Chosen as one of the ten canonical plays by Euripides during the
Hellenistic period in Greece, Hecuba was popular throughout Antiquity.
The play also became part of the so-called 'Byzantine triad' of three
plays of Euripides (along with Phoenician Women and Orestes)
selected for study in school curricula, above all for the brilliance of
its rhetorical speeches and quotable traditional wisdom. Translations
into Latin and vernacular languages, as well as stage performances
emerged early in the sixteenth century. The Renaissance admired the play
for its representation of the extraordinary suffering and misfortunes of
its newly-enslaved heroine, the former queen of Troy Hecuba, for the
courageous sacrificial death of her daughter Polyxena, and for the
beleaguered queen's surprisingly successful revenge against the
unscrupulous killer of her son Polydorus. Later periods, however,
developed reservations about the play's revenge plot and its unity.
Recent scholarship has favorably reassessed the play in its original
cultural and political context and the past thirty years have produced a
number of exciting staged productions. Hecuba has emerged as a profound
exploration of the difficulties of establishing justice and a stable
morality in post-war situations.
This book investigates the play's changing critical and theatrical
reception from Antiquity to the present, its mythical and political
background, its dramatic and thematic unity, and the role of its
choruses.
