El amor es representado por el sacrificio de Alcestis, esposa de Admeto. Ella decide perder su vida por salvar la de su esposo. Gran ejemplo de amor.

In Alcestis, Admetus is a king who is doomed to death by... well, Death himself, to put it simply; however, Death agrees to spare Admetus' early demise if someone else is to take his place. Alcestis, the king's wife, agrees to die in place of her husband, and so she dies, but not before she tells Admetus to never marry again. As a result, Admetus tells her that he will never marry again; in fact, he goes an extra step and agrees to never party again like he was used to doing.

Soon after, Heracles shows up at Admetus' palace; Admetus decides not to tell his good friend about the demise of his wife because he doesn't want to trouble him. Soon after, Heracles proceeds to get really drunk, thus irritating the servants so much that one eventually scolds him about what had just happened to the king concerning his wife. Heracles becomes shameful of his behavior, so he leaves, only to come back with a veiled woman whom he gives to Admetus. As it turns out, it's actually Alcestis, whom Heracles rescued from Death.

This entire play is a very interesting one in that it's kind of a tragicomedy, which I had not seen from Euripides up to this point. It's both a tragedy and a comedy in the most easy-to-understand sense there is, to be honest. While it's very sad that Alcestis apparently dies to save her husband, it's also very funny to read about Heracles acting like a blundering fool in the palace, just wasted out of his mind. I think that's why I took such a liking to it, because let's be real here- sometimes, the doom and gloom seen in a lot of Greek drama can really get too heavy sometimes.

Overall, I really think that the balance of serious and non-serious moments in this play did it very well; I'm not sure if this is a common type of play for Euripides, but I am hoping to see more of this type of play in the future.

Questa è la tragedia del sacrificio e dell’amore incondizionato: la protagonista Alcesti, donna decisa e moglie devota, decide di morire al posto di suo marito. Apparentemente, Alcesti potrebbe sembrare un'eroina tragica, ma mi chiedo se il suo sacrificio sia davvero mosso da un amore viscerale, o piuttosto dalla pressione di una società greca che imponeva alle donne di essere subordinate agli uomini, fino al punto di sacrificarsi per loro. Admeto, dal canto suo, rappresenta chiaramente la figura comune dell'uomo terrorizzato dall’idea della morte, disposto a lasciare che sua moglie perda la vita al posto suo senza opporre una ferma resistenza. Un certo dinamismo è introdotto dal personaggio di Eracle che, scendendo nell'Ade per salvare Alcesti, trasforma la tragedia in un racconto a lieto fine. Questo finale felice però rende l'opera meno tipicamente tragica, avvicinandola forse più al mito o all'epos, suggerendo una commistione di generi con un altalenarsi di toni tragici e comici che a dire il vero non ho apprezzato particolarmente. Ad essere onesta, nonostante Euripide abbia uno stile più ricco e vario rispetto ai suoi predecessori, forse è l’autore che apprezzo meno tra i grandi tragediografi greci, ma attendo di leggere altre opere per formare un giudizio più completo sulla sua poetica.

Give me anything by Euripides and I'll read it

3.5/5

I think it’s hard to judge a version of a play when you haven’t read the original, so forgive me for dropping critics on the story line instead of on the adaptation.

I thought this play was very interesting. Admetos is going to die, but he is afraid to. Since no one wants to die in his place, his wife Alcestis decides to do so. Everything that comes from this is quite thought-provoking. Admetos begs Alcestis to stay with him and he mourns her loss, which is all very ironic since he let her die. The most powerful part, though, is when Admetos gets mad at his father for not dying for him and they start arguing over whose fault it is that Alcestis died, and I thought these parts were the best, because it's about the real reason that Alcestis died:

Pheres:
(...)
You call me a coward?
Be careful what names you use for us
Who failed to die for you, at your request.
Think of the names that will be found for you.

Admetos:
(...)
Let the noblest woman on this earth
Die because he dare not.
He knows he made a mistake.

Pheres:
The only mistake would have been
Dying for you. The mistake
Made by that poor fool there, Alcestis.

Which develops into an even bigger argument (where I was totally like OOOOHHHH. TELL HIM BOIII :)) ).

So to me, everything involving the selfishness of Admetos was really interesting. And I thought the part where Heracles gets totally wasted and is reenacting all his heroic deeds with his servants was pretty comical.

What I didn’t like, however, was that Alcestis is being brought back, for two reasons. One, Heracles is being the hero again, which he really doesn’t deserve because it just boosts his ego. Two, Admetos doesn’t deserve it at all! I read in other reviews that this happy ending is to think about what’s left unsaid, but I just didn’t experience it that way. (Three, no juicy details about how it went - just two sentences about it from Heracles). I also got a bit annoyed by how God is being portrayed as non-omnipotent, and I thought it didn’t really add much to the story.

All in all it's surely not a bad read and it reads pretty easily so it's worth the try! :)

Admetos, king of Thessaly, is cursed to die young. Being a good king, the call goes out for someone to take on his early death. After everyone declines, including his aging parents, his wife, Alcestis, chooses to die.

