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It expresses Browning's highest conception of the union of soul with soul: Therewith her whole soul entered into his, He looked the look back, and Alkestis died died only to be rejected by Hades, as still living, and with a more potent life, in her husband's heart and will. Yet the mortal cloud is round these mortals still; they cannot see things as the gods see.
The new Admetos, new Alkestis, imagined by Balaustion at the close of the poem, are wedded lovers who, like the married in Pompilia's dream of heaven, "know themselves into one." For them the severance of death has become an impossible thing; and therefore no place is left for Herakles in this treatment of the story.
Perhaps it would have been wiser to admit that Euripides has marred his own work by this grim tragic-comic encounter of crabbed age and youth. But it is true that one who has much to give, like Alkestis, gives freely; and one who has little to give, like Pheres, clutches that little desperately and is starved not only in possessions but in soul.
By a happy and original device the transcript of the Alkestis is much more than a translation; it is a translation rendered into dramatic action for we see and hear the performers and they are no longer masked and this is accompanied with a commentary or an interpretation.
[Footnote 111: A comment of Paul de Saint-Victor on the silence of the recovered Alkestis deserves to be quoted: "Hercule apprend
The sacrifice of the Queen to ease her husband, and the final restoration, being the two main points of contact with Euripides' version of the story, compare with these the stories of Alkestis told by William Morris in 'The Earthly Paradise, 'June'; 'The Love of Alcestis, by Emma Lazarus, in 'Admetos, 'Poems, vol. i.; by Robert Browning in 'Balustion's Adventure; by Longfellow in 'The Golden Legend. See also articles in Poet-lore, 'The Alkestis of Euripides and of Browning, July, 1890; 'Old and New Ideals of Womanhood'; 'The Iphigenia' and 'Alkestis Stories, May, 1891; 'Longfellow's Golden Legend and its Analogues, February, 1892.
The wife, Penelope, Andromache, Alkestis, nay, even the charming young bride in Xenophon's "Oeconomics," is, while excluded from many concerns, distinctly reverenced and loved in her own household capacity; but the reverence is of the sort which the man feels for his parents and his household gods, and the affection is calm and gently rebuking like that for his children.
If Admetos remained at the close of the play what he is understood by Browning to have been at its opening, reunion with a self-lover so base could hardly have flushed with gladness the spirit of Alkestis just escaped from the shades. But Alkestis, who had proved her own loyalty by deeds, values deeds more than words.
"If the Alkestis is not the masterpiece of the genius of Euripides," wrote Paul de Saint-Victor, "it is perhaps the masterpiece of his heart."
Is Shakespeare's use of a striking incident from the 'Alkestis' too close not to have been suggested by it? Does it show his intention to portray in Hermione a new Alkestis? Do they serve two ends, make the play more effective for stage representation, make the characters stronger? Does he make Leontes more attractive than Greene does in the first part of the play?
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