Published in the new Methuen Classical Dramatists series

The three plays in this volume straddle the borders between comedy and tragedy. Alkestis is a moving "romance" with death; it has parallels to Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. Helen, an alternative version of the tragic portrayal of the Trojan War, shows Helen "relocated in a delightful comedy" (Observer) - as an innocent victim of her own beauty, hidden in Egypt by the gods while her image has been abducted by Paris. In Ion, a father who thought he was childless discovers his son, and a son who thought he was motherless finds his mother.

Euripides was born near Athens between 485 and 480 BC. His first play was presented in 455 BC and he wrote some hundred altogether of which nineteen survive - a greater number than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles combined - and which include Alkestis, Medea, Bacchae, Hippolytos, Ion and Iphigenia at Aulis. He died in 406 BC.