Alcestis

The juxtaposition of sound and silence is an important motif throughout the play. When the Chorus first enters, they marvel at the silence of the house: “It is quiet by the palace. What does it mean? / Why is the house of Admetus so still?” (77-78). Silence represents the silence of death but also of concealment. Admetus is silent about the death of Alcestis when Heracles visits him and subsequently enforces silence on his slaves, whom he forbids from disturbing his guest by mourning their mistress. Mourning is not a silent affair; as the Chorus notes in their first song, “They would not be silent if she were dead” (93). Admetus wants to replace the wails of mourning with the revelry of hospitality.

This motif culminates in the silence of Alcestis in exodos. The revived Alcestis would have been played probably by a nonspeaking extra, so her silence was in part the result of dramaturgical convention. But Alcestis’s silence can also be interpreted thematically, as adding to the ambiguity of the ending. On one level, Alcestis’s silence explicitly connects her with death, as Heracles says, she will only be able to speak in three days after discharging her obligations to the gods of the Underworld. Alcestis has not been completely restored to the world of the living but remains, as she was at the beginning, both living and dead. Alcestis’s silence, a carryover from her recent death, means that the play ends without giving her a chance to express her own emotions.