Nay, wait; and some
Woman, some new desire of love, will come.
ADMETUS (_indignantly_).
Peace!
How canst thou? Shame upon thee!
HERACLES.
Thou wilt stay
Unwed for ever, lonely night and day?
ADMETUS.
No other bride in these void arms shall lie.
HERACLES.
What profit will thy dead wife gain thereby?
ADMETUS.
Honour; which finds her wheresoe'er she lies.
HERACLES.
Most honourable in thee: but scarcely wise!
ADMETUS.
God curse me, if I betray her in her tomb!
HERACLES.
So be it!...
And this good damsel, thou wilt take her home?
ADMETUS.
No, in the name of Zeus, thy father! No!
HERACLES.
I swear, 'tis not well to reject her so.
ADMETUS.
'Twould tear my heart to accept her.
HERACLES.
Grant me, friend,
This one boon! It may help thee in the end.
ADMETUS.
Woe's me!
Would God thou hadst never won those victories!
HERACLES.
Thou sharest both the victory and the prize.
ADMETUS.
Thou art generous.... But now let her go.
HERACLES.
She shall,
If go she must. Look first, and judge withal.
[_He takes the veil off_ ALCESTIS.]
ADMETUS (_steadily refusing to look_).
She must.--And thou, forgive me!
HERACLES.
Friend, there is
A secret reason why I pray for this.
ADMETUS (_surprised, then reluctantly yielding_).
I grant thy boon then--though it likes me ill.
HERACLES.
'Twill like thee later. Now ... but do my will.
ADMETUS (_beckoning to an Attendant_).
Take her; find her some lodging in my hall.
HERACLES.
I will not yield this maid to any thrall.
ADMETUS.
Take her thyself and lead her in.
HERACLES.
I stand
Beside her; take her; lead her to thy hand.
[_He brings the Woman close to_ ADMETUS, _who looks determinedly
away. She reaches out her arms._]
ADMETUS.
I touch her not.--Let her go in!
HERACLES.
I am loth
To trust her save to thy pledged hand and oath.
[_He lays his hand on_ ADMETUS'S _shoulder_.]
ADMETUS (_desperately_).
Lord, this is violence ... wrong ...
HERACLES.
Reach forth thine hand
And touch this comer from a distant land.
ADMETUS (_holding out his hand without looking_).
Like Perseus when he touched the Gorgon, there!
HERACLES.
Thou hast touched her?
ADMETUS (_at last taking her hand_).
Touched her?... Yes.
HERACLES (_a hand on the shoulder of each_).
Then cling to her;
And say if thou hast found a guest of grace
In God's son, Heracles! Look in her face;
Look; is she like...?
[ADMETUS _looks and stands amazed_.]
Go, and forget in bliss
Thy sorrow!
ADMETUS.
O ye Gods! What meaneth this?
A marvel beyond dreams! The face ... 'tis she;
Mine, verily mine! Or doth God mock at me
And blast my vision with some mad surmise?
HERACLES.
Not so. This is thy wife before thine eyes.
ADMETUS (_who has recoiled in his amazement_).
Beware! The dead have phantoms that they send...
HERACLES.
Nay; no ghost-raiser hast thou made thy friend.
ADMETUS.
My wife ... she whom I buried?
HERACLES.
I deceive
Thee not; nor wonder thou canst scarce believe.
ADMETUS.
And dare I touch her, greet her, as mine own
Wife living?
HERACLES.
Greet her. Thy desire is won.
ADMETUS (_approaching with awe_),
Beloved eyes; beloved form; O thou
Gone beyond hope, I have thee, I hold thee now?
HERACLES.
Thou hast her: may no god begrudge your joy.
ADMETUS (_turning to_ HERACLES).
O lordly conqueror, Child of Zeus on high,
Be blessèd! And may He, thy sire above,
Save thee, as thou alone hast saved my love!
[_He kneels to_ HERACLES, _who raises him_.]
But how ... how didst thou win her to the light?
