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diff --git a/old/10523-8.txt b/old/10523-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7b401ee --- /dev/null +++ b/old/10523-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3228 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Alcestis, by Euripides + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Alcestis + +Author: Euripides + +Release Date: December 23, 2003 [EBook #10523] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALCESTIS *** + + + + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Charles M. Bidwell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + +THE ALCESTIS + +OF + +EURIPIDES + + + +TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH RHYMING VERSE + +WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES BY + +GILBERT MURRAY, LL D, D LITT, FBA + +REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD + + + + +1915 + + + +INTRODUCTION + +The _Alcestis_ would hardly confirm its author's right to be +acclaimed "the most tragic of the poets." It is doubtful whether one can +call it a tragedy at all. Yet it remains one of the most characteristic +and delightful of Euripidean dramas, as well as, by modern standards, the +most easily actable. And I notice that many judges who display nothing but +a fierce satisfaction in sending other plays of that author to the block +or the treadmill, show a certain human weakness in sentencing the gentle +daughter of Pelias. + +The play has been interpreted in many different ways. There is the old +unsophisticated view, well set forth in Paley's preface of 1872. He +regards the _Alcestis_ simply as a triumph of pathos, especially of +"that peculiar sort of pathos which comes most home to us, with our views +and partialities for domestic life.... As for the characters, that of +Alcestis must be acknowledged to be pre-eminently beautiful. One could +almost imagine that Euripides had not yet conceived that bad opinion of +the sex which so many of the subsequent dramas exhibit.... But the rest +are hardly well-drawn, or, at least, pleasingly portrayed." "The poet +might perhaps, had he pleased, have exhibited Admetus in a more amiable +point of view." + +This criticism is not very trenchant, but its weakness is due, I think, +more to timidity of statement than to lack of perception. Paley does see +that a character may be "well-drawn" without necessarily being "pleasing"; +and even that he may be eminently pleasing as a part of the play while +very displeasing in himself. He sees that Euripides may have had his own +reasons for not making Admetus an ideal husband. It seems odd that such +points should need mentioning; but Greek drama has always suffered from a +school of critics who approach a play with a greater equipment of +aesthetic theory than of dramatic perception. This is the characteristic +defect of classicism. One mark of the school is to demand from dramatists +heroes and heroines which shall satisfy its own ideals; and, though there +was in the New Comedy a mask known to Pollux as "The Entirely-good Young +Man" ([Greek: panchraestos neaniskos]), such a character is fortunately +unknown to classical Greek drama. + +The influence of this "classicist" tradition has led to a timid and +unsatisfying treatment of the _Alcestis_, in which many of the most +striking and unconventional features of the whole composition were either +ignored or smoothed away. As a natural result, various lively-minded +readers proceeded to overemphasize these particular features, and were +carried into eccentricity or paradox. Alfred Schöne, for instance, fixing +his attention on just those points which the conventional critic passed +over, decides simply that the _Alcestis_ is a parody, and finds it +very funny. (_Die Alkestis von Euripides_, Kiel, 1895.) + +I will not dwell on other criticisms of this type. There are those who +have taken the play for a criticism of contemporary politics or the +current law of inheritance. Above all there is the late Dr. Verrall's +famous essay in _Euripides the Rationalist_, explaining it as a +psychological criticism of a supposed Delphic miracle, and arguing that +Alcestis in the play does not rise from the dead at all. She had never +really died; she only had a sort of nervous catalepsy induced by all the +"suggestion" of death by which she was surrounded. Now Dr. Verrall's work, +as always, stands apart. Even if wrong, it has its own excellence, its +special insight and its extraordinary awakening power. But in general the +effect of reading many criticisms on the _Alcestis_ is to make a +scholar realize that, for all the seeming simplicity of the play, +competent Grecians have been strangely bewildered by it, and that after +all there is no great reason to suppose that he himself is more sensible +than his neighbours. + +This is depressing. None the less I cannot really believe that, if we make +patient use of our available knowledge, the _Alcestis_ presents any +startling enigma. In the first place, it has long been known from the +remnants of the ancient Didascalia, or official notice of production, that +the _Alcestis_ was produced as the fourth play of a series; that is, +it took the place of a Satyr-play. It is what we may call Pro-satyric. +(See the present writer's introduction to the _Rhesus_.) And we +should note for what it is worth the observation in the ancient Greek +argument: "The play is somewhat satyr-like ([Greek: saturiphkoteron]). It +ends in rejoicing and gladness against the tragic convention." + +Now we are of late years beginning to understand much better what a +Satyr-play was. Satyrs have, of course, nothing to do with satire, either +etymologically or otherwise. Satyrs are the attendant daemons who form the +Kômos, or revel rout, of Dionysus. They are represented in divers +fantastic forms, the human or divine being mixed with that of some animal, +especially the horse or wild goat. Like Dionysus himself, they are +connected in ancient religion with the Renewal of the Earth in spring and +the resurrection of the dead, a point which students of the +_Alcestis_ may well remember. But in general they represent mere +joyous creatures of nature, unthwarted by law and unchecked by +self-control. Two notes are especially struck by them: the passions and +the absurdity of half-drunken revellers, and the joy and mystery of the +wild things in the forest. + +The rule was that after three tragedies proper there came a play, still in +tragic diction, with a traditional saga plot and heroic characters, in +which the Chorus was formed by these Satyrs. There was a deliberate clash, +an effect of burlesque; but of course the clash must not be too brutal. +Certain characters of the heroic saga are, so to speak, at home with +Satyrs and others are not. To take our extant specimens of Satyr-plays, +for instance: in the _Cyclops_ we have Odysseus, the heroic +trickster; in the fragmentary _Ichneutae_ of Sophocles we have the +Nymph Cyllene, hiding the baby Hermes from the chorus by the most +barefaced and pleasant lying; later no doubt there was an entrance of the +infant thief himself. Autolycus, Sisyphus, Thersites are all Satyr-play +heroes and congenial to the Satyr atmosphere; but the most congenial of +all, the one hero who existed always in an atmosphere of Satyrs and the +Kômos until Euripides made him the central figure of a tragedy, was +Heracles. +[Footnote: The character of Heracles in connexion with the Kômos, already +indicated by Wilamowitz and Dieterich (_Herakles_, pp. 98, ff.; +_Pulcinella_, pp. 63, ff.), has been illuminatingly developed in an +unpublished monograph by Mr. J.A.K. Thomson, of Aberdeen.] + +The complete Satyr-play had a hero of this type and a Chorus of Satyrs. +But the complete type was refined away during the fifth century; and one +stage in the process produced a play