47 pages • 1 hour read
Alcestis
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Euripides
Alcestis is the earliest surviving play composed by Euripides, an Athenian tragedian who lived between 480 and 406 BCE. Euripides was the youngest of the three great Athenian tragedians, the others being Aeschylus (ca. 525-456 BCE) and Sophocles (ca. 496-406 BCE). With little surviving documentation, there is almost no reliable information about Euripides’s life. Euripides was born on the island of Salamis, spent most of his career in Athens, and eventually moved to the court of King Archelaus in Macedon, where he died. Ancient biographies of Euripides, most of them written long after the playwright’s death, embellished these facts with an array of extraordinary or improbable claims that are usually dismissed as fables by modern scholars—for example, that Euripides lived by himself in a cave or that he died after being torn apart by hunting dogs.
Over a career that spanned about 50 years, Euripides composed 90 plays, 18 of which survive in full (Rhesus, another surviving tragedy traditionally attributed to Euripides, is thought to have been composed by somebody else). There are more surviving plays by Euripides than by Aeschylus and Sophocles put together though both Aeschylus and Sophocles won far more dramatic contests than Euripides did: Aeschylus won 13 and Sophocles won 18 while Euripides won only 5 (one of them posthumously). Euripides’s lack of accolades was due in part to his reputation for pursuing controversial themes. The contemporary comedian Aristophanes often mocked Euripides in his plays, representing him as an impious and reclusive intellectual who delighted in mocking the gods.
Over time, Euripides came to be appreciated as the most avant-garde and adventurous of the Athenian tragedians. Already in antiquity he was celebrated for his exploration of emotional realism, his innovative treatment of traditional mythology, and his persistent questioning of contemporary values. By the European Renaissance, Euripides was the most popular of the three Athenian tragedians, and his most famous plays—including Medea, Trojan Women, and Bacchae—exert a prevailing influence on Western culture and literature.
Literary Context: The Myth of Alcestis
The Greek myth of Alcestis tells of how Apollo arranges for his mortal friend Admetus to avoid death if he can find somebody to willingly take his place. Only Alcestis, Admetus’s wife, agrees to do so. In a twist of fate, the virtuous Alcestis is saved (versions vary as to who saves her) and restored to her husband.
The motif of the man who seeks a substitute to die in his place is common in the myths and folktales across many cultures. The myth of Alcestis is the most familiar version of this motif in ancient Greek culture, and Euripides’s Alcestis is the most canonical retelling of the myth that has survived from antiquity. Scattered references to Alcestis in Greek literature appear as early as Homer’s Iliad (Book 2, Lines 714-15), but the earliest literary account of the entire myth comes from a play composed by Phrynichus, a tragedian active about a generation before Euripides. However, Phrynichus’s Alcestis does not survive, and as a result, it is unclear how precisely it influenced Euripides’s play.
Euripides’s version of the myth represents Alcestis as a virtuous and dutiful wife who voluntarily agrees to die in the place of her husband. This depiction of Alcestis is consistent across ancient accounts. Euripides has Apollo save Admetus by tricking the Fates, the goddesses responsible for allotting the length of each mortal’s life; in Aeschylus’s Eumenides, Apollo tricks the Fates by making them drunk. All ancient accounts agree that only Alcestis was willing to die in Admetus’s place, but there are different versions of Alcestis’s rescue. Euripides has Heracles save Alcestis by physically overpowering Death. In other versions, Persephone or another god is so impressed by Alcestis’s virtue that she restores her life.
Euripides’s play has remained influential in the West, establishing the Alcestis as the mythical archetype of the virtuous wife. The play has inspired further retellings and adaptations by notable figures, such as the Italian-French composer Jean-Baptiste Lully, American poet T. S. Eliot, and English poet Robert Browning.
Literary Context: Alcestis as “Problem Play”
Most of the plays composed by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were first performed in Athens at the Theater of Dionysus. The plays were entered in the drama competition that formed an important part of annual festivals, most notably the City Dionysia. Each of the three tragedians staged a tetralogy, typically of three tragedies and one satyr play. Satyr plays, like tragedies, took their plots from traditional mythology but employed comical or ribald themes, a chorus of satyrs (the half-horse half-man followers of Dionysus), and a happy ending.
Alcestis was performed as the fourth play in a tetralogy, the space normally reserved for a satyr play. However, Alcestis defies customary genre classification. Certain themes and motifs explored by the play—the tricking of the Fates and the personification of Death, for example—are common in satyr plays, but Alcestis lacks the light-hearted ribaldry and explicit sexuality characteristic of satyr plays, such as Euripides’s Cyclops. It also includes no satyrs, which are the genre’s defining characteristic. Alcestis explores conventional tragic themes, such as fate and virtue; it uses elevated tragic diction; and it employs a structure and scenes shared by other tragedies, including a prologue, a chorus, and type scenes, such as messenger speeches, an agon, and recognition.
Scholars remain puzzled by many features of Euripides’s Alcestis, which has been famously characterized as a “problem play,” meaning it is not easily categorized Many scholars, noting the play’s comic elements, such as the bickering between Apollo and Death or Heracles’s drunken rants, have argued that the play is more comic than tragic. However, Greek tragedies often employed humor, and Alcestis is not the only ancient tragedy with a happy ending: Though uncommon, all three of the great Athenian tragedians produced tragedies that ended happily.
Unlock all 47 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Euripides
