Drama by Jane Lumley.

At some point in the early 1550s, Lady Jane Lumley, daughter of the Earl of Arundel, translated Euripides’ play Iphigenia at Aulis into English, becoming both his first English translator and the first known Englishwoman to write a play. Although her achievement has sometimes been scorned and her grasp of Greek derided, recent scholarship has provided new evidence for her competence and shown that the play offers a powerful meditation on the fate of Lumley’s cousin, Lady Jane Grey. It also introduces new implications and emphases not present in the original, including an interest in the concept of the commodity and Arthurian overtones. Lumley’s translation may also have influenced a play possibly commissioned by her widower to greet James VI and I to Newcastle, and it continues to be performed.