Greek Tragedy XXVI: Euripides’s Trojan Women, or It’s Always Darkest Before It Goes Pitch Black

I told you that Euripides just keeps getting darker and darker the farther we get into his career. The Trojan Women is pretty grim. A content warning: This play contains a rather grisly infanticide.

Discussion Prompts

1. AP Credit: Putting this play in the context of the time in which it was written (during the Peloponnesian War), what is Euripides’s message to Athens?
2. The usual directing questions: Where and when would you set it? Why? How would you cast it? Why? What directing choices would you make regarding the final exits of Cassandra or Hecuba or anyone else?
3. What do you think of these portrayals of Menelaos, Cassandra, Hecuba, Helen, and Andromache? How do they align with how we have seen them in other sources (Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles)?
4. This play reminds me of Shakespeare’s King John. What does it remind you of? Why?