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Updated: April 30, 2025
It has been maintained that Browning's interpretation of the spiritual significance of the drama is a beautiful perversion of the purpose of the Greek poet; that Admetos needs no purification; that in accepting his wife's offer to be his substitute in dying, the king was no craven but a king who recognised duty to the state as his highest duty.
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.
Then came to him both brothers, when they heard that Jason was come home, Pheres from hard by, leaving the fountain Hypereis, and out of Messena Amythaon, and quickly came Admetos and Melampos to welcome home their cousin. And at a common feast with gracious words Jason received them and made them friendly cheer, culling for five long nights and days the sacred flower of joyous life.
If Admetos is to be in some degree justified, it can only be by bearing in mind that the fact by which he shall himself escape from death is of Apollo's institution, and that obedience to the purpose of Apollo rendered self-preservation a kind of virtue.
This point of correspondence may have occurred to Shakespeare and suggested his continuation of Greene's novel. Admetos' image of his wife, that he would have made by the cunning hands of artists, is possibly a prototype of the statue of the Queen in 'The Winter's Tale, the piece "newly performed by that rare Italian master, Julio Romano."
And the good Herakles, who enjoys a glorious jest amazingly, and who by that jest can benevolently retort upon Admetos for his concealment of Alkestis' death for now the position is reversed and the king shall receive her living, and yet believe her dead Herakles contrives to put Admetos to that precise test which is alone sufficient to assure Alkestis of his fidelity.
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.
But Admetos makes no such defence of his action when replying to the reproaches of his father, and he anticipates that the verdict of the world will be against him.
The interest of the play for Browning lay especially in three things the pure self-sacrifice of the heroine, devotion embodied in one supreme deed; and no one can heighten the effect with which Euripides has rendered this; secondly, the joyous, beneficent strength of Herakles, and this Browning has felt in a peculiar degree, and by his commentary has placed it in higher relief; and thirdly, the purification and elevation through suffering of the character of Admetos; here it would be rash to assert that Browning has not divined the intention of Euripides, but certainly he has added something of his own.
He must trace the whole process of the purification of the soul of Admetos, by sorrow and its cruel yet beneficent reality, and in his commentary he emphasises each point of development in that process. When his wife lies at the point of death the sorrow of Admetos is not insincere, but there was a childishness in it, for he would not confront the fact that the event was of his own election.
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