EURIPIDES' MISTER HERACLES

by Simon Armitage

What is the greatest atrocity a man can commit? What do we mean by hero? These are questions in Euripides' Heracles, tackled by Armitage in language that brings the play's contemporaneity into focus, without diminishing its historical portent.

Genres: Plays

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Simon Armitage, whose The Shout was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, has published ten volumes of poetry and has received numerous honors for his work. He was appointed UK Poet Laureate in 2019

Armitage's poetry collections include Book of Matches (1993) and The Dead Sea Poems (1995). He has written two novels, Little Green Man (2001) and The White Stuff (2004), as well as All Points North (1998), a collection of essays on the north of England. He has produced a dramatised version of Homer's Odyssey and a collection of poetry entitled Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus The Corduroy Kid (which was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize), both of which were published in July 2006. Many of Armitage's poems appear in the AQA (Assessment and Qualifications Alliance) GCSE syllabus for English Literature in the United Kingdom. These include "Homecoming", "November", "Kid", "Hitcher", and a selection of poems from Book of Matches, most notably of these "Mother any distance...". His writing is characterised by a dry Yorkshire wit combined with "an accessible, realist style and critical seriousness."

Reviews

[Russio · Rating 5 out of 5]

A shattering story, efficiently told by the wonderful SA. Sometimes his recasting of drama can come across as wilfully parochial and overly updated but in this case he makes the case up front, uses the chorus for the former function and trims back the wit to allow the tragedy to reveal itself in all its horror. The updating is not really that but rather an attempt at universality, where tanks and chariots sit side by side in the mental landscape of the play and this works perfectly fine. Really glad to have read this drama, the story of which I may not have chanced upon,

[Gillian Hagenus · Rating 4 out of 5]

"It burns, doesn't it, in the skin, hurts to be touched? Grief is a thing of the flesh, so is loss, so is defeat"

If not for the story, than for the language. Armitage's writing spans time. He writes with such beautiful (and sometimes quirky) imagery. Every word seems carefully chosen and yet, there is such an ease to the language. This is a play, but reads more like a modern-day epic.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm always impressed by Simon Armitage's updates of literary classics, especially his masterful edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. He has a real talent for conveying the intent of the source works while introducing just enough contemporary argot to make the stories feel relevant to a modern reader.

In this vein, Mister Heracles is something of a minor work, originally created as a script for dramatic performance. While it benefits from all of Armitage's strengths as a writer, and moreover benefits from time-skipping the familicide at the heart of Euripides' version of the tale, Armitage is nonetheless limited by his source material, making Mister Heracles a brief and undemanding read that has its charms but lacks the heft of a truly significant literary achievement.