with a normal chorus but with one +figure of the Satyric or "revelling" type. One might almost say the +"comic" type if, for the moment, we may remember that that word is +directly derived from 'Kômos.' + +The _Alcestis_ is a very clear instance of this Pro-satyric class of +play. It has the regular tragic diction, marked here and there (393, +756, 780, etc.) by slight extravagances and forms of words which are +sometimes epic and sometimes over-colloquial; it has a regular saga plot, +which had already been treated by the old poet Phrynichus in his +_Alcestis_, a play which is now lost but seems to have been Satyric; +and it has one character straight from the Satyr world, the heroic +reveller, Heracles. It is all in keeping that he should arrive tired, +should feast and drink and sing; should be suddenly sobered and should go +forth to battle with Death. It is also in keeping that the contest should +have a half-grotesque and half-ghastly touch, the grapple amid the graves +and the cracking ribs. + + * * * * * + +So much for the traditional form. As for the subject, Euripides received +it from Phrynichus, and doubtless from other sources. We cannot be sure of +the exact form of the story in Phrynichus. But apparently it told how +Admetus, King of Pherae in Thessaly, received from Apollo a special +privilege which the God had obtained, in true Satyric style, by making the +Three Fates drunk and cajoling them. This was that, when his appointed +time for death came, he might escape if he could find some volunteer to +die for him. His father and mother, from whom the service might have been +expected, refused to perform it. His wife, Alcestis, though no blood +relation, handsomely undertook it and died. But it so happened that +Admetus had entertained in his house the demi-god, Heracles; and when +Heracles heard what had happened, he went out and wrestled with Death, +conquered him, and brought Alcestis home. + +Given this form and this story, the next question is: What did Euripides +make of them? The general answer is clear: he has applied his usual +method. He accepts the story as given in the tradition, and then +represents it in his own way. When the tradition in question is really +heroic, we know what his way is. He preserves, and even emphasizes, the +stateliness and formality of the Attic stage conventions; but, in the +meantime, he has subjected the story and its characters to a keener study +and a more sensitive psychological judgment than the simple things were +originally meant to bear. So that many characters which passed as heroic, +or at least presentable, in the kindly remoteness of legend, reveal some +strange weakness when brought suddenly into the light. When the tradition +is Satyric, as here, the same process produces almost an opposite effect. +It is somewhat as though the main plot of a gross and jolly farce were +pondered over and made more true to human character till it emerged as a +refined and rather pathetic comedy. The making drunk of the Three Grey +Sisters disappears; one can only just see the trace of its having once +been present. The revelling of Heracles is touched in with the lightest of +hands; it is little more than symbolic. And all the figures in the story, +instead of being left broadly comic or having their psychology neglected, +are treated delicately, sympathetically, with just that faint touch of +satire, or at least of amusement, which is almost inseparable from a close +interest in character. + +What was Admetus really like, this gallant prince who had won the +affection of such great guests as Apollo and Heracles, and yet went round +asking other people to die for him; who, in particular, accepted his +wife's monstrous sacrifice with satisfaction and gratitude? The play +portrays him well. Generous, innocent, artistic, affectionate, eloquent, +impulsive, a good deal spoilt, unconsciously insincere, and no doubt +fundamentally selfish, he hates the thought of dying and he hates losing +his wife almost as much. Why need she die? Why could it not have been some +one less important to him? He feels with emotion what a beautiful act it +would have been for his old father. "My boy, you have a long and happy +life before you, and for me the sands are well-nigh run out. Do not seek +to dissuade me. I will die for you." Admetus could compose the speech for +him. A touching scene, a noble farewell, and all the dreadful trouble +solved--so conveniently solved! And the miserable self-blinded old man +could not see it! + +Euripides seems to have taken positive pleasure in Admetus, much as +Meredith did in his famous Egoist; but Euripides all through is kinder to +his victim than Meredith is. True, Admetus is put to obvious shame, +publicly and helplessly. The Chorus make discreet comments upon him. +The Handmaid is outspoken about him. One feels that Alcestis herself, for +all her tender kindness, has seen through him. Finally, to make things +quite clear, his old father fights him openly, tells him home-truth upon +home-truth, tears away all his protective screens, and leaves him with his +self-respect in tatters. It is a fearful ordeal for Admetus, and, after +his first fury, he takes it well. He comes back from his wife's burial a +changed man. He says not much, but enough. "I have done wrong. I have only +now learnt my lesson. I imagined I could save my happy life by forfeiting +my honour; and the result is that I have lost both." I think that a +careful reading of the play will show an almost continuous process of +self-discovery and self-judgment in the mind of Admetus. He was a man who +blinded himself with words and beautiful sentiments; but he was not +thick-skinned or thick-witted. He was not a brute or a cynic. And I think +he did learn his lesson ... not completely and for ever, but as well as +most of us learn such lessons. + +The beauty of Alcestis is quite untouched by the dramatist's keener +analysis. The strong light only increases its effect. Yet she is not by +any means a mere blameless ideal heroine; and the character which +Euripides gives her makes an admirable foil to that of Admetus. Where he +is passionate and romantic, she is simple and homely. While he is still +refusing to admit the facts and beseeching her not to "desert" him, she in +a gentle but businesslike way makes him promise to take care of the +children and, above all things, not to marry again. She could not possibly +trust Admetus's choice. She is sure that the step-mother would be unkind +to the children. She might be a horror and beat them (l. 307). And when +Admetus has made a thrilling answer about eternal sorrow, and the +silencing of lyre and lute, and the statue who shall be his only bride, +Alcestis earnestly calls the attention of witnesses to the fact that he +has sworn not to marry again. She is not an artist like Admetus. There is +poetry in her, because poetry comes unconsciously out of deep feeling, but +there is no artistic eloquence. Her love, too, is quite different from +his. To him, his love for his wife and children is a beautiful thing, a +subject to speak and sing about as well as an emotion to feel. But her +love is hardly conscious. She does not talk about it at all. She is merely +wrapped up in the welfare of certain people, first her husband and then he +children. To a modern romantic reader her insistence that her husband +shall not marry again seems hardly delicate. But she does not think about +romance or delicacy. To her any neglect to ensure due protection for the +children would be as unnatural as to refuse to die for her husband. +Indeed, Professor J.L. Myres has suggested that care for the children's +future is the guiding motive of her whole conduct. There was first the +danger of their being left fatherless, a dire calamity in the heroic age. +She could meet that danger by dying herself. Then followed the danger