Iphigenia in Ireland: A Long View

Abstract

This article explores the relative lack of interest in Euripides' Iphigenia in Aulis for over 150 years, and the curious neglect of the play at the end of the nineteenth century, in particular, when scholars rehabilitated Euripides as the ancient playwright for the modern age. Even when Euripides' tragedies were staged in the early years of the twentieth century at London's Royal Court Theatre by Granville Barker, in Gilbert Murray's translations, the Iphigenia in Aulis, was conspicuous by its absence. In many ways, it took until the new millennium for this particular Euripidean tragedy to gain its footing in the modern repertoire and for Iphigenia to become a character of potent interest to contemporary playwrights. However, there was one notable exception that this article seeks to probe: the significant role that Iphigenia and the events at Aulis have played in Ireland from the seventeenth century to the present; and how, in many ways, it was these Irish Iphigenias, especially, that sealed the new interest in Euripides' play.