About the Play - Hecuba
 

Schedule of Events 2014  
All events are open to the public and free, with the exception of Hecuba which will have a ticket charge to support the cost of bringing the Classical Greek Theatre Festival production to WSU


Sept 15:  12:30 Anthropology Club presentaion, 101 SBS
Sept. 16: Greek Readers Theatre/Aristophes "Sexual Congress", HH room, Stewart Library

Sept 17,
12:30: "Women, Children and War, Stephanie Wolfe, Poli. Sci. HH room, Stewart Library. The lecture is co-sponsored by Amnesty International.

Sept 17,
6:30: "Infotainment" lecture, Jim Svendsen, Director, Classical Greek Theatre Festival,  Fireplace Lounge, SUB. Everything you need to know to understand the play 
Sept 17, 7:30: Euripides Hecuba, presented by Classical Greek Theatre Festival,   Wildcat Theatre SUB


 
   
Greek vase painting: Hecuba led away to captivity.
Greek vase painting: Hecuba led away to captivity
  • Synopsis
  • Full text online
  • Study guide from Greek Theatre at Westminster

    Hecuba was the queen of Troy, the wife of Priam and the mother of many children who did not survive her. One of her sons was Hector, the bravest of the Trojan warriors, dragged in the dust by the wrath of Achilles. One of her daughters was Cassandra, cursed with foreknowledge, taken off to Greece by the victorious Agamemnon and murdered there, along with Agamemnon, by Agamemnon’s angry wife. Cassandra was collateral damage. Agamemnon’s wife was taking revenge for the sacrifice of her daughter to assure the winds that made the expedition to Troy possible.

    And Hecuba’s fate? She has foreknowledge of what her fate will be because it will be the same for all the women on the losing side of a bronze-age war. Her husband, brothers, grown sons will be slain. She will live because she is not dangerous and has value as a slave woman, subject to the will of the conqueror.

    In Paul Roche’s translation of a passage from Euripides’ tragedy, The Trojan Women, this is how she sees it:

    I know! I know! …And as for me,
    Whose miserable slave am I to be?
    Be a drudge, a futile drone, the image
    Of a corpse and a ghastly uselessness…
    Perhaps as a porter at a gate,
    Or as a chidren’s nurse – I who once
    Was the honored queen of Troy.