of a +stepmother. She meets that by making Admetus swear never to marry. In the +long run, I fancy, the effect of gracious loveliness which Alcestis +certainly makes is not so much due to any words of her own as to what the +Handmaid and the Serving Man say about her. In the final scene she is +silent; necessarily and rightly silent, for all tradition knows that those +new-risen from the dead must not speak. It will need a long _rite de +passage_ before she can freely commune with this world again. It is a +strange and daring scene between the three of them; the humbled and +broken-hearted husband; the triumphant Heracles, kindly and wise, yet +still touched by the mocking and blustrous atmosphere from which he +sprang; and the silent woman who has seen the other side of the grave. +It was always her way to know things but not to speak of them. + +The other characters fall easily into their niches. We have only to +remember the old Satyric tradition and to look at them in the light of +their historical development. Heracles indeed, half-way on his road from +the roaring reveller of the Satyr-play to the suffering and erring +deliverer of tragedy, is a little foreign to our notions, but quite +intelligible and strangely attractive. The same historical method seems to +me to solve most of the difficulties which have been felt about Admetus's +hospitality. Heracles arrives at the castle just at the moment when +Alcestis is lying dead in her room; Admetus conceals the death from him +and insists on his coming in and enjoying himself. What are we to think of +this behaviour? Is it magnificent hospitality, or is it gross want of +tact? The answer, I think, is indicated above. + +In the uncritical and boisterous atmosphere of the Satyr-play it was +natural hospitality, not especially laudable or surprising. From the +analogy of similar stories I suspect that Admetus originally did not know +his guest, and received not so much the reward of exceptional virtue as +the blessing naturally due to those who entertain angels unawares. If we +insist on asking whether Euripides himself, in real life or in a play of +his own free invention, would have considered Admetus's conduct to +Heracles entirely praiseworthy, the answer will certainly be No, but it +will have little bearing on the play. In the _Alcestis_, as it stands, the +famous act of hospitality is a datum of the story. Its claims are admitted +on the strength of the tradition. It was the act for which Admetus was +specially and marvellously rewarded; therefore, obviously, it was an act +of exceptional merit and piety. Yet the admission is made with a smile, +and more than one suggestion is allowed to float across the scene that in +real life such conduct would be hardly wise. + +Heracles, who rose to tragic rank from a very homely cycle of myth, was +apt to bring other homely characters with him. He was a great killer not +only of malefactors but of "kêres" or bogeys, such as "Old Age" and "Ague" +and the sort of "Death" that we find in this play. Thanatos is not a god, +not at all a King of Terrors. One may compare him with the dancing +skeleton who is called Death in mediaeval writings. When such a figure +appears on the tragic stage one asks at once what relation he bears to +Hades, the great Olympian king of the unseen. The answer is obvious. +Thanatos is the servant of Hades, a "priest" or sacrificer, who is sent to +fetch the appointed victims. + +The other characters speak for themselves. Certainly Pheres can be trusted +to do so, though we must remember that we see him at an unfortunate +moment. The aged monarch is not at his best, except perhaps in mere +fighting power. I doubt if he was really as cynical as he here professes +to be. + + * * * * * + +In the above criticisms I feel that I may have done what critics are so +apt to do. I have dwelt on questions of intellectual interest and perhaps +thereby diverted attention from that quality in the play which is the most +important as well as by far the hardest to convey; I mean the sheer beauty +and delightfulness of the writing. It is the earliest dated play of +Euripides which has come down to us. True, he was over forty when he +produced it, but it is noticeably different from the works of his old age. +The numbers are smoother, the thought less deeply scarred, the language +more charming and less passionate. If it be true that poetry is bred out +of joy and sorrow, one feels as if more enjoyment and less suffering had +gone to the making of the _Alcestis_ than to that of the later plays. + + + + +ALCESTIS + + + +CHARACTERS OF THE PLAY + + +ADMÊTUS, _King of Pherae in Thessaly_. +ALCESTIS, _daughter of Pelias, his wife_. +PHERÊS, _his father, formerly King but now in retirement_. +TWO CHILDREN, _his son and daughter_. +A MANSERVANT _in his house_. +A HANDMAID. + +The Hero HERACLES. +The God APOLLO. +THANÁTOS _or_ DEATH. +CHORUS, _consisting of Elders of Pherae_. + + +"_The play was first performed when Glaukînos was Archon, in the 2nd +year of the 85th Olympiad_ (438 B.C.). _Sophocles was first, +Euripides second with the Cretan Women, Alcmaeon in Psophis, Telephus and +Alcestis.... The play is somewhat Satyric in character._" + + + +ALCESTIS + + +_The scene represents the ancient Castle of_ ADMETUS _near Pherae +in Thessaly. It is the dusk before dawn_; APOLLO, _radiant in the +darkness, looks at the Castle._ + + +APOLLO. +Admetus' House! 'Twas here I bowed my head +Of old, and chafed not at the bondman's bread, +Though born in heaven. Aye, Zeus to death had hurled +My son, Asclepios, Healer of the World, +Piercing with fire his heart; and in mine ire +I slew his Cyclop churls, who forged the fire. +Whereat Zeus cast me forth to bear the yoke +Of service to a mortal. To this folk +I came, and watched a stranger's herd for pay, +And all his house I have prospered to this day. +For innocent was the Lord I chanced upon +And clean as mine own heart, King Pheres' son, +Admetus. Him I rescued from the grave, +Beguiling the Grey Sisters till they gave +A great oath that Admetus should go free, +Would he but pay to Them Below in fee +Another living soul. Long did he prove +All that were his, and all that owed him love, +But never a soul he found would yield up life +And leave the sunlight for him, save his wife: +Who, even now, down the long galleries +Is borne, death-wounded; for this day it is +She needs must pass out of the light and die. +And, seeing the stain of death must not come nigh +My radiance, I must leave this house I love. + But ha! The Headsman of the Pit, above +Earth's floor, to ravish her! Aye, long and late +He hath watched, and cometh at the fall of fate. + +_Enter from the other side_ THANATOS; _a crouching black-haired and +winged figure, carrying a drawn sword. He starts in revulsion on +seeing_ APOLLO. + + +THANATOS. +Aha! +Why here? What mak'st thou at the gate, + Thou Thing of Light? Wilt overtread +The eternal judgment, and abate + And spoil the portions of the dead? +'Tis not enough for thee to have blocked + In other days Admetus' doom +With craft of magic wine, which mocked + The three grey Sisters of the Tomb; + But now once more + I see thee stand at watch, and shake + That arrow-armèd hand to make +This woman thine, who swore, who swore, + To die now for her husband's sake. + + +APOLLO. +Fear not. +I bring fair words and seek but what is just. + +THANATOS (_sneering_) +And if words help thee not, an arrow must? + +APOLLO. +'Tis ever my delight to bear this bow. + +THANATOS. +And aid this house unjustly? Aye, 'tis so. + +APOLLO. +I love this man, and grieve for his dismay. + +THANATOS. +And now wilt rob me of my second prey! + +APOLLO. +I never robbed thee, neither then nor now. + +THANATOS. +Why is Admetus here then, not below? + +APOLLO. +He gave for ransom his own wife, for whom ... + +THANATOS (_interrupting_). +I am come; and straight will bear her to the tomb. + +APOLLO. +Go, take her.