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XX.—Balaustion's Adventure as an Interpretation of the Alcestis of Euripides
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Balaustion's Adventure was first published in 1871. From that time until the present scholars have differed in opinion as to whether the poem misrepresents the Alcestis of Euripides, which it aims to interpret, and, if so, to what extent. The particular criticisms directed against Browning's interpretation have to do almost exclusively with his treatment of the characters of Admetus and Heracles. He makes Admetus selfish and cowardly; Heracles, essentially noble. Did Euripides think of them so? Professor Richard G. Moulton, writing for the Browning Society Papers in 1891, took exception to Browning's treatment of Admetus. He called Balaustion's Adventure “a beautiful misrepresentation of the original.” “Browning,” he said, “has entirely misread and misinterpreted Euripides' play of Alcestis.” … “The character he has read into the actions of Admetus is opposed to the view of him taken by all the personages of the story, gods, heroes, men; is opposed to the author's own intimations through the mouth of the Chorus; is countenanced only by the one personage whom all the rest including Alcestis hold guilty of the selfishness Browning has ascribed to Admetus.“ Verrall criticises Browning's interpretation of Heracles. He insists that the Heracles of Euripides is not the godlike helper of mankind which Browning would have us believe him to be, but a mere ”drunken athlete adventurer,“ a burlesque figure.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1917
References
1 Browning Society Papers, Part xiii, p. 148.
2 Ibid., p. 166.
3 Verrall, Euripides the Rationalist, p. 16.
4 Fortn. Rev., xvi, p. 490.
5 Amer. Journ. of Philol., xvii, p. 205.
6 Way, Euripides in English Verse, i, p. 421.
7 Way, i, p. 422.
8 Way, i, p. 423.
9 Note on Alcestis, v. 1147.
10 Verrall, pp. 11 ff.
11 Way, vv. 952 ff.
12 Verrall, pp. 34, 39, 40.
13 Gk. Class. Lit., I, Part ii, p. 103.
14 Amer. Phil. Assoc. Trans. (1898), pp. 65-6.
15 Ibid., p. 83.
16 Earle, Alcestis, p. xxviii.
17 Studies in Honor of Basil L. Gildersleeve, p. 333.
18 Ibid., pp. 333 ff.
19 Gilbert Murray, Alcestis, p. xii.
20 Note to vv. 604-5.
21 Balaustion's Adventure, vv. 1251-4.
22 Philologische Untersuchungen, ix, pp. 70 ff.
23 Browning has treated this phase of the subject in the introduction to Parleyings with Men of Importance in their Day.
24 Cited by Weil in Alceste, p. 5.
25 Philologische Untersuchtingen, ix, p. 66, note.
26 Bergk, Griech. Lit.-Gesch., iii, p. 498.
27 Amer. Phil. Assoc. Trans. (1898), pp. 65 ff. See also Weil, Alceste, p. 5.
28 Murray, Alcestis, p. x.
29 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Euripides' Herakles, pp. 97-8.
30 Ibid., p. 98.
31 Ibid., p. 100.
32 Philol. Untersuchungen, ix, p. 66.
33 Jebb, The Trachiniae of Sophocles, Intro., p. xxi.
34 Athenaeus, Deipnosophists (tr. by C. D. Young), ii, p. 648, (Book x).
35 Murray, Alcestis, p. 27.
36 Way, Alcestis, vv. 499 ff.
37 Amer. Jour. of Philol., xvii, p. 52.
38 Vv. 837-860.
39 Patin, Études sur les tragiques grecs, i, p. 216.
40 Murray, Alcestis, Note to vv. 1008 ff.
41 Chapman, Greek Studies.
42 Verrall, Euripides the Rationalist, pp. 106 ff.
43 Paley, Euripides, i, p. 240.
44 Ibid., p. xiv.
45 Earle, Euripides' Alcestis (1894), p. xxv.
46 Jerram, Euripides' Alcestis (1895), p. xvii.
47 Hadley, The Alcestis of Euripides (1896), p. xviii.
48 Way, Euripides in English Verse, i, p. 423.
49 Murray, Alcestis, p. 78 (note to vv. 837 ff.).
50 Ibid., p. xiv.
51 Since the writing of this paper, J. A. K. Thomson's The Greek Tradition has come to my notice. In the chapter entitled “Alcestis and her Hero,” he says: “What Euripides does is to soften down the grotesque elements of the story until we just feel that they are there, lurking possibilities of laughter, giving a faintly ironic but extraordinarily human quality to the pathos of the central situation” (p. 135) … “The drunkenness of Heracles is a very mild affair … Heracles is a very attractive character. He is a big jovial man, with a great deal of good sense and kindly feeling under that rough lion-skin of his. He is that at all times; but he is something more. One of the finest things in the play is the revelation, at the call of an extreme danger, of the heroic strain in this unassuming son of the god. We are made to feel that the roistering mood of the feast was but the mask of a more permanent mood, a kind and cheerful stoicism, accepting, though fully conscious, the burden of its duty” (p. 138)… “Euripides has made us accept that transfiguration as natural, inevitable. This is great art” (p. 139).
52 Verrall's contention, already alluded to, that Euripides did not make Admetus truly hospitable and that Heracles upbraided him to the last with his unfriendly behavior, is left doubtful by a careful reading of the play.
53 Vv. 1055 ff.
54 Vv. 1076 ff.
55 Vv. 1216 ff.
56 Vv. 1246 ff.
57 Vv. 1724 ff.
58 Vv. 1765 ff.
59 V. 1779.
60 V. 1917.
61 V. 1921.
62 Plutarch's Lives (ed. by Langhorn, 1860), iii, p. 36.
63 Vv. 343 ff.
64 Vv. 2451-2.
65 Vv. 1476-89.
66 Vv. 2544-48.
67 Vv. 2571-2614.
68 Vv. 2632 ff.
69 Vv. 2416-25.