HERACLES.
I fought for life with Him I needs must fight.
ADMETUS.
With Death thou hast fought! But where?
HERACLES.
Among his dead
I lay, and sprang and gripped him as he fled.
ADMETUS (_in an awed whisper, looking towards_ ALCESTIS).
Why standeth she so still? No sound, no word!
HERACLES.
She hath dwelt with Death. Her voice may not be heard
Ere to the Lords of Them Below she pay
Due cleansing, and awake on the third day.
(_To the Attendants_) So; guide her home.
[_They lead_ ALCESTIS _to the doorway_.]
And thou, King, for the rest
Of time, be true; be righteous to thy guest,
As he would have thee be. But now farewell!
My task yet lies before me, and the spell
That binds me to my master; forth I fare.
ADMETUS.
Stay with us this one day! Stay but to share
The feast upon our hearth!
HERACLES.
The feasting day
Shall surely come; now I must needs away.
[HERACLES _departs_.]
ADMETUS.
Farewell! All victory attend thy name
And safe home-coming!
Lo, I make proclaim
To the Four Nations and all Thessaly;
A wondrous happiness hath come to be:
Therefore pray, dance, give offerings and make full
Your altars with the life-blood of the Bull!
For me ... my heart is changed; my life shall mend
Henceforth. For surely Fortune is a friend.
[_He goes with_ ALCESTIS _into the house_.]
CHORUS.
There be many shapes of mystery;
And many things God brings to be,
Past hope or fear.
And the end men looked for cometh not,
And a path is there where no man thought.
So hath it fallen here.
NOTES
P. 3, Prologue. Asclêpios (Latin Aesculapius), son of Apollo, the
hero-physician, by his miraculous skill healed the dead. This transgressed
the divine law, so Zeus slew him. (The particular dead man raised by him
was Hippolytus, who came to life in Italy under the name of Virbius, and
was worshipped with Artemis at Aricia.) Apollo in revenge, not presuming
to attack Zeus himself, killed the Cyclopes, and was punished by being
exiled from heaven and made servant to a mortal. There are several such
stories of gods made servants to human beings.
P. 3, l. 12, Beguiling.]--See Preface. In the original story he made them
drunk with wine. (Aesch. _Eumenides_, 728.) As the allusion would
doubtless be clear to the Greek audience, I have added a mention of wine
which is not in the Greek. Libations to the Elder Gods, such as the Fates
and Eumenides, had to be "wineless." Historically this probably means that
the worship dates from a time before wine was used in Greece.
P. 4, l. 22, The stain of death must not come nigh My radiance.]--Compare
Artemis in the last scene of the _Hippolytus_. The presence of a dead
body would be a pollution to Apollo, though that of Thánatos (Death)
himself seems not to be so. It is rather Thánatos who is dazzled and
blinded by Apollo, like an owl or bat in the sunlight.
P. 5, l. 43, Rob me of my second prey.]--"You first cheated me of Admetus,
and now you cheat me of his substitute."
P. 6, l. 59, The rich would buy, etc.]--Here and throughout this difficult
little dialogue I follow the readings of my own text in the _Bibliotheca
Oxoniensis_.
P. 7, l. 74, To lay upon her hair my sword.]--As the sacrificing priest
cut off a lock of hair from the victim's head before the actual sacrifice.
P. 8, l. 77, Chorus.]--The Chorus consists of citizens, probably Elders,
of the city of Pherae. Dr. Verrall has rightly pointed out that there is
some general dissatisfaction in the town at Admetus's behaviour (l. 210
ff.). These citizens come to mourn with Admetus out of old friendship,
though they do not altogether defend him.
The Chorus is very drastically broken up into so many separate persons
conversing with one another; the treatment in the _Rhesus_ is similar
but even bolder. See _Rhesus_, pp. 28-31, 37-42. Cf. also the
entrance-choruses of the _Trojan Women_ (pp. 19-23) and the
_Medea_ (pp. 10-13); and ll. 872 ff., 889 ff., pp. 50, 51, below.
