Euripides: the Accidental Father of Modern European Drama

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There is often a misconception that Euripides was never the playwright that Sophocles was. He often slips through the cracks in conversations, and if it wasn’t for the horrors of Medea, often times he wouldn’t be mentioned at all. Sophocles often is the spotlighted playwright in everyday conversations, when everyone (even if they can’t remember the names of Oedipal or Elektra complexes) still reference that ‘Freudian thing’ where a son wants to sleep with his mother, or a daughter with her father. Euripides is really the greater of the two in regards to writing about social dynamics and political issues—and can actually be traced back as being the father of modern European drama. At the time of his writing, Euripides was actually one of the least popular of the major playwrights. Not only was he the youngest of the major playwrights, but he took an opposite view of political life in Athens. He pointed out flaws in the Athenian government that the leaders would rather not have had scrutinized, and his plays were often met with a lot of disdain rather than praise. When Euripides fled Athens (which most scholars refer to as when Euripides was ‘invited’ to move to Macedon by King Archelaus, despite the dangers he must have faced in Athens for his subversive views) in 408 B.C., he wrote his masterpiece The Bacchae, which was later performed in Athens after his death and took first prize at the festival. Euripides never got to see this play performed in his home country, nor did he get the praise that finally came with it. The major differences between Euripides’ writing style and that of his contemporaries was that Euripides often took the stance of an atheist, as well as what would now be considered political activism. When Euripides wrote Trojan Women, the first anti-war play in Western civilization, he was making a plea for peace to the government. At the time,

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