First and foremost, this play is a meditation on the horror of profound loss. In the stark wailing language of Greek plays, that emotion is distilled and magnified.


ADMETOS
"...a pain too huge to utter.
Pain, dark pain.
Instead of light-pain
No refuge anywhere in me
From this fire, this huge dark single flame
that caresses my whole body "

While Admetos grief forms the center of the play, there are a number of satellite scenes that circle this dark core, each of which explores some aspect of the experience of death and grief. I'll go through some of them so you can see how this play worked for me and how it earned five stars.

**************

Admetus admits Hercules as an honored guest and hides the death of his wife, for fear his friend would avoid burdening his grieving host. Hercules gets drunk, and acts out his labors, all twelve of them, including those he's yet to complete as well as the freeing of Prometheus. Afterward, he wakes from his stupor and learns the truth: He's been partying while his best friend's wife lies dead.

This play within a play is fun for mythology buffs who get to count off the labors of Hercules (as it must've been for the ancient Greek audience). It also further explores how we hide death from ourselves. Hercules labors, completed in a drunken stupor, could easily correspond to the labors of humanity, undertaken in ignorance of the tragedy of death. We feel that same sudden shock when we remember that we have been working and playing in the shadow of death.

Another seeming digression is Admetus's argument with his parents. Who deserved to die, who deserved to take this death that was ultimately meant for Admetus? Who among us doesn't suppose, when a death occurs that someone else could have taken it for themselves? The questions people like to ask is, was Admetus selfish to stay alive? Was he sexist? (Probably, yeah.) But the point isn't to judge but to expose this emotional and poisonous reasoning that each of us carries within us. The chorus sees it's not really a quarrel between the king and his parents:

CHORUS
"Admetos is trying to gnaw himself
free from Admetos. Admetos
is spitting out the torn flesh and blood
of Admetos"

How devastatingly gory and profound!

******************

I can't do justice to the scope of this play. Here we explore the public and private spheres of grief. We explore duty and selfishness and the potential worth of one life over another. There are enough puzzles here for years of study. In the end, it's not important that we make sense of this massive work. It is enough that it cracks open the inner experience of grief, the agonies of life, hope, and despair in the face of fated death. Admetus's burden, and the burden of every human being, is transmuted into something inexplicably fine. Here is the essential power of the theater on full display.

A note on the translation: This translations is that of UK poet laureate Ted Hughes, and I think it's superb (I've no comparisons). It does contain anachronisms. I'm usually not cool with that, but as you can tell from my review, it didn't seem to bother me. I'm no scholar, but I suspect he took other liberties. As a stand alone work, this is one of the most incredible books I've ever read, but I wouldn't use this translation if I were making a serious study of Euripides.

Όχι τυχαία ο Ευρυπίδης έχει χαρακτηριστεί ως ¨από σκηνής φιλόσοφος". Ένα δραματικό έργο που κάθε στίχος αποτελεί μια ευκαιρία να στοχαστείς, να συγκινηθείς, να απορήσεις όταν συνειδητοποιείς πότε γράφτηκε...

Το έργο αφορά στην εθελοθυσία της βασίλισσας Άλκηστις που προθυμοποιείται να θυσιαστεί για να μην πεθάνει ο βασιλιάς άνδρα της και εμείς την "συναντούμε" όταν αυτή πλέον ψυχορραγεί. Ο χορός αναρωτιέται αν όντως πέθανε εγκωμιάζοντας τη βασίλισσα για την θυσία της.
Στο πρώτο "επεισόδιο¨η θεράπαινα υπηρέτρια μιλά για το θρήνο των παιδιών αλλά και των δούλων της Άλκηστις και την προετοιμασία της ίδιας για το θάνατο. Το έργο κορυφώνεται με την συνάντηση των συζήγων με το βασιλιά να υπόσχεται ισόβιο πενθος.
Στο πρώτο "στάσιμο" ο χορός κακίζει τους γέροντες γονείς του Άδμητου που δεν προθυμοποιήθηκαν οι ίδιοι να θυσιαστούν. Στο δεύτερο επεισόδιο ο Ηρακλής φιλοξενείται από τον Άδμητο νομίζωντας ότι πενθεί για κάποιο μακρινό ξένο. Μετά από μια εκρηκτική συνάντηση-κατηγορητήριο του Άδμητου με τον πατέρα του Φέρητα, ο Ηρακλής μαθαίνει τον πραγματικό λόγο του πένθους και αποχωρεί αποφασισμένος να βοηθήσει και καταφέρνει να απομακρύνει την βασίλισσα από τον Θάνατο φέρνοντας την πίσω τάχα ως έπαθλο από κάποιον αγώνα. Τελικά ο βασιλιάς την αναγνωρίζει και ο χορός κλείνει δίνοντας έμφαση στις θεεικές δυνάμεις που μπορούν να αλλάζουν όσα θεωρούμε αναπόφευκτα.

