Electra

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price

A tragic tale of duty, retribution and fate.

King Agamemnon, on returning from the Trojan Wars, is murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover. Now, to avenge the crime, their daughter Electra must commit one even worse and face the inevitable consequences.

This edition of Sophocles' play Electra, in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, is translated and introduced by Marianne McDonald and J. Michael Walton.

Auteur

Sophocles was born about 496 BC in Colonus Hippius (now part of Athens). He is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, along with Aeschylus and Euripides.

He wrote more than 100 plays, including seven complete tragedies and fragments of 80 or 90 others. His completed plays included Ajax, Antigone, The Women of Trachis, Oedipus the King, Electra, Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus. Sophocles influenced the development of the drama, most importantly by adding a third actor, thereby reducing the importance of the chorus in the presentation of the plot.