--I can never move thine heart. + +THANATOS (_mocking_). +To slay the doomed?--Nay; I will do my part. + +APOLLO. +No. To keep death for them that linger late. + +THANATOS (_still mocking_). +'Twould please thee, so?... I owe thee homage great. + +APOLLO. +Ah, then she may yet ... she may yet grow old? + +THANATOS (_with a laugh_). +No!... I too have my rights, and them I hold. + +APOLLO. +'Tis but one life thou gainest either-wise. + +THANATOS. +When young souls die, the richer is my prize. + +APOLLO. +Old, with great riches they will bury her. + +THANATOS. +Fie on thee, fie! Thou rich-man's lawgiver! + +APOLLO. +How? Is there wit in Death, who seemed so blind? + +THANATOS. +The rich would buy long life for all their kind. + +APOLLO. +Thou will not grant me, then, this boon? 'Tis so? + +THANATOS. +Thou knowest me, what I am: I tell thee, no! + +APOLLO. +I know gods sicken at thee and men pine. + +THANATOS. +Begone! Too many things not meant for thine +Thy greed hath conquered; but not all, not all! + +APOLLO. +I swear, for all thy bitter pride, a fall +Awaits thee. One even now comes conquering +Towards this house, sent by a southland king +To fetch him four wild coursers, of the race +Which rend men's bodies in the winds of Thrace. +This house shall give him welcome good, and he +Shall wrest this woman from thy worms and thee. +So thou shalt give me all, and thereby win +But hatred, not the grace that might have been. + [_Exit_ APOLLO.] + +THANATOS. +Talk on, talk on! Thy threats shall win no bride +From me.--This woman, whatsoe'er betide, +Shall lie in Hades' house. Even at the word +I go to lay upon her hair my sword. +For all whose head this grey sword visiteth +To death are hallowed and the Lords of death. + + [THANATOS _goes into the house. Presently, as the day grows lighter, +the_ CHORUS _enters: it consists of Citizens of Pherae, who speak +severally._] + + +CHORUS. + +LEADER. +Quiet, quiet, above, beneath! + +SECOND ELDER. +The house of Admetus holds its breath. + +THIRD ELDER. +And never a King's friend near, +To tell us either of tears to shed +For Pelias' daughter, crowned and dead; + Or joy, that her eyes are clear. +Bravest, truest of wives is she +That I have seen or the world shall see. + +DIVERS CITIZENS, _conversing_. +(The dash -- indicates a new speaker.) + +--Hear ye no sob, or noise of hands + Beating the breast? No mourners' cries + For one they cannot save? +--Nothing: and at the door there stands + No handmaid.--Help, O Paian; rise, + O star beyond the wave! + +--Dead, and this quiet? No, it cannot be. +--Dead, dead!--Not gone to burial secretly! + +--Why? I still fear: what makes your speech so brave? +--Admetus cast that dear wife to the grave + Alone, with none to see? + +--I see no bowl of clear spring water. + It ever stands before the dread + Door where a dead man rests. +--No lock of shorn hair! Every daughter + Of woman shears it for the dead. + No sound of bruisèd breasts! + +--Yet 'tis this very day ...--This very day? +--The Queen should pass and lie beneath the clay. +--It hurts my life, my heart!--All honest hearts + Must sorrow for a brightness that departs, + A good life worn away. + +LEADER. +To wander o'er leagues of land, + To search over wastes of sea, +Where the Prophets of Lycia stand, + Or where Ammon's daughters three +Make runes in the rainless sand, + For magic to make her free-- + Ah, vain! for the end is here; + Sudden it comes and sheer. +What lamb on the altar-strand + Stricken shall comfort me? + +SECOND ELDER. +Only, only one, I know: + Apollo's son was he, +Who healed men long ago. + Were he but on earth to see, +She would rise from the dark below + And the gates of eternity. + For men whom the Gods had slain + He pitied and raised again; +Till God's fire laid him low, +And now, what help have we? + +OTHERS. +All's done that can be. Every vow +Full paid; and every altar's brow + Full crowned with spice of sacrifice. +No help remains nor respite now. + +_Enter from the Castle a_ HANDMAID, _almost in tears._ + +LEADER. +But see, a handmaid cometh, and the tear +Wet on her cheek! What tiding shall we hear?... + Thy grief is natural, daughter, if some ill +Hath fallen to-day. Say, is she living still +Or dead, your mistress? Speak, if speak you may. + +MAID. +Alive. No, dead.... Oh, read it either way. + +LEADER. +Nay, daughter, can the same soul live and die? + +MAID. +Her life is broken; death is in her eye. + +LEADER. +Poor King, to think what she was, and what thou! + +MAID. +He never knew her worth.... He will know it now. + +LEADER. +There is no hope, methinks, to save her still? + +MAID. +The hour is come, and breaks all human will. + +LEADER. +She hath such tendance as the dying crave? + +MAID. +For sure: and rich robes ready for her grave. + +LEADER. +'Fore God, she dies high-hearted, aye, and far +In honour raised above all wives that are! + +MAID. +Far above all! How other? What must she, +Who seeketh to surpass this woman, be? +Or how could any wife more shining make +Her lord's love, than by dying for his sake? +But thus much all the city knows. 'Tis here, +In her own rooms, the tale will touch thine ear +With strangeness. When she knew the day was come, +She rose and washed her body, white as foam, +With running water; then the cedarn press +She opened, and took forth her funeral dress +And rich adornment. So she stood arrayed +Before the Hearth-Fire of her home, and prayed: +"Mother, since I must vanish from the day, +This last, last time I kneel to thee and pray; +Be mother to my two children! Find some dear +Helpmate for him, some gentle lord for her. +And let not them, like me, before their hour +Die; let them live in happiness, in our +Old home, till life be full and age content." + To every household altar then she went +And made for each his garland of the green +Boughs of the wind-blown myrtle, and was seen +Praying, without a sob, without a tear. +She knew the dread thing coming, but her clear +Cheek never changed: till suddenly she fled +Back to her own chamber and bridal bed: +Then came the tears and she spoke all her thought. + "O bed, whereon my laughing girlhood's knot +Was severed by this man, for whom I die, +Farewell! 'Tis thou ... I speak not bitterly.... +'Tis thou hast slain me. All alone I go +Lest I be false to him or thee. And lo, +Some woman shall lie here instead of me-- +Happier perhaps; more true she cannot be." + She kissed the pillow as she knelt, and wet +With flooding tears was that fair coverlet. + At last she had had her fill of weeping; then +She tore herself away, and rose again, +Walking with downcast eyes; yet turned before +She had left the room, and cast her down once more +Kneeling beside the bed. Then to her side +The children came, and clung to her and cried, +And her arms hugged them, and a long good-bye +She gave to each, like one who goes to die. +The whole house then was weeping, every slave +In sorrow for his mistress. And she gave +Her hand to all; aye, none so base was there +She gave him not good words and he to her. + So on Admetus falls from either side +Sorrow. 