THE ALCESTIS

OF

EURIPIDES

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH RHYMING VERSE

WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES BY

GILBERT MURRAY, LL D, D LITT, FBA

REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

1915

INTRODUCTION

The Alcestis would hardly confirm its author's right to beacclaimed "the most tragic of the poets." It is doubtful whether one cancall it a tragedy at all. Yet it remains one of the most characteristicand delightful of Euripidean dramas, as well as, by modern standards, themost easily actable. And I notice that many judges who display nothing buta fierce satisfaction in sending other plays of that author to the blockor the treadmill, show a certain human weakness in sentencing the gentledaughter of Pelias.

The play has been interpreted in many different ways. There is the oldunsophisticated view, well set forth in Paley's preface of 1872. Heregards the Alcestis simply as a triumph of pathos, especially of"that peculiar sort of pathos which comes most home to us, with our viewsand partialities for domestic life…. As for the characters, that ofAlcestis must be acknowledged to be pre-eminently beautiful. One couldalmost imagine that Euripides had not yet conceived that bad opinion ofthe sex which so many of the subsequent dramas exhibit…. But the restare hardly well-drawn, or, at least, pleasingly portrayed." "The poetmight perhaps, had he pleased, have exhibited Admetus in a more amiablepoint of view."

This criticism is not very trenchant, but its weakness is due, I think,more to timidity of statement than to lack of perception. Paley does seethat a character may be "well-drawn" without necessarily being "pleasing";and even that he may be eminently pleasing as a part of the play whilevery displeasing in himself. He sees that Euripides may have had his ownreasons for not making Admetus an ideal husband. It seems odd that suchpoints should need mentioning; but Greek drama has always suffered from aschool of critics who approach a play with a greater equipment ofaesthetic theory than of dramatic perception. This is the characteristicdefect of classicism. One mark of the school is to demand from dramatistsheroes and heroines which shall satisfy its own ideals; and, though therewas in the New Comedy a mask known to Pollux as "The Entirely-good YoungMan" ([Greek: panchraestos neaniskos]), such a character is fortunatelyunknown to classical Greek drama.

The influence of this "classicist" tradition has led to a timid andunsatisfying treatment of the Alcestis, in which many of the moststriking and unconventional features of the whole composition were eitherignored or smoothed away. As a natural result, various lively-mindedreaders proceeded to overemphasize these particular features, and werecarried into eccentricity or paradox. Alfred Schöne, for instance, fixinghis attention on just those points which the conventional critic passedover, decides simply that the Alcestis is a parody, and finds itvery funny. (Die Alkestis von Euripides, Kiel, 1895.)

I will not dwell on other criticisms of this type. There are those whohave taken the play for a criticism of contemporary politics or thecurrent law of inheritance. Above all there is the late Dr. Verrall'sfamous essay in Euripides the Rationalist, explaining it as apsychological criticism of a supposed

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