摘要："The Troades, produced in 415, is perhaps the least interesting of the extant tragedies. The plot consists merely of unconnected scenes, depicting the miserable fate of the Trojan captives; and the execution is not in the best style of Euripides." So wrote A. E. Haigh in 18961). Since then, scholars have received the play more favorably, but Haigh's criticism of the disconnected plot remains. Apologists for The Trojan Wornen must defend a play which is un-Aristotelian in the extreme: the plot is not a single action but a sequence of episodes; it contains no major reversal offortunes; and it lacks a clear complication and denouement2). Especially striking is the absence of a major reversal or peripeteia. The play depicts the aftermath of a monumental reversal, the fall of Troy, where no significant change in fortune is possible for the captive women.
