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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2014
Elucidation of the imbricate ironies in the Alcestis has been an important dimension of much of the scholarship on the play during the past twenty five years. Another type of inquiry, best represented by the work of A. P. Burnett, has been the identification of typologies of plot and scene. Both approaches share, however, a common deficiency in the subjectivity of their analyses of character. Is Heracles ‘a big-hearted, stupid glutton and drinker’ (Beye) or ‘the one man in the world who does not pursue a hedonistic career’, the hero whose ‘cause is freedom, the freedom of spirit and freedom of action’ (Rosemeyer)? How are we to view Admetus' spontaneous proposal to commission a statue of Alcestis as a surrogate wife for his bed? Is this ‘a promise that is positive, delicately stated, and filled with a powerful meaning’ (Burnett), or is it ‘difficult to believe that a fifth-century audience would not have found the idea ludicrous and disgusting’ (Beye)? Is Alcestis ‘a tragic heroine’, one whose love for Admetus motivated her sacrifice (Barnes, Dale), or a rather cold figure, not above emotional blackmail (Beye)? Is Admetus ultimately guided to success by his ‘nobility’ (Burnett) or one whose person, apart from his vague hosiotēs (‘piety’), offered no particular interest to Euripides (Dale)? A sampling shows that the discrepancy of critical perception is often so intense as to suggest the existence of an entirely new, exquisitely subtle facet of Euripidean irony which survives as a wilfully dolose legacy to the community of scholars.
1. See, for instance, Smith, Wesley D., ‘The Ironic Structure in Alcestis ’, Phoenix 14 (1960), 127–145 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; von Fritz, Kurt, ‘The Happy Ending of Alcestis ’, in Twentieth Century Interpretations of Euripides' Alcestis, ed. Wilson, John R. (Englewood Cliffs, 1968), 80–84 Google Scholar; Wilson, John R., Introduction to Twentieth Century Interpretations of Euripides' Alcestis (Englewood Cliffs, 1968), 9–11 Google Scholar; Beye, Charles R., tr. and comm., Alcestis by Euripides (Englewood Cliffs, 1974), 10 Google Scholar (hereafter: Beye); Nielsen, Rosemary M., ‘Alcestis: A Paradox in Dying’, Ramus 5 (1976), 92–102 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (hereafter: Nielsen). All references in this study to the text of the Alcestis are from Dale, A. M., ed. and comm., Euripides: Alcestis (Oxford, 1954) (hereafter: DaleGoogle Scholar).
2. Burnett, Anne Pippin, Catastrophe Survived: Euripides' Plays of Mixed Reversal (Oxford, 1971), 22–46 (hereafter: BurnettGoogle Scholar).
3. Beye, 8; Rosenmeyer, Thomas G., The Masks of Tragedy: Essays on Six Greek Dramas (Austin, 1963), 234 (hereafter: RosenmeyerGoogle Scholar).
4. Burnett, 36; Beye, 8.
5. Barnes, Hazel E., ‘Greek Tragicomedy’, CJ 60 (1964), 129 Google Scholar; Dale, xxvi; Beye, 76 (ad 280) and 78 (ad 328).
6. Burnett, 45; Dale, xxvii.
7. Cf. Linforth, Ivan M., ‘The Husband of Alcestis’, Queen's Quarterly 53 (1946), 148 Google Scholar, for an interesting statistical analysis of the assignment of spoken lines in the play.
8. An unusually sympathetic discussion of Heracles' character is, however, offered by Rosenmeyer, 233-35.
9. Eliot, T. S., ‘Hamlet and his Problems’, Selected Essays, 1917-1932 (New York, 1932), 124–125 Google Scholar.
10. Cf. Beye, Charles R., ‘Alcestis and her Critics’, GRBS 2 (1959), 112 Google Scholar, n. 7. While I endorse Beye's questioning of Dale's insistence on the importance of rhetoric in the play, I consider the reactions of characters to each other to be clearly incidental to the posture they assume in the face of death.