'Twere bitter grief to him to have died +Himself; and being escaped, how sore a woe +He hath earned instead--Ah, some day he shall know! + +LEADER. +Surely Admetus suffers, even to-day, +For this true-hearted love he hath cast away? + +MAID. +He weeps; begs her not leave him desolate, +And holds her to his heart--too late, too late! +She is sinking now, and there, beneath his eye +Fading, the poor cold hand falls languidly, +And faint is all her breath. Yet still she fain +Would look once on the sunlight--once again +And never more. I will go in and tell +Thy presence. Few there be, will serve so well +My master and stand by him to the end. +But thou hast been from olden days our friend. + [_The_ MAID _goes in_.] + +CHORUS. + +THIRD ELDER. + O Zeus, +What escape and where + From the evil thing? +How break the snare + That is round our King? + +SECOND ELDER. + Ah list! +One cometh?... No. + Let us no more wait; + Make dark our raiment + And shear this hair. + +LEADER. + Aye, friends! +'Tis so, even so. + Yet the gods are great + And may send allayment. + To prayer, to prayer! + +ALL (_praying_). + O Paian wise! +Some healing of this home devise, devise! +Find, find.... Oh, long ago when we were blind + Thine eyes saw mercy ... find some healing breath! +Again, O Paian, break the chains that bind; + Stay the red hand of Death! + +LEADER. + Alas! +What shame, what dread, + Thou Pheres' son, +Shalt be harvested + When thy wife is gone! + +SECOND ELDER. + Ah me; +For a deed less drear + Than this thou ruest + Men have died for sorrow; + Aye, hearts have bled. + +THIRD ELDER. + 'Tis she; +Not as men say dear, + But the dearest, truest, + Shall lie ere morrow + Before thee dead! + +ALL. + But lo! Once more! +She and her husband moving to the door! +Cry, cry! And thou, O land of Pherae, hearken! + The bravest of women sinketh, perisheth, +Under the green earth, down where the shadows darken, + Down to the House of Death! + +[_During the last words_ ADMETUS _and_ ALCESTIS _have entered_. +ALCESTIS _is supported by her Handmaids and followed by her +two children._] + +LEADER. +And who hath said that Love shall bring + More joy to man than fear and strife? +I knew his perils from of old, +I know them now, when I behold + The bitter faring of my King, +Whose love is taken, and his life + Left evermore an empty thing. + +ALCESTIS. + O Sun, O light of the day that falls! +O running cloud that races along the sky! + +ADMETUS. +They look on thee and me, a stricken twain, +Who have wrought no sin that God should have thee slain. + +ALCESTIS. + Dear Earth, and House of sheltering walls, +And wedded homes of the land where my fathers lie! + +ADMETUS. +Fail not, my hapless one. Be strong, and pray +The o'er-mastering Gods to hate us not alway. + +ALCESTIS (_faintly, her mind wandering_). +A boat two-oared, upon water; I see, I see. + And the Ferryman of the Dead, +His hand that hangs on the pole, his voice that cries; +"Thou lingerest; come. Come quickly, we wait for thee." + He is angry that I am slow; he shakes his head. + +ADMETUS. +Alas, a bitter boat-faring for me, +My bride ill-starred.--Oh, this is misery! + +ALCESTIS (_as before_). +Drawing, drawing! 'Tis some one that draweth me ... + To the Palaces of the Dead. +So dark. The wings, the eyebrows and ah, the eyes!... + Go back! God's mercy! What seekest thou? Let me be!... +(_Recovering_) Where am I? Ah, and what paths are these I tread? + +ADMETUS. +Grievous for all who love thee, but for me +And my two babes most hard, most solitary. + +ALCESTIS. + Hold me not; let me lie.-- +I am too weak to stand; and Death is near, +And a slow darkness stealing on my sight. + My little ones, good-bye. +Soon, soon, and mother will be no more here.... +Good-bye, two happy children in the light. + +ADMETUS. +Oh, word of pain, oh, sharper ache + Than any death of mine had brought! + For the Gods' sake, desert me not, +For thine own desolate children's sake. +Nay, up! Be brave. For if they rend + Thee from me, I can draw no breath; + In thy hand are my life and death, +Thine, my belovèd and my friend! + +ALCESTIS. +Admetus, seeing what way my fortunes lie, +I fain would speak with thee before I die. +I have set thee before all things; yea, mine own +Life beside thine was naught. For this alone +I die.... Dear Lord, I never need have died. +I might have lived to wed some prince of pride, +Dwell in a king's house.... Nay, how could I, torn +From thee, live on, I and my babes forlorn? +I have given to thee my youth--not more nor less, +But all--though I was full of happiness. +Thy father and mother both--'tis strange to tell-- +Had failed thee, though for them the deed was well, +The years were ripe, to die and save their son, +The one child of the house: for hope was none, +If thou shouldst pass away, of other heirs. +So thou and I had lived through the long years, +Both. Thou hadst not lain sobbing here alone +For a dead wife and orphan babes.... 'Tis done +Now, and some God hath wrought out all his will. + Howbeit I now will ask thee to fulfill +One great return-gift--not so great withal +As I have given, for life is more than all; +But just and due, as thine own heart will tell. +For thou hast loved our little ones as well +As I have.... Keep them to be masters here +In my old house; and bring no stepmother +Upon them. She might hate them. She might be +Some baser woman, not a queen like me, +And strike them with her hand. For mercy, spare +Our little ones that wrong. It is my prayer.... +They come into a house: they are all strife +And hate to any child of the dead wife.... + Better a serpent than a stepmother! +A boy is safe. He has his father there +To guard him. But a little girl! (_Taking the_ LITTLE GIRL + _to her_) What good +And gentle care will guide thy maidenhood? +What woman wilt thou find at father's side? +One evil word from her, just when the tide +Of youth is full, would wreck thy hope of love. +And no more mother near, to stand above +Thy marriage-bed, nor comfort thee pain-tossed +In travail, when one needs a mother most! +Seeing I must die.... 'Tis here, across my way, +Not for the morrow, not for the third day, +But now--Death, and to lie with things that were. + Farewell. God keep you happy.--Husband dear, +Remember that I failed thee not; and you, +My children, that your mother loved you true. + +LEADER. +Take comfort. Ere thy lord can speak, I swear, +If truth is in him, he will grant thy prayer. + +ADMETUS. +He will, he will! Oh, never fear for me. +Mine hast thou been, and mine shalt ever be, +Living and dead, thou only. None in wide +Hellas but thou shalt be Admetus' bride. +No race so high, no face so magic-sweet +Shall ever from this purpose turn my feet. +And children ... if God grant me joy of these, +'Tis all I ask; of thee no joy nor ease +He gave me. And thy mourning I will bear +Not one year of my life but every year, +While life shall last.... My mother I will know +No more. My father shall be held my foe. +They brought the words of love but not the deed, +While thou hast given thine all, and in my need +Saved me. What can I do but weep alone, +Alone alway, when such a wife is gone?... + An end shall be of revel, and an end +Of crowns and song and mirth of friend with friend, +Wherewith my house was glad. I ne'er again +Will touch the lute nor ease my heart from pain +With pipes of Afric. All the joys I knew, +And joys were many, thou hast broken in two. +Oh, I will find some artist wondrous wise +Shall mould for me thy shape, thine hair, thine eyes, +And lay it in thy bed; and I will lie +Close, and reach out mine arms to thee, and cry +Thy name into the night, and wait and hear +My own heart breathe: "Thy love, thy love is near." +A cold delight; yet it might ease the sum +Of sorrow.... And good dreams of thee will come +Like balm. 