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Gilbert Murray
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== Classicist == === Academic career === From 1889 to 1899, Murray was Professor of Greek at the [[University of Glasgow]].<ref>The most famous of his students there was [[John Buchan]], whom Murray helped to take a further degree at Oxford.[http://www.johnbuchansociety.co.uk/samples/classics.htm] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120204192919/http://www.johnbuchansociety.co.uk/samples/classics.htm|date=4 February 2012}} Others were [[H. N. Brailsford]] and [[Janet Spens]]. He left Glasgow because his health broke down.</ref> There was a break in his academic career from 1899 to 1905, when he returned to Oxford; he interested himself in dramatic and political writing. After 1908 he was [[Regius Professor of Greek (Oxford)|Regius Professor of Greek]] at the [[University of Oxford]].<ref>He was a noted and popular lecturer. Amongst those on whom he had a particular influence was [[Gilbert Highet]].[http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/1999/1999-01-08.html]</ref> In the same year he invited [[Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff]] to Oxford, where the Prussian philologist delivered two lectures: ''Greek Historical Writing'' and ''Apollo'' (later, he would replicate them in Cambridge).<ref>{{Cite web|title=Greek historical writing, and Apollo; two lectures delivered before the University of Oxford June 3 and 4, 1908 : Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich von, 1848β1931 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming|url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924028260630|access-date=2020-07-23|website=Internet Archive|language=en}}</ref><ref>The correspondence between Murray and Wilamowitz is now published in ''The Prussian and the Poet. The Letters of Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff to Gilbert Murray (1894β1930)'', ed. by A. Bierl, W. M. Calder III, R. L. Fowler (Hildesheim 1991).</ref> From 1925 to 1926, he was the [[Charles Eliot Norton Lectures|Charles Eliot Norton Lecturer]] at [[Harvard University]]. === Greek drama === Murray is perhaps now best known for his verse translations of [[Greek drama]], which were popular and prominent in their time. As a poet he was generally taken to be a follower of [[Algernon Charles Swinburne|Swinburne]] and had little sympathy from the [[modernist poet]]s of the rising generation.<ref>[[T. S. Eliot]] was rude: "As a poet, Mr. Murray is merely a very insignificant follower of the pre-Raphaelite movement." (from [http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw6.html ''Euripides and Professor Murray'', an essay in ''The Sacred Wood'' (1920)]). Swinburne was in fact a youthful enthusiasm of Murray's, and Eliot's identification of it has stuck; but Murray probably preferred Tennyson for content among the Victorians ([[Mary Berenson]] reported this in 1903, and it still held good 50 years on {{harv|West|1984|p=249}}.</ref> The staging of Athenian drama in English did have its own cultural impact.<ref>From the 1880s onwards, amateur performances in Greek had been popular, particularly for students dramaticals. See ''The Invention of Jane Harrison'' (2000) by [[Mary Beard (classicist)|Mary Beard]].</ref> He had earlier experimented with his own prose dramas, without much success. Over time he worked through almost the entire canon of Athenian dramas ([[Aeschylus]], [[Sophocles]], [[Euripides]] in tragedy; [[Aristophanes]] in comedy). From [[Euripides]], the ''[[Hippolytus (play)|Hippolytus]]'' and ''[[The Bacchae]]'' (together with ''[[The Frogs]]'' of [[Aristophanes]]; first edition, 1902);<ref name="atheniandrama3">First published in: ''The Athenian Drama, vol. III: Euripides'' (Euripides: Hippolytus; The Bacchae. Aristophanes: The Frogs. Translated into English rhyming verse), 1902 ({{OCLC|6591082}}); many reprints (together, separate, repackaged).</ref> the ''Medea'', ''Trojan Women'', and ''Electra'' (1905β1907); ''Iphigenia in Tauris'' (1910); ''The Rhesus'' (1913) were presented at the [[Royal Court Theatre|Court Theatre]], in London.<ref>See ''The Court theatre 1904β1907: a commentary and criticism'' by [[Desmond MacCarthy]], 1966 reissue with Stanley Weintraub.</ref> In the United States [[Harley Granville-Barker|Granville Barker]] and his wife [[Lillah McCarthy]] gave outdoor performances of ''The Trojan Women'' and ''Iphigenia in Tauris'' at various colleges (1915). The translation of ''[[Oedipus Rex|Εdipus Rex]]'' was a commission from [[W. B. Yeats]].