When Death come for him, Admetus, king of Thessaly, is terrified. Apollo cuts a deal on his behalf: someone else can take his place. Admetus is not greatly loved. His aged parents decline to stand in for him. Only his wife, Alcestis, will go in his stead.
Admetus makes a great show of caring for his wife. His “care” is ironic. When the chorus says, “Surely, he must be doing all he can for her,” we are choking on irony.
Irony is one of the hallmarks of tragicomedy, and we are in neck deep.
It takes Admetus a long time to see that he’s lost himself along with his wife. When he confronts his father and calls him a coward, old Pheres lets him have a look in the mirror.
Heracles, an ill-timed guest, arrives, and Admetus doesn’t have the heart to tell him that it’s Alcestis who has died. Heracles gets tipsy and is a terrible guest. But when he discovers the truth, he goes and gets her back by brute force.
Among the good lines in the play, I like one from the opening scene, where Apollo is arguing with Death, saying he should wait until Alcestis is old. We don’t expect Death to be deft with words. But Euripides’ Death is, prompting Apollo to say:
What is this? Have you unrecognized talents from debate?
(A freer translation, suggested by Professor H.D.F. Kitto, might be: “And so you’re an intellectual now?”)
When Death comes for me, I hope I remember that line.
• Sources: H.D.F. Kitto, Greek Tragedy; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1954. The chapter “New Tragedy: Euripides’ Tragi-Comedies” is on pp. 327-47. Alcestis, translated by Richmond Lattimore, is in Euripides I in The Complete Greek Tragedies, edited by David Grene and Richmond Lattimore; Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1953, pp. 1-53. The quotation is on p. 9.
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