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Updated: June 21, 2025
When the body of Alkestis has been borne away and the king re-enters his desolate halls the full truth breaks in upon him; nothing can be as it has been before "He stared at the impossible mad life"; he has learnt that life, which yet shall be rightly lived, is a harder thing than death: He was beginning to be like his wife.
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.
Aristophanes' Apology is written from first to last with unflagging energy; the translation of the "Herakles" which it includes is a masculine and masterly effort to transport the whole sense and spirit of the original into English verse, and the rendering of the choral passages into lyric form gives it an advantage over the transcript of the "Alkestis."
Likeness or superiority to Alkestis, Compare with Queen Katharine in 'Henry VIII. Is she hard, having made her husband do penance for sixteen years? "Deep and even quick feeling never renders Hermione incapable of an admirable justice," writes Dowden, "nor deprives her of a true sense of pity for him who so gravely wrongs both her and himself."
The great tragedians, who sublimate the popular mythology, for the most part regard the after-life as only a sad inevitable sequel; and to be snatched back from it for even a brief reprieve, like Alkestis, is miraculous good fortune.
And of them that dwelt in Pherai by the Boibeian mere, in Boibe and Glaphyre and stablished Iolkos, of them, even eleven ships, Admetos' dear son was leader, Eumelos whom Alkestis, fair among women, bare to Admetos, she that was most beauteous to look upon of the daughters of Pelias.
Of all its author's dramas the Alkestis is the most appropriate to the occasion, for it is the poem of a great deliverance from death, and here in effect it delivers from death, or worse, the fugitives from the pirate-bark, "at destruction's very edge," who are the suppliants to Syracuse.
His allegiance to this vow is an act, and it shall be for Alkestis the test of his entire loyalty.
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