List of illustrations; Notes on contributors; Foreword Paul Cartledge; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; 1. Sophocles: the state of play Simon Goldhill and Edith Hall; Part I. Between Audience and Actor: 2. The audience on stage: rhetoric, emotion, and judgement in Sophoclean theatre Simon Goldhill; 3. 'The players will tell all': the dramatist, the actors and the art of acting in Sophocles' Philoctetes Ismene Lada-Richards; 4. Deianeira deliberates: precipitate decision-making and Trachiniae Edith Hall; Part II. Oedipus and the Play of Meaning: 5. Inconclusive conclusion: the ending(s) of the Oedipus Tyrannus Peter Burian; 6. The third stasimon of Oedipus at Colonus Chris Carey; 7. The logic of the unexpected: semantic diversion in Sophocles, Yeats (and Virgil) Michael Silk; 8. The French Oedipus of the inter-war period Fiona Macintosh; Part III. Constructing Tragic Traditions: 9. Theoretical views of Athenian tragedy in the 5th century BC Kostas Valakas; 10. Athens and Delphi in Aeschylus' Oresteia Angus Bowie; 11. Feminized males in Bacchae: the importance of discrimination Richard Buxton; 12. Hektor's helmet glinting in a fourth-century tragedy Oliver Taplin; 13. Seeing a Roman tragedy through Greek eyes: Shakespeare's Julius Caesar Chris Pelling; Bibliography; Index.