a chariot.

So you can understand why I wasn't totally enthused about this program. Would all the men be arrogant? Would all the women be crazy? What the heck was up with this Chorus, anyway?

But I'm determined, so I've found a page here that lays out all the greek plays in chronological order, beginning with Aeschylus, who wrote about 470 B.C. My first play is "The Persians" and when I finish it, I'll post a summary with comments.

Aren't you all so lucky?

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