Instead of assigning the various lines definitely to First, Second, Third
Citizen, and so on, I have put a "paragraphus" (--), the ancient Greek
sign for indicating a new speaker.
P. 8, l. 82, Pelias' daughter.]--_i.e._ Alcestis.
P. 8, l. 92, Paian.]--The Healer. The word survives chiefly as a cry for
help and as an epithet or title of Apollo or Asclepios. "Paian," Latin
Paean, is also a cry of victory; but the relation of the two meanings is
not quite made out. (Pronounce rather like "Pah-yan.") Cf. l. 220.
P. 9, l. 112, To wander o'er leagues of land.]--You could sometimes save a
sick person by appealing to an oracle, such as that of Apollo in Lycia or
of Zeus Ammon in the Libyan desert; but now no sacrifice will help. Only
Asclepios, were he still on earth, might have helped us. (See on the
Prologue.)
P. 12, l. 150, 'Fore God she dies high-hearted.]--What impresses the Elder
is the calm and deliberate way in which Alcestis faces these preparations.
P. 12, l. 162, Before the Hearth-Fire.]--Hestia, the hearth-fire, was a
goddess, the Latin Vesta, and is addressed as "Mother." It is
characteristic in Alcestis to think chiefly about happy marriages for the
children.
P. 12, l. 182, Happier perhaps, more true she cannot be.]--A famous line
and open to parody. Cf. Aristophanes, _Knights_, 1251 ("Another wear
this crown instead of me, Happier perhaps; worse thief he cannot be"). And
see on l. 367 below.
P. 15, l. 228, Hearts have bled.]--People have committed suicide for less
than this.
P. 16, l. 244, O Sun.]--Alcestis has come out to see the Sun and Sky for
the last time and say good-bye to them. It is a rite or practice often
mentioned in Greek poetry. Her beautiful wandering lines about Charon and
his boat are the more natural because she is not dying from any disease
but is being mysteriously drawn away by the Powers of Death.
P. 16, l. 252, A boat, two-oared.]--She sees Charon, the boatman who
ferried the souls of the dead across the river Styx.
P. 17, l. 259, Drawing, drawing.]--The creature whom she sees drawing her
to "the palaces of the dead" is certainly not Charon, who had no wings,
but was like an old boatman in a peasant's cap and sleeveless tunic; nor
can he be Hades, the throned King to whose presence she must eventually
go. Apparently, therefore, he must be Thanatos, whom we have just seen on
the stage. He was evidently supposed to be invisible to ordinary human
eyes.
P. 18, l. 280, Alcestis's speech.]--Great simplicity and sincerity are the
keynotes of this fine speech. Alcestis does not make light of her
sacrifice: she enjoyed her life and values it; she wishes one of the old
people had died instead; she is very earnest that Admetus shall not marry
again, chiefly for the children's sake, but possibly also from some little
shadow of jealousy. A modern dramatist would express all this, if at all,
by a scene or a series of scenes of conversation; Euripides always uses
the long self-revealing speech. Observe how little romantic love there is
in Alcestis, though Admetus is full of it. See Preface, pp. xiii, xiv.
Pp. 19, 20, l. 328 ff., Admetus's speech.]--If the last speech made us
know Alcestis, this makes us know Admetus fully as well. At one time the
beauty and passion of it almost make us forget its ultimate hollowness; at
another this hollowness almost makes us lose patience with its beautiful
language. In this state of balance the touch of satire in l. 338 f. ("My
mother I will know no more," etc.), and the fact that he speaks
immediately after the complete sincerity of Alcestis, conspire to weigh
down the scale against Admetus. There can be no doubt that he means, and
means passionately, all that he says. Only he could not quite manage to
die when it was not strictly necessary.
