This play is beautiful in its grief - in the words of Alcestis before she dies and even in the representation of grief in Admetos and in the chorus.

Thoughts and discussion from class -- by being brought back, the nearing god-like revere the people have of Alcestis is diminished, and she goes from having choice and power (albeit in death) to losing this choice, returning silent and subservient. She is honored for her choice in the beginning - but is this her as a person demonstrating kleos, or her as dutiful wife? I would like to think the former. But if that is the case, the end takes away her kleos, and so while it is a happy ending for Admetos (he gets it all!) it is less of a happy ending for Alcestis.

It is also ironic that Admetos spends time with gods and wishes to evade death (hubris? trying to emulate the gods?) and as a result Alcestis reaches an almost god-like worth in her death while Admetos becomes less and less favored.

Additionally, looking at the idea of treating death, thinking of what ways we all ask that others die for us. In our consumer culture, we are all Admetos.

Some lines:

Alcestis: Time will dull your grief the dead are nothing
Alcestis: I am nothing now the dead are nothing

Chorus:

Necessity is stone.
Call her death, compulsion, fate: against
what man her cruelty comes, that man is doomed.
If poets know, if scholars speak the truth,
nothing is stronger, nothing more resistless,
is.
O Man,
against her hard, relentless coming on,
all your craft and intellect are weak.
There is no power in your spells and Orphic songs;
no virtue in your herbs, your healing lore. Nothing,
nothing can resist her coming on. Only patience.
Suffer and submit.

Necessity is stone,
implacable. She has no face
but rock; no human shape or likeness owns,
no cult no shrine. She heeds no sacrifice.
She is force, and flint; no feeling has, no
pity. None.

Mistress, Lady without mercy, I have felt
your stroke before. May you never come again!
Only by your hard strength the will of Zeus is done.
By sheer force you break the iron of the Chalybes.
Your will is granite, cruel. Nothing helps. Only patience.
Suffer and submit.

I do love an emo guy.

1/8/22

A matter of life and death, and the unavoidable character of the latter, with a strange morality.

When Admetus allows his wife to die instead of him, challenges the notion of dying in the precise moment that was meant to be. His own father highlights this fact as cowardice that deprives him of the moral authority to ask for a better behavior of his part.

The play takes a happy turn when the husband's friendship with Heracles grants the comeback of the deceased wife.

As other reviewers pointed out, it's hard to figure out if such an ending makes it worthy of a "comedy" tag, with a tragic start... or a sort of pragmatic moral: to have powerful friends and means is the way to achieve your goals. Somehow it seems to be a praise of the influence in gods through means of material display of hospitality.

I read this as background essential to T.S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party, so we'll see how it relates to its source.

how can a person love you that much but at the same time destroy you?