The Trojan Women (Duncan, trans.)

The glorious feminine characters of antiquity are here, at the walls of Troy; Hecuba, Casandra, Andromache, and Helen herself. Sartre has said that he took liberties with the original, for "there was an implicit rapport between Euripides and the audience for which he was writing (which) a translation cannot reproduce." His method is simple. "Euripides' text contains innumerable allusions which the Athenian public immediately understood. These mean nothing to us; consequently I deleted many of them and developed others." It is written for clarity and understanding, and with a point of view: "The play demonstrates that war is a defeat to humanity." Similarly, Ronald Duncan's version is "a free adaptation, and not a translation." You will find it a limber and comely version, free of all the familiar stiffness and archaism.