P. 20, l. 355, If Orpheus' voice were mine.]--The bard and prophet,
Orpheus, went down to the dead to win back his wife, Eurydice. Hades and
Persephonê, spell-bound by his music, granted his prayer that Eurydicê
should return to the light, on condition that he should go before her,
harping, and should never look back to see if she was following. Just at
the end of the journey he looked back, and she vanished. The story is told
with overpowering beauty in Vergil's fourth Georgic.
P. 21, l. 367, Oh, not in death from thee Divided.]--Parodied in
Aristophanes' _Archarnians_ 894, where it is addressed to an eel, and
the second line ends "in a beet-root fricassee." See on l. 182.
P. 23, l. 393 ff., The Little Boy's speech.]--Classical Greek sculpture
and vase-painting tended to represent children not like children but like
diminutive men; and something of the sort is true of Greek tragedy.
The stately tragic convention has in the main to be maintained; the child
must speak a language suited for heroes, or at least for high poetry.
The quality of childishness has to be indicated by a word or so of
child-language delicately admitted amid the stateliness. Here we have
[Greek: maia], something like "mummy," at the beginning, and [Greek:
neossos], "chicken" or "little bird," at the end. Otherwise most of the
language is in the regular tragic diction, and some of it doubtless seems
to us unsuitable for a child. If Milton had had to make a child speak in
_Paradise Lost_, what sort of diction would he have given it?
The success or ill-success of such an attempt as this to combine the two
styles, the heroic and the childlike, depends on questions of linguistic
tact, and can hardly be judged with any confidence by foreigners. But I
think we can see Euripides here, as in other places, reaching out at an
effect which was really beyond the resources of his art, and attaining a
result which, though clearly imperfect, is strangely moving. He gets great
effects from the use of children in several tragedies, though he seldom
lets them speak. They speak in the _Medea_, the _Andromache_,
and _Suppliants_, and are mute figures in the _Trojan Women,
Hecuba, Heracles_, and _Iphigenia in Aulis_. We may notice that
where his children do speak, they speak only in lyrics, never in ordinary
dialogue. This is very significant, and clearly right.
The breaking-down of the child seems to string Admetus to self-control
again.
P. 25, l. 428, Ye chariot-lords.]--The plain of Thessaly was famous for
its cavalry.
P. 25, l. 436 ff., Chorus.]--The "King black-browed" is, of course, Hades;
the "grey hand at the helm and oar," Charon; the "Tears that Well," the
more that spreads out from Acheron, the River of _Achê_ or Sorrows.
P. 25, l. 445 ff. Alcestis shall be celebrated--and no doubt worshipped--
at certain full-moon feasts in Athens and Sparta, especially at the
Carneia, a great Spartan festival held at the full moon in the month
Carneios (August-September). Who the ancient hero Carnos or Carneios was
is not very clearly stated by the tradition; but at any rate he was
killed, and the feast was meant to placate and perhaps to revive him.
Resurrection is apt to be a feature of both moon-goddesses and vegetation
spirits.
P. 27, l. 476, Entrance of Heracles.]--Generally, in the tragic
convention, each character that enters either announces himself or is
announced by some one on the stage; but the figure of Heracles with his
club and lion-skin was so well known that his identity could be taken for
granted. The Leader at once addresses him by name.
P. 27, l. 481, The Argive King.]--It was the doom of Heracles, from before
his birth, to be the servant of a worser man. His master proved to be
Eurystheus, King of Tiryns or Argos, who was his kinsman, and older by a
day. See _Iliad_ T 95 ff. Note the heroic quality of Heracles's
answer in l. 491. It does not occur to him to think of reward for himself.
P. 27, l. 483, Diomede of Thrace.]--This man, distinguished in legend from
the Diomede of the _Iliad_, was a savage king who threw wayfarers to
his man-eating horses. Such horses are not mere myths; horses have often
been trained to fight with their teeth, like carnivora, for war purposes.
Diomêdes was a son of Arês, the War-god or Slayer, as were the other wild
tyrants mentioned just below, Lycâon, the Wolf-hero, and Cycnus, the Swan.
