Oresteia: The Medwin-Shelley Translation. Aeschylus, translated by Percy Bysshe Shelley & Thomas Medwin. Edited and with Foreword by John Lauritsen. 192 pages. Trade paperback (left), $14,  ISBN 978-0-943742-16-8, Pagan Press 2011.  Also available as a Kindle book (right) on Amazon for $3.99 .

    The Aeschylus plays that make up the Oresteia trilogy — Agamemnon, Choëphori (Libation Bearers), and Eumenides (the Kindly Ones) — are among the supreme masterpieces of world literature. This book is the first publication for over 170 years of a forgotten masterpiece of translation, done by Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of our greatest poets, and his friend and cousin, Thomas Medwin.
    When published separately in the 1830s, under Medwin's byline, the translations were critically acclaimed as “by far the best” into English, having “fire, spirit, and general correctness.” But they were not reprinted, and are now known to few, if any, students of English literature.
    Editor John Lauritsen demonstrates, through both biographical and textual evidence, that Shelley must be acknowledged as a full collaborator in the Oresteia translation. Shelley was an extraordinarily gifted translator, rivaled only, if at all, by Pope and Dryden. He was not concerned with slavishly literal, word-for-word translation, but with re-creating the full and entire sense — the energy, wit, irony and pathos — of the original. Shelley was the master of more verse forms than any other poet in English: this translation contains intricate verse forms of his own devising, as well as traditional sonnets, Spenserian stanzas, and odes.
    Shelley's hand is as unmistakable in the dialogue as in the verse passages, for he was a master of dialogue, as shown in his translations from Plato and Goethe, his plays, novels, and verse dramas. While maintaining an Aeschylean formality, the language is idiomatic, and the lines can effectively be spoken. Given actors and an audience accustomed to Shakespeare, Oresteia: The Medwin-Shelley Translation could successfully be put on the stage.
    The Medwin-Shelley translation is still unequalled for dramatic power and poetry.  Editor John Lauritsen regards this translation as the greatest play in the English language, bar none.


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