‘Men as they ought to be'

This chapter discusses the Translating Classical Plays on Men as They Ought to Be'. The first, indeed the only, seventeenth-century translation of any Greek tragedy, was the Electra of Sophocles, a peculiar polemic by Christopher Wase. Sophocles' Electra deals with the revenge of Agamemnon's brother and sister for the death of their father at the hands of their mother Clytemnestra. Together with Gilbert Murray, though less for Sophocles in Murray's case than in his translations of Euripides, these two classical heavyweights created a foundation for the modern era of translating the Greeks for performance. Aristophanic comedy, may not be the best place to find reliable information about any major figure of the fifth century bce, be he politician, soldier, philosopher or fellow playwright. The passage is not an easy one for the translator, as the following selection demonstrates from the other fifty or so translations of Sophocles' Electra to have appeared in print since those of Wase and Theobald.