Explores the influence of the Greek Electra myth on theatre, from Shakespeare's Hamlet - more than a thousand years after the classical Greek period - to the twentieth-century. As we read the plays in this volume, we will question: Are we still locked into theses oppositions? If so, how do they effect the world we live in?

Shakespeare's Hamlet--written 1,000 years after the classical Greek period--follows a narrative pattern similar to that of the Greek Electra myth, and it isn't the only story to do so. We see signs of Electra's influence again in the 20th-century works of Oscar Wilde, Eugene O'Neill and T.S. Eliot, among others. This revised and updated edition will look more closely at the influence of Electra on popular culture throughout history and the questions it poses regarding oppositions such as logic versus instinct, night versus day and repression versus freedom.