Here’s an interesting tidbit:
The publishing house Smith & Kraus perhaps has the answer. It has recently launched a series titled “Playwrights in an Hour” that consists of 27 slim volumes dedicated to different dramatists. The series — a kind of Red Bull for theater buffs — covers Western writers from Shakespeare and Moliere to August Wilson and Theresa Rebeck.
Authored by a diverse group of academics and theater professionals, “Playwrights in an Hour” is intended to offer readers a “a brief, highly focused accounting of the playwright’s life and work,” writes the late UCLA drama professor Carl Mueller, who penned some of the volumes.
>Each book contains a 30- to 40-page essay covering the highlights of the playwright’s life and situating his or her works in a biographical context. The essay is followed by excerpts from notable plays in the writer’s body of work. […]
via A new cheatsheet for theater buffs | Los Angeles Times.
Zipping over to S&K’s website, we note that the volumes for Euripides, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, and Sophocles are now available. Here’s the blurb, e.g., from the Aeschylus page:
A thirty-five-year-old Aeschylus enlisted in the Athenian army and fought in the battle of Marathon (490 BCE) and Salamis (480 BCE). These battles were not only the prelude to Athenian military hegemony in the region but also to Athenian cultural dominance. Aeschylus himself would be part of that cultural revolution. Writing the great masterpiece, Oresteia, he took up a theme that first dawned on him at Salamis: the deep wisdom of the eternal justice which rules the world, as Thucydides wrote.
Setting the playwright in context to his personal life, social, historical and political events, other writers of influence, and more, you will quickly gain a deep understanding of Aeschylus and the plays he wrote. Read Aeschylus in an Hour and experience his plays like never before. Know the playwright, love the play!
Potentially useful in a first- or second-year class?
rogueclassicism 