When was alcestis written

Selfishness : Perhaps the most astounding aspect of the play is that Admetus selfishly clings to his own life while allowing his wife to die for him. Keep in mind, though, that Euripides was following Remorse : Admetus wins back a small measure of respect from the reader when he expresses remorse for allowing his wife to die for him.

Hospitality : To the ancient Greeks, hospitality was extremely important. One was obliged to welcome and entertain visitors and to provide them food, drink and lodging. Admetus demonstrates the importance of hospitality when he receives Heracles as a guest and withholds from him news of the death of Alcestis.

Definition and Background. Cummings Study Guide. More Info. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy. Cummings Guides Home Type of Work. First Performance. The endings remind me of each other so. Death and Resurrection in Ancient Greece 9 April I can now understand why they call this a problem play: for most of the play it is a tragedy but suddenly, at the end, everything turns out all right. One commentary I have read on this raises the question of whether it is a masterpiece or a train wreck.

What we need to remember though is that this would have been one of the seven plays of Euripides that were selected to be preserved and I say this because unlike the other two classic playwri Death and Resurrection in Ancient Greece 9 April I can now understand why they call this a problem play: for most of the play it is a tragedy but suddenly, at the end, everything turns out all right.

What we need to remember though is that this would have been one of the seven plays of Euripides that were selected to be preserved and I say this because unlike the other two classic playwrights, he have a whole volume of Euripidean plays that came down to us along with the seven masterpieces.

However it is the myth sitting behind this play that we need to consider, and it seems that Euripides actually added nothing to the myth, and the resurrection of Alcestis at the conclusion of the play is something that existed in the original myth. The story was that Alcestis was an incredibly beautiful woman surprise, surprise and her father held a contest to see who would be the most worthy suitor - Admentus won the contest.

With regards to Admentus, he had helped Apollo by taking care of the god after he had been kicked out of Olympus, and Apollo rewarded Admentus by helping him complete the task to win over Alcestis' father. However, after the marriage, Admentus did not make the required sacrifice and was to die, but once again Apollo intervened and saved his life by making the furies drunk. The catch was that somebody had to die in Admentus' place.

This is a little different than what I gathered from the play, and that was that for helping Apollo, Admentus was given the gift of a longer life, but there was a sting in the tail, and that was that somebody else had to willing give up their life.

Admentus' parents basically told him to bugger off, but Alcestis, his wife, stepped in as the sacrifice, much to Ademntus' horror.

The play begins with Alcestis dying, and this happens pretty quickly. However, while Admentus and his household is in mourning, Heracles rocks up on his way to Thrace to complete one of his tasks. Now, hospitality is very, very important to the Greeks, and despite his mourning, Heracles is welcomed into the house and given guest quarters, however he is not told what is happening.

Heracles finds out after speaking to a servant, and in appreciation for Admentus opening up his house, he goes and defeats death and brings Alcestis back to life. Now, here is another instance of resurrection in Greek mythology. Here we have Heracles defeating death to bring someone back to life, however this differs from Christian mythology in that a second person steps in to overturn death, even though he is the son of Zeus.

This is more like Jesus bringing Lazerus back to life as opposed to Christ returning from the dead. However we do see glimpses here of the concept of the son of God defeating death.

Admentus is truly a tragic character, probably one of the most tragic of the Greek heroes that I have read, though I note that it is Euripides that seems to use this the best.

However, it does not end badly for Admentus, and his tragic flaw: his desire for a long life; does not truly bite him.

In a way it causes division within his family, such as with the death of Alcestis and the fact that he drives away his father. Admentus is a truly selfish individual - what right does he have demanding the life of his father-in-law so that he might live longer. It does not work like that, and it seems that Euripides is in agreement.

This play is about death, pure and simple, and how death destroys relationships. We also get a glimpse into the mind of Admentus, as he mourns over the death of his wife. We see that despite his longer life it is no longer a life worth living and in fact he no longer wants to spend any time where he will be reminded of Alcestis' sacrifice. I guess the main reason he mourns so hard is not the futility and meaninglessness of death as some Christians might suggest but rather because the death came about through his own selfish desire to live longer.

Yet he does not learn from this, and in fact he is rewarded for his selfishness. Okay, it is clear that the reward comes not from his own failings as a human being, but rather because despite his grief and mourning though I doubt a psychologist would suggest that this is the natural grief process he still fulfilled his duty towards his guest.

Also, despite his lying to Heracles, Heracles still saw fit to reward him for his hospitality. Still, those last five pages where Alcestis returns from the dead, despite her no longer having a voice in the play, just does not seem to sit right.

May 19, Steven rated it liked it Shelves: euripides , plays , ancient-greek , literature. In Alcestis , the god Apollo rewards Admetus, king of Pherae in Thessaly, for his hospitality by arranging that on the day of the king's death someone else perishes instead of him.

Admetus's old parents selfishly? After she dies, in dramatic fashion, Heracles visits Admetus's house; not wanting to turn away a friend by making him feel that he cannot stay and enjoy himself in times of mourning, he conceals the news of hi In Alcestis , the god Apollo rewards Admetus, king of Pherae in Thessaly, for his hospitality by arranging that on the day of the king's death someone else perishes instead of him.

After she dies, in dramatic fashion, Heracles visits Admetus's house; not wanting to turn away a friend by making him feel that he cannot stay and enjoy himself in times of mourning, he conceals the news of his wife's death and receives him with great hospitality.

