Euripides as a Playwright

In the book ‘Greek Tragedy’ Bernhard Zimmermann points out that the achievement of the tragic playwright such as Euripides was measured ‘by the manner in which he elaborated the traditional framework of the myth through the representation of characters and their motives, the emphasis and attenuation of plot elements, the insertion of minor figures - in short, through fresh interpretation of material supplied by tradition’.

Euripides has taken a mythological plot and has created the play ‘Hippolytus’, in which he expresses thoughts and feelings of people of his time; in his work he raises vital questions of that time. It should be pointed out that Euripides’ plays are closely connected with psychoanalysis. Although there was no Freudian theory at that time, when the play ‘Hippolytus’ was written by a great dramatist, Euripides was just guided by an intuitive psychological understanding of human beings. His character descriptions confirm this point of view. The author describes the most cherished and sacred dreams and desires of the major characters of ‘Hippolytus’ - Hippolytus and Phaedre. While reading ‘Hippolytus’ we can feel the psychological depth of these characters and their agonizing sufferings. Euripides is a great expert of building tragedy’s peripeteia. His tragedies always have its cause and effect and are justified. ‘Hippolytus’ is one of the most vivid examples, where the reader is captured and taken away by the psychological conflicts of the play.

According to Friedrich Nietzsche, a reader goes through several stages while reading: at first he reads, then he interprets what has been read by him and then he tries to evaluate the book or a play. All these stages a person can come through while reading the play ‘Hippolytus’ elaborated by Euripides. Here we can talk about values of a person, his own personal experiences, which influence his evaluation of a book. Moreover, according to Nietzsche a reader moves from the concrete to the abstract during the process of reading. Euripides’ plays have a strongly pronounced psychological trend that is conditioned by a great interest of a playwright to a personality of a human being with all his contradictions and passions. Euripides was the first playwright who depicted passion, feelings and painful mental conditions of a man.