P. 30, l. 511, Right welcome were she: _i.e._ Joy.]--"Joy would be a
strange visitor to me, but I know you mean kindly."
P. 30, l. 518 ff., Not thy wife? 'Tis not Alcestis?]--The rather elaborate
misleading of Heracles, without any direct lie, depends partly on the fact
that the Greek word [Greek: gynae]; means both "woman" and "wife."--The
woman, not of kin with Admetus but much loved in the house, who has lived
there since her father's death left her an orphan, is of course Alcestis,
but Heracles, misled by Admetus's first answers, supposes it is some
dependant to whom the King happens to be attached. He naturally proposes
to go away, but, with much reluctance, allows himself to be over-persuaded
by Admetus. He had other friends in Thessaly, but the next castle would
probably be several miles off. The guest-chambers of the castle are
apparently in a separate building with a connecting passage.
As to Admetus's motive, we must remember that the entertaining of Heracles
is a datum of the story in its simplest form. See Preface, pp. xiv, xv. In
Euripides, Admetus is perhaps actuated by a mixture of motives, real
kindness, pride in his ancestral hospitality, and a little vanity. He
likes having the great Son of Zeus for a friend, and he has never yet
turned any one from his doors.
Euripides passes no distinct judgment on this act of Admetus. The Leader
in the dialogue blames him ("Art thou mad?") and so does Heracles
hereafter, p. 56. But the Chorus glorifies his deed in a very delightful
lyric. Perhaps this indicates the judgment we are meant to pass upon it.
On the plane of common sense it was doubtless all wrong, but on that of
imaginative poetry it was magnificent.
P. 35, 11. 569-605, Chorus.]--Apollo, worshipped as a shepherd god and a
singer, harper, piper, etc. ("song-changer"), had been himself a stranger
in this "House that loved the stranger": hence its great reward. Othrys is
the end of the mountain range to the south of Pherae; Lake Boibeïs was
just across the narrow end of the plain to the north-east, beyond it came
Mt. Pelion and the steep harbourless coast. Up to the north-west the plain
of Thessaly stretched far away towards the Molossian mountains. The wild
beasts gathered round Apollo as they did round Orpheus ("There where
Orpheus harped of old, And the trees awoke and knew him, And the wild
things gathered to him, As he piped amid the broken Glens his music
manifold."--_Bacchae_, p. 35).
P. 37, l. 614, Scene with Pherês.]--Pherês is in tradition the "eponymous
hero" of Pherae, _i.e._ the mythical person who is supposed to have
given his name to the town. It is only in this play that he has any
particular character. The scene gives the reader a shock, but is a
brilliant piece of satirical comedy, with a good deal of pathos in it,
too. The line (691) [Greek: chaireis horon phos, patera d' ou chairein
dokeis]; ("Thou lovest the light, thinkest thou thy father loves it not?")
seems to me one of the most characteristic in Euripides. It has a peculiar
mordant beauty in its absolutely simple language, and one cannot measure
the intensity of feeling that may be behind it. Pheres shows great power
of fight, yet one feels his age and physical weakness. See Preface, p.
xvi.
P. 40, l. 713 ff. The quick thrust and parry are sometimes hard to follow
in reading, though in acting the sense would be plain enough. Admetus
cries angrily, "Oh, live a longer life than Zeus!" "Is that a curse?" says
Pheres; "are you cursing because nobody does you any harm?" (_i.e_.
since you clearly have nothing else to curse for). Admetus: "On the
contrary I blessed you; I knew you were greedy of life." Pheres: "_I_
greedy? It is _you_, I believe, that Alcestis is dying for."
P. 42, l. 732. Acastus was Alcestis's brother, son of Pelias.
P. 43, l. 747. It is rare in Greek tragedy for the Chorus to leave the
stage altogether in the middle of a play. But they do so, for example, in
the _Ajax_ of Sophocles. Ajax is lost, and the Sailors who form the
Chorus go out to look for him; when they are gone the scene is supposed to
shift and Ajax enters alone, arranging his own death. This very effective
scene of the revelling Heracles is to be explained, I think, by the
Satyr-play tradition. See Preface.