<ref>R. F. Foster, ''W. B. Yeats: A Life'' I p. 334; early 1905. Foster also notes that Yeats and Murray corresponded about the [[Stage Society]]. Yeats was being provocative: ''Oedipus Rex'' could not be publicly presented on the British stage [https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLJ,GGLJ:2006-32,GGLJ:en&q=%22Oedipus+Rex%22+censorship], because the incest was unacceptable to the censors. Foster (II p. 338) notes that it was two decades later that the play was actually performed, but by then Yeats had adapted the Murray text, and [[R. C. Jebb]]'s, and made cuts, for a rather different result.</ref> Until 1912 this could not have been staged for a British audience, due to its depiction of [[incest]]. Murray was drawn into the public debate on censorship that came to a head in 1907{{sfn|Wilson|1987|p=172}} and was pushed by William Archer, whom he knew well from Glasgow, [[George Bernard Shaw]],<ref>Shaw was a friend, from Murray's time around 1902 looking into [[Fabianism]]βShaw had used Murray's marriage to Lady Mary Howard in 1905 as the basis for that of Barbara and Adolphus in ''[[Major Barbara (play)|Major Barbara]]''; see for example [[Michael Holroyd]]'s biography of Shaw, for Murray providing ideas for Act III; also ''"In More Ways than One": Major Barbara's Debt to Gilbert Murray'', Sidney P. Albert, Educational Theatre Journal, Vol. 20, No. 2 (May 1968), pp. 123β140</ref> and others such as [[John Galsworthy]], [[J. M. Barrie]] and [[Edward Garnett]]. A petition was taken to [[Herbert Gladstone, 1st Viscount Gladstone|Herbert Gladstone]], then Home Secretary, early in 1908. === The Ritualists === He was one of the scholars associated with [[Jane Ellen Harrison|Jane Harrison]] in the [[myth-ritual]] school of [[mythography]].<ref>[[Noel Annan]] (''The Dons: Mentors, Eccentrics and Geniuses'', 1999, p. 243) wrote "Gilbert Murray's remark that no one can write about Greek religion without being influenced by Jane Harrison seems truer now than when he made it."</ref> They met first in 1900.<ref>{{harvnb|West|1984|p=132}} says 1902 in Cambridge; but {{harvnb|Wilson|1987|p=119}} says 1900 in Switzerland. In both cases it was through [[A. W. Verrall]]. Both books say they met at [[Bernard Berenson]]'s Florence home in 1903, as Harrison was finishing ''Prolegomena'', and discussed it.</ref> He wrote an appendix on the [[Orphic tablets]] for her 1903 book ''Prolegomena''; he later contributed to her ''Themis'' (1912).<ref>''Excursus on the Ritual Forms Preserved in Greek Tragedy''; reprinted in {{cite book|title=The Myth and Ritual Theory|year=1998|editor-last=Segal|editor-first=Robert A.|publisher=Wiley|isbn=9780631206804}}. The editorial introduction writes (p. 95) "Murray views tragedy as the legacy of the ritualistic enactment of the myth of the life and death of [[Dionysus|Dionysius]]".</ref> [[Francis Fergusson]] wrote {{blockquote|In general the ritual had its agon, or sacred combat, between the old King, or god or hero, and the new, corresponding to the agons in the tragedies, and the clear "purpose" moment of the tragic rhythm. It had its ''Sparagmos'', in which the royal victim was literally or symbolically torn asunder, followed by the lamentation and/or rejoicing of the chorus: elements which correspond to the moments of "passion". The ritual had its messenger, its recognition scene and its epiphany; various plot devices for representing the moment of "perception" which follows the "pathos". Professor Murray, in a word, studies the art of tragedy in the light of ritual forms, and thus, throws a really new light onto Aristotle's ''Poetics''.<ref>[[Francis Fergusson]], ''The Idea of a Theatre'' (1949), reprinted in {{harvnb|Segal|1998|p=260}}</ref>}} === Ostracism === Murray's openly expressed pro-[[Irish Home Rule movement|Home Rule]] and [[Anti-imperialism|anti-imperialist]] views, combined with his failure to support the cause of retaining compulsory Greek, antagonised his colleagues at [[Oxford University]], who were mostly [[Conservative Party (UK)|Conservative]] and [[Unionism in Ireland|Unionist]]. In 1910, he recalled, only [[New College, Oxford|New College]], [[Balliol College, Oxford|Balliol College]] and [[Jesus College, Oxford|Jesus College]] continued to send pupils to his lectures; the absence of undergraduates from [[Christ Church, Oxford|Christ Church]], to which his Chair was attached, was particularly noticeable.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Symonds |first1=Richard |title=Oxford and Empire: The Last Lost Cause? |publisher=Oxford University Press|pages=80β98 |doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198203001.003.0006}}</ref>
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