'Tis sweet, even in a dream, to gaze +On a dear face, the moment that it stays. + O God, if Orpheus' voice were mine, to sing +To Death's high Virgin and the Virgin's King, +Till their hearts failed them, down would I my path +Cleave, and naught stay me, not the Hound of Wrath, +Not the grey oarsman of the ghostly tide, +Till back to sunlight I had borne my bride. + But now, wife, wait for me till I shall come +Where thou art, and prepare our second home. +These ministers in that same cedar sweet +Where thou art laid will lay me, feet to feet, +And head to head, oh, not in death from thee +Divided, who alone art true to me! + +LEADER. +This life-long sorrow thou hast sworn, I too, +Thy friend, will bear with thee. It is her due. + +ALCESTIS. +Children, ye heard his promise? He will wed +No other woman nor forget the dead. + +ADMETUS. +Again I promise. So it shall be done. + +ALCESTIS (_giving the children into his arms one after the other_). +On that oath take my daughter: and my son. + +ADMETUS. +Dear hand that gives, I accept both gift and vow. + +ALCESTIS. +Thou, in my place, must be their mother now. + +ADMETUS. +Else were they motherless--I needs must try. + +ALCESTIS. +My babes, I ought to live, and lo, I die. + +ADMETUS. +And how can I, forlorn of thee, live on? + +ALCESTIS. +Time healeth; and the dead are dead and gone. + +ADMETUS. +Oh, take me with thee to the dark below, +Me also! + +ALCESTIS. + 'Tis enough that one should go. + +ADMETUS. +O Fate, to have cheated me of one so true! + +ALCESTIS (_her strength failing_). +There comes a darkness: a great burden, too. + +ADMETUS. +I am lost if thou wilt leave me.... Wife! Mine own! + +ALCESTIS. +I am not thy wife; I am nothing. All is gone. + +ADMETUS. +Thy babes! Thou wilt not leave them.--Raise thine eye. + +ALCESTIS. +I am sorry.... But good-bye, children; good-bye. + +ADMETUS. +Look at them! Wake and look at them! + + +ALCESTIS. + I must go. + +ADMETUS. +What? Dying! + +ALCESTIS. + Farewell, husband! [_She dies._] + +ADMETUS (_with a cry_). + Ah!... Woe, woe! + +LEADER. +Admetus' Queen is dead! + +[_While_ ADMETUS _is weeping silently, and the_ CHORUS _veil +their faces, the_ LITTLE BOY _runs up to his dead Mother_.] + +LITTLE BOY. +Oh, what has happened? Mummy has gone away, + And left me and will not come back any more! +Father, I shall be lonely all the day.... + Look! Look! Her eyes ... and her arms not like before, + How they lie ... + Mother! Oh, speak a word! +Answer me, answer me, Mother! It is I. + I am touching your face. It is I, your little bird. + +ADMETUS (_recovering himself and going to the Child_). +She hears us not, she sees us not. We lie +Under a heavy grief, child, thou and I. + +LITTLE BOY. +I am so little, Father, and lonely and cold + Here without Mother. It is too hard.... And you, + Poor little sister, too. + Oh, Father! +Such a little time we had her. She might have stayed + On till we all were old.... +Everything is spoiled when Mother is dead. + +[_The_ LITTLE BOY _is taken away, with his Sister, sobbing_.] + +LEADER. +My King, thou needs must gird thee to the worst. +Thou shalt not be the last, nor yet the first, +To lose a noble wife. Be brave, and know +To die is but a debt that all men owe. + +ADMETUS. +I know. It came not without doubts and fears, +This thing. The thought hath poisoned all my years. + Howbeit, I now will make the burial due +To this dead Queen. Be assembled, all of you; +And, after, raise your triumph-song to greet +This pitiless Power that yawns beneath our feet. + Meantime let all in Thessaly who dread +My sceptre join in mourning for the dead +With temples sorrow-shorn and sable weed. +Ye chariot-lords, ye spurrers of the steed, +Shear close your horses' manes! Let there be found +Through all my realm no lute, nor lyre, nor sound +Of piping, till twelve moons are at an end. +For never shall I lose a closer friend, +Nor braver in my need. And worthy is she +Of honour, who alone hath died for me. + +[_The body of_ ALCESTIS _is carried into the house by mourners;_ +ADMETUS _follows it._] + +CHORUS. +Daughter of Pelias, fare thee well, + May joy be thine in the Sunless Houses! +For thine is a deed which the Dead shall tell + Where a King black-browed in the gloom carouses; + And the cold grey hand at the helm and oar + Which guideth shadows from shore to shore, +Shall bear this day o'er the Tears that Well, + A Queen of women, a spouse of spouses. + +Minstrels many shall praise thy name + With lyre full-strung and with voices lyreless, +When Mid-Moon riseth, an orbèd flame, + And from dusk to dawning the dance is tireless; + And Carnos cometh to Sparta's call, + And Athens shineth in festival; +For thy death is a song, and a fullness of fame, + Till the heart of the singer is left desireless. + +LEADER. +Would I could reach thee, oh, + Reach thee and save, my daughter, +Starward from gulfs of Hell, +Past gates, past tears that swell, +Where the weak oar climbs thro' + The night and the water! + +SECOND ELDER. +Belovèd and lonely one, + Who feared not dying: +Gone in another's stead +Alone to the hungry dead: +Light be the carven stone + Above thee lying! + +THIRD ELDER. +Oh, he who should seek again + A new bride after thee, +Were loathed of thy children twain, + And loathed of me. + +LEADER. +Word to his mother sped, + Praying to her who bore him; +Word to his father, old, +Heavy with years and cold; +"Quick, ere your son be dead! + What dare ye for him?" + +SECOND ELDER. +Old, and they dared not; grey, + And they helped him never! +'Twas she, in her youth and pride, +Rose up for her lord and died. +Oh, love of two hearts that stay + One-knit for ever.... + +THIRD ELDER. +'Tis rare in the world! God send + Such bride in my house to be; +She should live life to the end, + Not fail through me. + +[_As the song ceases there enters a stranger, walking strongly, but +travel-stained, dusty, and tired. His lion-skin and club show him to +be_ HERACLES.] + +HERACLES. +Ho, countrymen! To Pherae am I come +By now? And is Admetus in his home? + +LEADER. +Our King is in his house, Lord Heracles.-- +But say, what need brings thee in days like these +To Thessaly and Pherae's wallèd ring? + +HERACLES. +A quest I follow for the Argive King. + +LEADER. +What prize doth call thee, and to what far place? + +HERACLES. +The horses of one Diomede, in Thrace. + +LEADER. +But how...? Thou know'st not? Is he strange to thee? + +HERACLES. +Quite strange. I ne'er set foot in Bistony. + +LEADER. +Not without battle shalt thou win those steeds. + +HERACLES. +So be it! I cannot fail my master's needs. + +LEADER. +'Tis slay or die, win or return no more. + +HERACLES. +Well, I have looked on peril's face before. + +LEADER. +What profit hast thou in such manslaying? + +HERACLES. +I shall bring back the horses to my King. + +LEADER. +'Twere none such easy work to bridle them. + +HERACLES. +Not easy? Have they nostrils breathing flame? + +LEADER. +They tear men's flesh; their jaws are swift with blood. + +HERACLES. +Men's flesh! 'Tis mountain wolves', not horses' food! + +LEADER. +Thou wilt see their mangers clogged with blood, like mire. + +HERACLES. +And he who feeds such beasts, who was his sire? + +LEADER. +Ares, the war-lord of the Golden Targe. + +HERACLES. +Enough!--This labour fitteth well my large +Fortune, still upward, still against the wind. +How often with these kings of Ares' kind +Must I do battle? First the dark wolf-man, +Lycaon; then 'twas he men called The Swan; +And now this man of steeds!... Well, none shall see +Alcmena's son turn from his enemy. + +LEADER. +Lo, as we speak, this land's high governor, +Admetus, cometh from his castle door. + +_Enter_ ADMETUS _from the Castle_. + +ADMETUS. +Zeus-born of Perseid line, all joy to thee! + +HERACLES. +Joy to Admetus, Lord of Thessaly! + +ADMETUS. +Right welcome were she!--But thy love I know. + +HERACLES. +But why this mourning hair, this garb of woe? + +ADMETUS (_in a comparatively light tone_). +There is a burial I must make to-day. + +HERACLES. +God keep all evil from thy children! + +ADMETUS. + Nay, +My children live. + +HERACLES. + Thy father, if 'tis he, +Is ripe in years. + +ADMETUS. + He liveth, friend, and she +Who bore me. + +HERACLES. + Surely not thy wife? 