Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Hecuba of Euripides: A Revised d104 With Notes and an Introduction
In criticising such prologues as that spoken by the shade of Polydorus, we must remember that every Athenian in the theatre knew perfectly well already the whole tale of 'the mobled queen.' But he would watch with breathless interest to see how the poet would work out and develop the familiar story, and the prize would be adjudged accordingly. The audience was probably as highly educated as our own Commons; 'for the house is clever', said Aristophanes, one of the cleverest of them all. Macaulay truly says, 'an Athenian citizen might possess very few volumes and the largest library to which he had access might be much less valuable than Johnson's bookcase in Bolt Court. But the Athenian might pass every morning in conversation with Socrates, and might hear Pericles speak four or five times in a month. He saw the plays of Sophocles and Aristophanes: he walked amidst the friezes of Phidias and the paintings of Zeuxis: he knew by heart the choruses of Aeschylus'.
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