Yet Heracles soon discovers what has happened through the deeply saddened servants. In gratitude to his friend's unwavering hospitality, Heracles goes off to wrestle with Death, duly defeats him, and brings Alcestis back. There is quite a bit of debate about whether Alcestis is actually a tragedy, given its happy ending. I personally don't think it matters much how we categorize it. Ted Hughes' translation and adaption breathed a freshness and modernity to Euipides' ancient Greek play.

In B. However, they did not detract but updated the play. Death has come for Admetos, King of Thessaly. He can live another Ted Hughes' translation and adaption breathed a freshness and modernity to Euipides' ancient Greek play.

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.

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 3.

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. 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. 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.

Three, no juicy details about how it went - just two sentences about it from Heracles. 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.

Pain, dark pain. Instead of light-pain No refuge anywhere in me From this fire, this Admetos, king of Thessaly, is cursed to die young. 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.

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. Admetos is spitting out the torn flesh and blood of Admetos" How devastatingly gory and profound!

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. 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. Apr 25, sologdin rated it it was ok Shelves: ancient , of-best-sentence-and-moost-solaas. The play opens with the agon of Apollo and 'Death' Atropos, maybe, or Thanatos? The text acknowledges that this practice sets up a fungibility of persons that, assuming normal market mechanisms The play opens with the agon of Apollo and 'Death' Atropos, maybe, or Thanatos?

The text acknowledges that this practice sets up a fungibility of persons that, assuming normal market mechanisms, will "favor the rich" l. For her part, Alcestis does not sell her life dearly, asking only in recompense, what I shall ask you--not enough, oh never enough, since nothing is enough to make up for a life, but fair, and you yourself will say so, since you love these children as much as I do; or at least you should.

Keep them as masters in my house, and do not marry again and give our children to a stepmother. Meanwhile, Heracles shows up in town, on the way to Thrace for his 8th labor, the anthropophagic mares of Diomedes, for whom humans are equally fungible, as it happens, as they are for Atropos or for Admetus, if we get down to it.

Because he is friends with Admetus, he takes it upon himself to wrestle Atropos "Beside the tomb itself. I sprang and caught him in my hands" ll. Yay, stunningly silly eucatastrophe! Oct 13, Sarah rated it it was amazing Shelves: greek-drama , favorites. In Alcestis , Admetus is a king who is doomed to death by 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, Heracl In Alcestis , Admetus is a king who is doomed to death by 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.

This was such a phenomenal, fantastic read! I might be a bit biased because I'm a big fan of the Classics and especially Euripides' plays, but I'm convinced that everyone would find think that this one is incredible!

To let you decide for yourself I'm not going to write a raving review, I'm just going to leave you with one of my favourite pieces of this play: Death: "What you call death Is simply my natural power, The pull of my gravity.

And life Is a brief weightlessness - an aberration From the s This was such a phenomenal, fantastic read! And life Is a brief weightlessness - an aberration From the status quo - which is me. Happy reading! 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. 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 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 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.

Apart from Antigone, I struggle to really appreciate Greek plays. I can also see how Euripides takes us through grief and regret and shame but in a rather unsatisfying way. Perhaps I need more time to think about this one. Thou drawest breath even now, long past thy portioned hour of death. By murdering her And blamest my faint heart, coward, who hast let a woman play thy part and die to save her pretty soldier. Life is not life, but just unhappiness.

This he who lives in shame because he dared not die! He gave instead the woman whom he loved, and so is fled from death. He counts himself a man withal! And seeing his parents died not at his call he hates them, when himself he dared not die. Thy fate I praise not Thou drawest breath even now, long past thy portioned hour of death. Thy fate I praise not.

Yet, what gift soe'er God giveth, man must steel himself and bear. Really like the story and the commentary was very insightful!

Aug 29, Kylie Crawford rated it really liked it. Read this because I read the Silent Patient, and found it interesting. Nov 12, Alex rated it really liked it Shelves: rth-lifetime , reading-through-history , This is a review of the play, not this translation. I read Paul Roche's translation, which as usual was clear but not smashingly elegant. Bleak is the road I am coming.

Alcestis, the earliest of his extant plays, shows Euripides doing what he does best: overturning the rocks of myth and poking at the worms underneath. The story: Admetus has been promised by his buddy Apollo that he can escape death if, when his time comes, he can convince someone else to die in his place.

Sadly, no one wants t This is a review of the play, not this translation. Sadly, no one wants to do this for Admetus except his loving wife, Alcestis, who faithfully dies for him. And if that sounds like "WTF dude" to you, well, folks did things differently back then - but actually it sounds pretty fucked up to Euripides too, so here we go. The juicy part of the play comes when Admetus's dad Pheres shows up. Admetus is on his way to bury Alcestis, and he's understandably a bit raw, and he starts raging at his dad, who is after all super old and why couldn't he have died?

And his dad is like "I'm the coward, you say, you - you prince of cowards Shown up by a woman who died for you! Keep your mouth shut, coward, and remember If you love your life, so does everybody.

Once again, Euripides the trickster breaks the cocks off the Greek statues. The play is confused by the intervention of Heracles, who view spoiler [kinda bails everyone out and gives us a sudden happy ending. Fuckin' Heracles, right? It's often, as my boy Ronald points out, difficult to classify Euripides' plays, and that holds true here. It mixes comic and tragic tones and leaves you unsure what you've got.

Update: with time, the deus ex Heracles has kinda gotten to me; I'm downgrading this to four stars because of the ending. View all 3 comments. Timeless play, awesome translation. My review from which is apparently too long for this site character limit?

I am not a god. I am the magnet of the cosmos. What you call death Is simply my natural power, The pull of my gravity. And life Is a brief weightlessness-an aberration From the status quo-which is me.