'Tis not +Alcestis? + +ADMETUS (_his composure a little shaken_). + Ah; two answers share my thought, +Questioned of her. + +HERACLES. + Is she alive or dead? + +ADMETUS. +She is, and is not; and my heart hath bled +Long years for her. + +HERACLES. + I understand no more. +Thy words are riddles. + +ADMETUS. + Heard'st thou not of yore +The doom that she must meet? + +HERACLES. + I know thy wife +Has sworn to die for thee. + +ADMETUS. + And is it life, +To live with such an oath hung o'er her head? + +HERACLES (_relieved_). +Ah, +Weep not too soon, friend. Wait till she be dead. + +ADMETUS. +He dies who is doomed to die; he is dead who dies. + +HERACLES. +The two are different things in most men's eyes. + +ADMETUS. +Decide thy way, lord, and let me decide +The other way. + +HERACLES. + Who is it that has died? +Thou weepest. + +ADMETUS. + 'Tis a woman. It doth take +My memory back to her of whom we spake. + +HERACLES. +A stranger, or of kin to thee? + +ADMETUS. + Not kin, +But much beloved. + +HERACLES. + How came she to be in +Thy house to die? + +ADMETUS. + Her father died, and so +She came to us, an orphan, long ago. + +HERACLES (_as though about to depart_). +'Tis sad. +I would I had found thee on a happier day. + +ADMETUS. +Thy words have some intent: what wouldst thou say? + +HERACLES. +I must find harbour with some other friend. + +ADMETUS. +My prince, it may not be! God never send +Such evil! + +HERACLES. + 'Tis great turmoil, when a guest +Comes to a mourning house. + +ADMETUS. + Come in and rest. +Let the dead die! + +HERACLES. + I cannot, for mere shame, +Feast beside men whose eyes have tears in them. + +ADMETUS. +The guest-rooms are apart where thou shalt be. + +HERACLES. +Friend, let me go. I shall go gratefully. + +ADMETUS. +Thou shalt not enter any door but mine. +(_To an Attendant_) +Lead in our guest. Unlock the furthest line +Of guest-chambers; and bid the stewards there +Make ready a full feast; then close with care +The midway doors. 'Tis unmeet, if he hears +Our turmoil or is burdened with our tears. + +[_The Attendant leads_ HERACLES _into the house_.] + +LEADER. +How, master? When within a thing so sad +Lies, thou wilt house a stranger? Art thou mad? + +ADMETUS. +And had I turned the stranger from my door, +Who sought my shelter, hadst thou praised me more? +I trow not, if my sorrow were thereby +No whit less, only the more friendless I. +And more, when bards tell tales, were it not worse +My house should lie beneath the stranger's curse? +Now he is my sure friend, if e'er I stand +Lonely in Argos, in a thirsty land. + +LEADER. +Thou callest him thy friend; how didst thou dare +Keep hid from him the burden of thy care? + +ADMETUS. +He never would have entered, had he known +My grief.--Aye, men may mock what I have done, +And call me fool. My house hath never learned +To fail its friend, nor seen the stranger spurned. + +[ADMETUS _goes into the house_] + +CHORUS. +Oh, a House that loves the stranger, + And a House for ever free! +And Apollo, the Song-changer, + Was a herdsman in thy fee; + Yea, a-piping he was found, + Where the upward valleys wound, +To the kine from out the manger + And the sheep from off the lea, + And love was upon Othrys at the sound. + +And from deep glens unbeholden + Of the forest to his song +There came lynxes streaky-golden, + There came lions in a throng, + Tawny-coated, ruddy-eyed, + To that piper in his pride; +And shy fawns he would embolden, + Dappled dancers, out along + The shadow by the pine-tree's side. + +And those magic pipes a-blowing + Have fulfilled thee in thy reign +By thy Lake with honey flowing, + By thy sheepfolds and thy grain; + Where the Sun turns his steeds + To the twilight, all the meads +Of Molossus know thy sowing + And thy ploughs upon the plain. + Yea, and eastward thou art free + To the portals of the sea, +And Pelion, the unharboured, is but minister to thee. + + He hath opened wide his dwelling + To the stranger, though his ruth + For the dead was fresh and welling, + For the loved one of his youth. + 'Tis the brave heart's cry: + "I will fail not, though I die!" + Doth it win, with no man's telling, + Some high vision of the truth? + We may marvel. Yet I trust, + When man seeketh to be just +And to pity them that wander, God will raise him from the dust. + +[_As the song ceases the doors are thrown open and_ ADMETUS _comes +before them: a great funeral procession is seen moving out._] + +ADMETUS. +Most gentle citizens, our dead is here +Made ready; and these youths to bear the bier +Uplifted to the grave-mound and the urn. +Now, seeing she goes forth never to return, +Bid her your last farewell, as mourners may. + +[_The procession moves forward, past him_.] + +LEADER. +Nay, lord; thy father, walking old and grey; +And followers bearing burial gifts and brave +Gauds, which men call the comfort of the grave. + +_Enter_ PHERES _with followers bearing robes and gifts_. + +PHERES. +I come in sorrow for thy sorrow, son. +A faithful wife indeed thou hast lost, and one +Who ruled her heart. But, howso hard they be, +We needs must bear these griefs.--Some gifts for thee +Are here.... Yes; take them. Let them go beneath +The sod. We both must honour her in death, +Seeing she hath died, my son, that thou mayst live +Nor I be childless. Aye, she would not give +My soul to a sad old age, mourning for thee. +Methinks she hath made all women's life to be +A nobler thing, by one great woman's deed. + Thou saviour of my son, thou staff in need +To our wrecked age, farewell! May some good life +Be thine still in the grave.--Oh, 'tis a wife +Like this man needs; else let him stay unwed! + +[_The old man has not noticed_ ADMETUS'S _gathering +indignation_.] + +ADMETUS. +I called not thee to burial of my dead, +Nor count thy presence here a welcome thing. +My wife shall wear no robe that thou canst bring, +Nor needs thy help in aught. There was a day +We craved thy love, when I was on my way +Deathward--thy love, which bade thee stand aside +And watch, grey-bearded, while a young man died! +And now wilt mourn for her? Thy fatherhood! +Thou wast no true begetter of my blood, +Nor she my mother who dares call me child. +Oh, she was barren ever; she beguiled +Thy folly with some bastard of a thrall. +Here is thy proof! This hour hath shown me all +Thou art; and now I am no more thy son. + 'Fore God, among all cowards can scarce be one +Like thee. So grey, so near the boundary +Of mortal life, thou wouldst not, durst not, die +To save thy son! Thou hast suffered her to do +Thine office, her, no kin to me nor you, +Yet more than kin! Henceforth she hath all the part +Of mother, yea, and father in my heart. + And what a glory had been thine that day, +Dying to save thy son--when, either way, +Thy time must needs be brief. Thy life has had +Abundance of the things that make men glad; +A crown that came to thee in youth; a son +To do thee worship and maintain thy throne-- +Not like a childless king, whose folk and lands +Lie helpless, to be torn by strangers' hands. + Wilt say I failed in duty to thine age; +For that thou hast let me die? Not so; most sage, +Most pious I was, to mother and to thee; +And thus ye have paid me! Well, I counsel ye. +Lose no more time. Get quick another son +To foster thy last years, to lay thee on +Thy bier, when dead, and wrap thee in thy pall. +_I_ will not bury thee. I am, for all +The care thou hast shown me, dead. If I have found +Another, true to save me at the bound +Of life and death, that other's child am I, +That other's fostering friend, until I die. + How falsely do these old men pray for death, +Cursing their weight of years, their weary breath! +When Death comes close, there is not one that dares +To die; age is forgot and all its cares. + +LEADER. +Oh, peace! Enough of sorrow in our path +Is strewn. Thou son, stir not thy father's wrath. + +PHERES. +My son, whom seekest thou ... some Lydian thrall, +Or Phrygian, bought with cash?... to affright withal +By cursing? I am a Thessalian, free, +My father a born chief of Thessaly; +And thou most insolent. Yet think not so +To fling thy loud lewd words at me and go. + I got thee to succeed me in my hall, +I have fed thee, clad thee. But I have no call +To die for thee. Not in our family, +Not in all Greece, doth law bid fathers die +To save their sons. Thy road of life is thine +None other's, to rejoice at or repine. +All that was owed to thee by us is paid. +My throne is thine. My broad lands shall be made +Thine, as I had them from my father.... Say, +How have I wronged thee? What have I kept away? +"Not died for thee?"