Tantalus: The Greek Epic Cycle Retold in Ten Plays

When theatre began, two and a half millennia ago in ancient Greece, it drew from a well of even older myths, the Great Epic Cycle. These myths were Europe's first image of the tragedy and comedy of the human enterprise. Stories and characters from the beginning of our imagination inspired John Barton to write the great cycle of human life Tantalus, an epic theatre myth for the new millennium.

Its subject is the Trojan War, a crusade which becomes a catastrophe. Helen of Troy - was she really the cause of this ten-year war? Agamemnon's anguish - did he have to kill his daughter to start the war? Clytemnestra - was her murderous revenge justified? A wooden horse - how can it destroy a great city? Heroes humbled, children hurt, mothers and fathers bereaved, entire nations shaken and rebuilt: all pass through this kaleidoscope of human fate.

This new, revised and streamlined edition of Tantalus is the culmination of a life-time's work.

John Barton is a director and an Advisory Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company (which he helped found in 1959). He spent nearly 20 years developing his epic Tantalus, which is an extension of his earlier work, The Greeks (1980). He has adapted some twenty texts for the theatre and has also published, The First Stage, The Hollow Crown, The Wars of the Roses, The Greeks, La Ronde and Playing Shakespeare.