Gilbert Murray, England's most famous classical scholar and poet-translator of the major Greek dramatists--especially Euripides--effectively revitalized Greek drama both on the stage and the printed page, bringing it to unprecedented popularity throughout the English-speaking world. Although he began his playwriting career with two original plays, it was his verse translations that won him international renown in the theater, amateur as well as professional. A public even larger than the audiences that attended performances of these translated classics avidly purchased their published texts--nearly 400,000 copies being sold during Murray's lifetime.

Murray's inventive freedom, personal vision of the ancient authors, and keen sense of theater contributed to the composition of lively, imaginatively embellished, and stageworthy verse versions of Hellenic drama. By the same token these works introduced at times marked deviations from the originals. The translator did not hesitate to refashion classical writings to the tastes of his day, nor, in...