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.