10 h 39 minAudiobook2 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
A forbidden burial, a wounded soldier, a threatened city: what happens when doing right means defying someone else’s duty?
The Seven Plays in English Verse gathers Sophocles’ surviving complete tragedies, where rulers, outcasts, and divided families face choices with no easy answer. In Oedipus the King, plague grips Thebes as its ruler pursues the killer of Laius. In Antigone, a sister’s burial duty clashes with Creon’s command. Oedipus at Colonus follows the blind, aged king as he seeks shelter near Athens.
Ajax follows a warrior whose wounded honor threatens those who depend on him. Electra keeps alive the demand to avenge her father Agamemnon’s murder. Philoctetes and Neoptolemus face trust, deception, and military duty, while Women of Trachis centers on Deianira’s fear of losing Heracles. These verse dramas bring Greek heroic legend close to painful questions of loyalty, obedience, and love.
What you’ll discover
- A city under threat Follow Oedipus as his promise to help Thebes becomes a determined search for truth.
- A burial forbidden Meet Antigone where a sister’s duty collides with a ruler’s demand for obedience.
- Honor under pressure Watch Ajax struggle with humiliation when Achilles’ armor goes to Odysseus instead of him.
- Grief that refuses silence Encounter Electra’s fierce refusal to let her father’s murder become accepted family history.
- Trust and love tested Explore an abandoned soldier’s trust and a wife’s fear of losing the bond she cherishes.
Who will love it
For readers who love tense family conflicts, moral choices, and the roots of stage drama, these seven tragedies offer sharply different confrontations over duty, honor, and justice.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
Who’s who
- OedipusA king seeking the truth in Oedipus the King becomes an aged exile seeking shelter in Oedipus at Colonus.
- Antigone and CreonA sister’s burial duty clashes with a ruler’s demand for obedience.
- AjaxA warrior’s sense of honor becomes a danger when he believes his fellow Greeks have disgraced him.
- ElectraAgamemnon’s daughter holds fast to grief and the demand that his murder be avenged.
- Philoctetes and NeoptolemusAn abandoned soldier and a young warrior face questions of trust, deception, and military duty.
- DeianiraThe wife of Heracles fears losing her husband and tries to preserve their bond in Women of Trachis.
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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Die sieben Dramen in englischen Versen
by Sophokles
A sister’s burial duty clashes with a ruler’s demand for obedience, setting family against city.
Medium level10–20 hours to read25 languages
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In short
The Seven Plays in English Verse gathers the surviving complete tragedies of Sophocles, whose rulers, outcasts, and divided families struggle with duties they cannot easily reconcile. These plays remain gripping because their great conflicts take personal form: a forbidden burial, a wounded soldier, a threatened city, and a marriage shaken by jealousy.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Sophocles places people under pressure until their strongest convictions become dangerous. His seven surviving complete plays draw on Greek heroic legend, but their conflicts are close to ordinary life: whom to trust, what children owe their parents, when obedience becomes wrong, and how much suffering one person may demand of another. Gods and prophecies shape these worlds without making human choices simple.
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Which seven plays by Sophocles are included?
The collection contains Ajax, Antigone, Women of Trachis, Oedipus the King, Electra, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus. These are Sophocles’ seven surviving complete tragedies, not everything he wrote. They range from the Trojan War legends to the troubled royal family of Thebes.
Should I read the three Theban plays in order?
For the sequence of Oedipus’s family story, read Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, then Antigone. Sophocles wrote them at different times, not as one continuous trilogy. Each play stands on its own, with its own central conflict and dramatic shape.
What do Sophocles’ tragedies have in common?
Sophocles repeatedly places strong-willed people between competing obligations: family and city, religious duty and political command, personal honor and collective need. His characters must act without complete understanding, while the consequences reach beyond the person making the choice.
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