"Αφέντρα μου, έρχομαι πια κι εγώ κάτω στη γή
προσπέφτοντάς σου θα σε παρακαλέσω για τελευταία φορά
τα ορφανά παιδιά να προστατέψεις, στο γιο μου αξιαγάπητη γυναίκα δώσε και στην κόρη μου άνδρα καταγωγής μεγάλης. Μήτε όπως χάνομαι εγώ που τα γέννησα να πεθάνουν πρόωρα τα παιδιά μου, αλλλά ευτυχισμένα να περάσουν ευχάριστη ζωή.

A matter of life and death, and the unavoidable character of the latter, with a strange morality.

When Admetus allows his wife to die instead of him, challenges the notion of dying in the precise moment that was meant to be. His own father highlights this fact as cowardice that deprives him of the moral authority to ask for a better behavior of his part.

The play takes a happy turn when the husband's friendship with Heracles grants the comeback of the deceased wife.

As other reviewers pointed out, it's hard to figure out if such an ending makes it worthy of a "comedy" tag, with a tragic start... or a sort of pragmatic moral: to have powerful friends and means is the way to achieve your goals. Somehow it seems to be a praise of the influence in gods through means of material display of hospitality.

I read this as background essential to T.S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party, so we'll see how it relates to its source.

A tragedy of love/sacrifice and sorrow/loss. A comedy in which a loutish god saves the day.

Euripid, tvorac ljudske svesti!

Ted Hughes' translation and adaption breathed a freshness and modernity to Euipides' ancient Greek play. In 438 B.C., the Ancient Greeks would have been unfamiliar with Hughes' choices to use in his translation, electro-technocrats, hypodermic syringes, anesthesia, morphine, and asbestos. However, they did not detract but updated the play. I picked up Alcestis after reading about the play in The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides.

Death has come for Admetos, King of Thessaly. He can live another day if one of his kinfolk will take his place. Everyone he asks, including his elderly parents, refuse. His young wife, Alcestis, volunteers to take his place, and he willingly accepts her sacrifice. He promises her not to marry again and abstain from merrymaking. Admetos faces anger, suffering, despair, grief, and cowardice in his decision to allow the queen to replace him. However, when Heracles appears as a guest immediately after her death, Admetos decides not to tell him and instructs his household not to either. Heracles joyfully drinks and recounts his 12 labors. However, upon learning of Alcestis' death and Admetos' grief, Heracles confronts death to atone for his behavior.

Admetos — most prosperous King of his day, with even Apollo in his service — is destined to be taken too soon by Death and Fate, though a substitute can be given. Pheres, the father of the king, and the king's mother refuse, and Apollo asks of every possible relative to consider, but none are willing to give life for the sake of a long-thriving people and great King. In the midst of mourning, Heracles/Hercules arrives, and Admetos conceals the death of his Queen in respect of his fine guest, breaking the bond of friendship and abiding by Xenia, a paradoxical service and sin which Heracles ultimately forgives. Heracles, the archetypal revelling hero (just as Cu Chúllain, Achilles and Beowulf) goes into a drunken frenzy and drives the mourning servants mad with his two friends.
Heracles is finally told by a servant, and he takes it upon himself to venture into the underworld and take Alcestis back, in a sense correcting Orpheus' failure
Admetos is overjoyed, his wife only paying the cost of three days of silence in exchange for her revival, death defied by the Demigod larger than Fate and Death itself, soon to be deified himself, and hope imbued back into the heart of the king, and the lesson of proper respect paid to the dead even in the presence of an admirable guest.

One of my favorite Greek myths and a wonderful play — made further poignant with Hughes clear personal connection with the material as a mirror of his own life, and it is a sort of completion of the poetic delusion he had shortly after Assia Wevill's passing that the Orpheus myth could be successfully poeticised, which he did somewhat disingenuously with his manipulation of the myth in his children's play Orpheus.

But asides from this context within Hughes' oeuvre — made up of translations of other mythological plays — he expands upon some mythic sensibilities, particularly in the dramatic Bacchic ritual version of Hercules deeds so far, and his future ones, including oblique allusion to the fall of Paganism and the Hebrew God through Christ, as well as the Orpheus passage and other personalised sections by the Chorus (according to secondary reading [The Ted Hughes Society; Neill Roberts; Keith Sagar]).

The language is quote colloquial in the 'Bacchic'/Satyric section, but the rest of the language is relatively direct, almost primitive, as is Hughes dramatic-verse form in general. The verse is free, and more structured in moments, but still loose. Hughes continues to be the modern voice most prominently capable of interpreting myths.

I look forward to reading both more Euripides and Hughes' other myth plays, Phédre, Oedipus and The Oresteia.
I also direct anyone who read this or his other plays to the volume 'Selected Translations,' edited by the co-founder and editor of the journal 'Modern Poetry in Translation,' containing his early translation of an Odyssey extract for the BBC.