<DIV><P>From <I>The Persians</I><BR>"Defeat is impossible<BR>Defeat is unthinkable<BR>We have always been the favorites of fate. <BR>Fortune has cupped us<BR>In her golden palms.<BR>It has only been a matter<BR>Of choosing our desire. Which fruit<BR>To pick from the nodding tree."</P><P>This chilling passage is from Ellen McLaughlin&rsquo;s new adaptation of <I>The Persians </I>by Aeschylus, the earliest surviving play in Western literature, an elegy for a fallen civi-lization and a warning to its new conqueror. As Margo Jefferson wrote in the <I>New York Times</I>, "The play is a true classic: we see the present and the future right there, inside the past. And when writers give us a &lsquo;new version&rsquo; (a translation or adaptation) of a classic, they both serve and use it. They serve the playwright&rsquo;s gifts by refusing to simplify. But they can&rsquo;t just imitate. Every age has its own rhythms and drives. The classic must make us feel the new acutely. Ellen McLaughlin serves and uses <I>The Persians </I>with true power and grace."</P><P>Also included in this volume: <I>Iphigenia and Other Daughters </I>(from Euripides and Sophocles); <I>The Trojan Women </I>(Euripides); <I>Helen </I>(Euripides); and <I>Lysistrata </I>(Aristophanes), all powerfully realized and as relevant today as when they were first performed.</P><P>Ellen McLaughlin&rsquo;s plays include <I>Days and Nights Within, A Narrow Bed, Infinity&rsquo;s House</I> and <I>Tongue of a Bird</I>, which have been widely produced. She is a past finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and was the co-winner of the Great American Play Contest. Also an accomplished actor, Ms. McLaughlin is most known for having originated the part of the Angel in Tony Kushner&rsquo;s <I>Angels in America</I>, appearing in every U.S. production through its Broadway run.</P></DIV>