Herakles: A Play in Verse
In "J.B." (which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1959), Archibald MacLeish explored the story of Job, the myth of man's quarrel with God, the ancient human cry for justification of the injustice of the universe. In his new play, "Herakles" - his first since "J.B." - MacLeish turns to the counter myth, the story of the Greek hero Herakles, who masters the evils of the universe and becomes a god himself only to find that he has murdered his own sons. As in "J.B.", the myth in "Herakles" becomes a myth not of the fabulous past but of the actual present. The scene is contemporary Greece: a hotel room in Athens; a distant, ruined temple frequented by guides and tourists…