P. 45, ll. 782-785. There are four lines rhyming in the Greek here; an odd
and slightly drunken effect.
P. 46, l. 805 ff., A woman dead, of no one's kin: why grieve so much?]--
Heracles is somewhat "shameless," as a Greek would say; he had much more
delicacy when he was sober.
P. 48, l. 837 ff. A fine speech, leaving one in doubt whether it is the
outburst of a real hero or the vapouring of a half-drunken man. Just the
effect intended. Electryon was a chieftain of Tiryns. His daughter,
Alcmênê, the Tirynthian _Korê_ or Earth-maiden, was beloved of Zeus,
or, as others put it, was chosen by Zeus to be the mother of the Deliverer
of mankind whom he was resolved to beget. She was married to Amphitryon of
Thebes.
P. 49, l. 860 ff. If Heracles set out straight to the grave and Admetus
with the procession was returning from the grave, how was it they did not
meet? The answer is that Attic drama seldom asked such questions.
Pp. 49-54, ll. 861-961. This Threnos, or lamentation scene, seems to our
minds a little long. We must remember (1) that a Tragedy _is_ a
Threnos--a _Trauerspiel_--and, however much it develops in the
direction of a mere entertainment, the Threnos-element is of primary
importance. (2) This scene has two purposes to serve; first to illustrate
the helpless loneliness of Admetus when he returns to his empty house, and
secondly the way in which remorse works in his mind, till in ll. 935-961
he makes public confession that he has done wrong. For both purposes one
needs the illusion of a long lapse of time.
P. 53, l. 945 ff., The floor unswept.]--Probably the floor really would be
unswept in the house of a primitive Thessalian chieftain whose wife was
dead and her place unfilled; but I doubt if the point would have been
mentioned so straightforwardly in a real tragedy.
Pp. 54-55, l. 966 ff., That which Needs Must Be.]--Ananke or Necessity.--
Orphic rune.]--The charms inscribed by Orpheus on certain tablets in
Thrace. Orphic literature and worship had a strong magical element in
them.
P. 55, l. 995 ff., A grave-mound of the dead.]--Every existing Greek
tragedy has somewhere in it a taboo grave--a grave which is either
worshipped, or specially avoided or somehow magical. We may conjecture
from this passage that there was in the time of Euripides a sacred tomb
near Pherae, which received worship and had the story told about it that
she who lay there had died for her husband.
Pp. 56-67, ll. 1008-end. This last scene must have been exceedingly
difficult to compose, and some critics have thought it ineffective or
worse. To me it seems brilliantly conceived and written, though of course
it needs to be read with the imagination strongly at work. One must never
forget the silent and veiled Woman on whom the whole scene centres. I have
tried conjecturally to indicate the main lines of her acting, but, of
course, others may read it differently.
To understand Heracles in this scene, one must first remember the
traditional connexion of Satyrs (and therefore of satyric heroes) with the
re-awakening of the dead Earth in spring and the return of human souls to
their tribe. Dionysus was, of all the various Kouroi, the one most widely
connected with resurrection ideas, and the Satyrs are his attendant
daemons, who dance magic dances at the Return to Life of Semele or
Persephone. And Heracles himself, in certain of his ritual aspects, has
similar functions. See J.E. Harrison, _Themis_, pp. 422 f. and 365
ff., or my _Four Stages of Greek Religion_, pp. 46 f. This tradition
explains, to start with, what Heracles--and this particular sort of
revelling Heracles--has to do in a resurrection scene. Heracles bringing
back the dead is a datum of the saga. There remain then the more purely
dramatic questions about our poet's treatment of the datum.
Why, for instance, does Heracles mystify Admetus with the Veiled Woman? To
break the news gently, or to retort his own mystification upon him? I
think, the latter. Admetus had said that "a woman" was dead; Heracles
says: "All right: here is 'a woman' whom I want you to look after."