Euripides' Helen starts with quite a lot of names and mythological background, forcing the reader to frequently consult the notes. But I decided to include this play as Michael Billington in The 101 Greatest Plays calls it "the greatest play by Euripides." Helen was written soon after the Sicilian Expedition, in which Athens
had suffered a massive defeat. In the play, Euripides strongly condemns
war, deeming it to be the root of all evil.
[Helen of Troy by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1863)]
Helen, the daughter of the supreme god Zeus and Leda in Greek mythology, was the most beautiful woman in the world. Zeus is said to have seduced Leda in the form of a swan and from the eggs Leda laid Helen and Pollux were born. When it came time for Helen to be married, many kings and princes came to ask for her hand. The favorite was Menelaus, who did not come in person but was represented by his brother Agamemnon, and Helen married him.
The myth goes that a few years later, Paris, a Trojan prince, came to Sparta to take the most beautiful girl in the world. This was Helen. Aphrodite had promised him her as a reward, if in return he would choose the goddess as the most beautiful in the "Judgement of Paris," incurring the wrath of Athena and Hera. When Paris visited Helen and Menelaus, they received him very warmly, and with Aphrodite's help, Helen fell in love with Paris and secretly left her husband to be with her new lover.
When Menelaus discovered that his wife was gone, he asked his brother Agamemnon for advice. Agamemnon, who had wanted to fight Troy for years, told his brother to declare war. Menelaus summoned all the kings and heroes of Greece to start the Trojan War. "A thousand ships" were launched by the Greeks to get Helen back from Troy.
After ten years of war, when he had finally entered Troy by ruse with the wooden horse, Menelaus wanted to kill Helen. But when Helen saw Menelaus, the spell broke and she fell in love with him again. Menelaus, unable to bring herself to kill her, took her back to Sparta and grew old with her.
So far the "official" myth. There was also a variant version which maintained that Helen had never in fact arrived at Troy, but had been in Egypt during the entire Trojan War - rather than running off to Troy with Paris, Helen was actually whisked away to Egypt by the gods. The Helen who escaped with Paris, betraying her husband and her country and initiating the ten-year conflict, was actually an "eidolon," a phantom look-alike. After Paris was promised the most beautiful woman in the world by Aphrodite and he judged her fairer than her fellow goddesses Athena and Hera, Hera ordered Hermes to replace Helen, Paris' assumed prize, with a fake. Thus, the real Helen has been languishing in Egypt for years, while the Greeks and Trojans alike scold her for her supposed infidelity.
At the beginning of the play, the Egyptian king Proteus, who has protected Helen, has died. His son Theoclymenus, the new king, intends to marry Helen, who after all these years remains loyal to her husband Menelaus. However, she receives word from the exiled Greek Teucer that Menelaus never returned to Greece from Troy, and is presumed dead, putting her in a perilous position. She consults the prophetess Theonoe, sister to Theoclymenus, to find out more about Menelaus' fate.
Her fears are allayed when a stranger arrives in Egypt and turns out to be Menelaus himself, who, beaten by storms out of his way, is shipwrecked on the coast of Egypt. At first, Menelaus does not believe that she is the real Helen, since he has hidden the Helen he won in Troy in a cave. But luckily one of his sailors steps in to inform him that the false Helen has disappeared into thin air.
The couple still must figure out how to escape from Egypt, but the rumor that Menelaus has died is still in circulation. Thus, Helen tells Theoclymenus that the stranger who came ashore was a messenger who came to tell her that her husband was truly dead. She informs the king that she may marry him as soon as she has performed a ritual burial at sea, thus freeing her symbolically from her first wedding vows. The king agrees to this, and Helen and Menelaus use this opportunity to escape on the boat given them for the ceremony.
[Helen, by Evelyn De Morgan (1898)]
Why is Helen such a great play? According to Michael Billington because it invents the new form of tragicomedy, and because Sophocles offers a strong indictment of war's futility. As Helen of Troy does not exist and is just a mirage, the whole Trojan War has been fought about nothing - as so many wars are, also in recent times. Instead of cheating on her husband with Paris and then eloping with him to Troy, the real Helen has spent 17 years living in Egypt as a model of marital fidelity. She is chastely waiting for her husband to return from the useless war.
When they finally meet, Helen has a quicker mind than her husband Menelaus, who has (understandably) some difficulty accepting the idea that he sailed to Troy in pursuit of a shadow. It is also Helen who comes up with the great plan for their escape from Egypt, by feigning that she has to carry out funeral obsequies for her deceased husband at sea. In other words, in Billington's words, "the whole play is a testament to female resourcefulness." It may be partly due to my selection and preferences, but also in Antigone, Electra and Medea we have met strong women.
I have read Helen in the translation by James Morwood in Oxford World's Classics.
The 101 Greatest Plays from Antiquity to the Present, by Michael Billington (Faber & Faber, 2015)
Illustrations from Wikipedia, from which I have also borrowed some parts of the synopsis.
Greatest Plays of All Time