11. In his chapter entitled ‘Alcestis: Character and Death’ (op. cit. 201-248), Rosenmeyer, too, stresses the role of death as a ‘catalyst … for the isolation of character’ (207), but his subsequent discussion oscillates confusingly between (a) observations on the psychology of the characters which are destined to prove that ‘they are, in fact, modern men’ (209; cf. 223); (b) subjective judgments in support of his view that the play is a ‘gentle anatomy of the unheroic soul’ (217 and passim — eig. 227 [‘At the moment of her death she despises her husband and twists the knife in his wound’], 230 [‘On the part of Alcestis, assurance, asperity, malice, contempt’], 235-36 [‘To this extent Admetus' silence is selfish, a further token of his lack of fiber’], 238 [‘Admetus, to be sure, behaves like a cad’]); and (c) final arguments that Euripides' ‘commedia’ (215) is a kind of morality tale in which Admetus' ‘admission of his cowardice’ (242) during the arti manthariō speech dramatizes the ‘dawning of guilt upon a soul in the process of conversion’ (241). The general weakness of Rosenmeyer's approach is most clearly indicated by his sudden disavowal of the ‘study of character’ and ‘the anatomy of the soul’ (242) because ‘Psychological realism disenchants’ (243), so that ‘The last scene is pure fairy tale, to finish the play satisfactorily. Realistic portraiture and clinical psychology are left far behind. Euripides has said what he wanted to say by the time the closing scene opens’ (244). However lively his insights and breezy his style, Rosenmeyer's treatment of the play is seriously flawed by inconsistency and incompleteness.
12. Cf. Linforth (above n. 7), 148.
13. Cf. Burnett, 42.
14. Cf. Rosenmeyer, 218, 223-24.
15. Golden, Leon, ‘Euripides' Alcestis: Structure and Theme’, CJ 66 (1970), 117 Google Scholar.
16. Cf. Dale, 52 (ad 10); Nielsen, 94.
17. This and most other translations in this study are from Beye.
18. Cf. Beye, 76 (ad 280), 78 (ad 328).
19. Cf. Beye, 6.
20. Cf. the insistence on Admetus' losing, missing, and erring in 144, 242, 327 , 342, 418; Beye, 67 (ad 144).
21. Hippolytus, too, appears to die on stage at the end of Euripides' play. Cf. Barrett, W. S., Euripides, Hippolytus (Oxford, 1964), 416 (ad 1459-61Google Scholar).
22. Cf. Heracles' remonstration in 1008-18 for Admetus' inadequate trust in his loyalty.
23. Cf. Dale, 102 (ad 600ff.); Beye, 92 (ad 600ff.).
24. Cf. Beye, 94 (ad 643-666).
25. Cf. also 761-64, where the servant assigned to Heracles openly accuses Admetus of tolerating the dishonoring of Alcestis' memory.
26. Cf. Golden (above n. 15) 119-120.
27. Cf. the grim pun in 740.
28. Cf. 418-19, 685-86, 692-93, 712.
29. Cf. Rosenmeyer, 240-42 and Dale, 118 (ad 935), both of whom see this scene as the climacteric of the play for Admetus.
30. Cf. Dale, 119 (ad 939). On Admetus' concern for reputation, cf. Nielsen, 99.
31. Kazantzakis, Nikos, Zorba the Greek, tr. Wildman, Carl (New York, 1959), 100–101 Google Scholar. In his essay entitled ‘ Zorba the Greek, Nietzsche, and the Perennial Greek Predicament’, Ant R 25 (1965), 147–163 Google Scholar, Peter Bien's discussion of the paralysis of the narrator-Boss, in confrontation with the dynamic ‘strong pessimism’ of Zorba, offers many provocative points of comparision between the Alcestis and Kazantzakis' novel.
32. For Zorba's exhortation to folly, see Kazantzakis (above n. 31), 300; cf. Bien (above n. 31), 156-157.
33. Erōs appears specifically in the last part of the play in 866 and again in 1080, quite apart from its implicit expression in Admetus' sexual anxiety in 1049-65. Cf. Beye, 111 (ad 1080ff.).
34. Cf. Dale, 95 (ad 509).
35. Only after having completed most of this essay did I come upon Justina Gregory's recent ‘Euripides’ Alcestis ', Hermes 107 (1979), 259–270 Google Scholar. Despite our common emphasis on the fundamental importance of death for understanding the play, Gregory charts a quite different course in her investigation of the ‘pattern of loss of distinctions’ as the source of ‘a certain unity’ (262) in the episodes of the play. Much of her discussion is sensitive and often compelling, but I cannot accept her conclusions that ‘By the end of the play he (Admetus) is back where he stood before Apollo's intervention, bound by Necessity but unaware of it,’ or that ‘Heracles’ truest proof of friendship is not that he rescues Alcestis from the underworld but that he restores Admetus to ignorance — Prometheus' gift to mankind’ (270).