... I ask not thee to die. + Thou lovest this light: shall I not love it, I?... +'Tis age on age there, in the dark; and here +My sunlit time is short, but dear; but dear. + Thou hast fought hard enough. Thou drawest breath +Even now, long past thy portioned hour of death, +By murdering her ... and blamest my faint heart, +Coward, who hast let a woman play thy part +And die to save her pretty soldier! Aye, +A good plan, surely! Thou needst never die; +Thou canst find alway somewhere some fond wife +To die for thee. But, prithee, make not strife +With other friends, who will not save thee so. +Be silent, loving thine own life, and know +All men love theirs!... Taunt others, and thou too +Shalt hear much that is bitter, and is true. + +LEADER. +Too much of wrath before, too much hath run +After. Old man, cease to revile thy son. + +ADMETUS. +Speak on. I have spoken.... If my truth of tongue +Gives pain to thee, why didst thou do me wrong? + +PHERES. +Wrong? To have died for thee were far more wrong. + +ADMETUS. +How can an old life weigh against a young? + +PHERES. +Man hath but one, not two lives, to his use. + +ADMETUS. +Oh, live on; live, and grow more old than Zeus! + +PHERES. +Because none wrongs thee, thou must curse thy sire? + +ADMETUS. +I blest him. Is not life his one desire? + +PHERES. +This dead, methinks, is lying in _thy_ place. + +ADMETUS. +A proof, old traitor, of thy cowardliness! + +PHERES. +Died she through me?... That thou wilt hardly say. + +ADMETUS (_almost breaking down_). +O God! +Mayst thou but feel the need of me some day! + +PHERES. +Go forward; woo more wives that more may die. + +ADMETUS. +As thou wouldst not! Thine is the infamy. + +PHERES. +This light of heaven is sweet, and sweet again. + +ADMETUS. +Thy heart is foul. A thing unmeet for men. + +PHERES. +Thou laugh'st not yet across the old man's tomb. + +ADMETUS. +Dishonoured thou shalt die when death shall come. + +PHERES. +Once dead, I shall not care what tales are told. + +ADMETUS. +Great Gods, so lost to honour and so old! + +PHERES. +She was not lost to honour: she was blind. + +ADMETUS. +Go! Leave me with my dead.... Out from my mind! + +PHERES. +I go. Bury the woman thou hast slain.... +Her kinsmen yet may come to thee with plain +Question. Acastus hath small place in good +Men, if he care not for his sister's blood. + +[PHERES _goes off, with his Attendants_. ADMETUS _calls after him +as he goes._] + +ADMETUS. +Begone, begone, thou and thy bitter mate! +Be old and childless--ye have earned your fate-- +While your son lives! For never shall ye be +From henceforth under the same roof with me.... +Must I send heralds and a trumpet's call +To abjure thy blood? Fear not, I will send them all.... + +[PHERES _is now out of sight;_ ADMETUS _drops his defiance and +seems like a broken man._] + +But we--our sorrow is upon us; come +With me, and let us bear her to the tomb. + +CHORUS. + Ah me! +Farewell, unfalteringly brave! + Farewell, thou generous heart and true! + May Pluto give thee welcome due, +And Hermes love thee in the grave. +Whate'er of blessèd life there be + For high souls to the darkness flown, + Be thine for ever, and a throne +Beside the crowned Persephonê. + +[_The funeral procession has formed and moves slowly out, followed +by_ ADMETUS _and the_ CHORUS. _The stage is left empty, till a +side door of the Castle opens and there comes out a_ SERVANT, _angry +and almost in tears._] + +SERVANT. +Full many a stranger and from many a land +Hath lodged in this old castle, and my hand +Served them; but never has there passed this way +A scurvier ruffian than our guest to-day. +He saw my master's grief, but all the more +In he must come, and shoulders through the door. +And after, think you he would mannerly +Take what was set before him? No, not he! +If, on this day of trouble, we left out +Some small thing, he must have it with a shout. +Up, in both hands, our vat of ivy-wood +He raised, and drank the dark grape's burning blood, +Strong and untempered, till the fire was red +Within him; then put myrtle round his head +And roared some noisy song. So had we there +Discordant music. He, without a care +For all the affliction of Admetus' halls, +Sang on; and, listening, one could hear the thralls +In the long gallery weeping for the dead. + We let him see no tears. Our master made +That order, that the stranger must not know. + So here I wait in her own house, and do +Service to some black thief, some man of prey; +And she has gone, has gone for ever away. +I never followed her, nor lifted high +My hand to bless her; never said good-bye.... +I loved her like my mother. So did all +The slaves. She never let his anger fall +Too hard. She saved us alway.... And this wild beast +Comes in our sorrow when we need him least! + +[_During the last few lines_ HERACLES _has entered, unperceived by +the_ SERVANT. _He has evidently bathed and changed his garments and +drunk his fill, and is now revelling, a garland of flowers on his head. He +frightens the_ SERVANT _a little from time to time during the +following speech._] + +HERACLES. +Friend, why so solemn and so cranky-eyed? +'Tis not a henchman's office, to show pride +To his betters. He should smile and make good cheer. + There comes a guest, thy lord's old comrade, here; +And thou art all knitted eyebrows, scowls and head +Bent, because somebody, forsooth, is dead! + Come close! I mean to make thee wiser. + +[_The_ SERVANT _reluctantly comes close._] + + So. +Dost comprehend things mortal, how they grow?... +(_To himself_) I suppose not. How could he?... + Look this way! +Death is a debt all mortal men must pay; +Aye, there is no man living who can say +If life will last him yet a single day. +On, to the dark, drives Fortune; and no force +Can wrest her secret nor put back her course.... + I have told thee now. I have taught thee. After this +Eat, drink, make thyself merry. Count the bliss +Of the one passing hour thine own; the rest +Is Fortune's. And give honour chiefliest +To our lady Cypris, giver of all joys +To man. 'Tis a sweet goddess. Otherwise, +Let all these questions sleep and just obey +My counsel.... Thou believest all I say? +I hope so.... Let this stupid grieving be; +Rise up above thy troubles, and with me +Drink in a cloud of blossoms. By my soul, +I vow the sweet plash-music of the bowl +Will break thy glumness, loose thee from the frown +Within. Let mortal man keep to his own +Mortality, and not expect too much. + To all your solemn dogs and other such +Scowlers--I tell thee truth, no more nor less-- +Life is not life, but just unhappiness. + +[_He offers the wine-bowl to the_ SERVANT, _who avoids it_.] + +SERVANT. +We know all this. But now our fortunes be +Not such as ask for mirth or revelry. + +HERACLES. +A woman dead, of no one's kin; why grieve +So much? Thy master and thy mistress live. + +SERVANT. +Live? Man, hast thou heard nothing of our woe? + +HERACLES. +Yes, thy lord told me all I need to know. + +SERVANT. +He is too kind to his guests, more kind than wise. + +HERACLES. +Must I go starved because some stranger dies? + +SERVANT. +Some stranger?--Yes, a stranger verily! + +HERACLES (_his manner beginning to change_). +Is this some real grief he hath hid from me? + +SERVANT. +Go, drink, man! Leave to us our master's woes. + +HERACLES. +It sounds not like a stranger. Yet, God knows... + +SERVANT. +How should thy revelling hurt, if that were all? + +HERACLES. +Hath mine own friend so wronged me in his hall? + +SERVANT. +Thou camest at an hour when none was free +To accept thee. We were mourning. Thou canst see +Our hair, black robes... + +HERACLES (_suddenly, in a voice of thunder_). + Who is it that is dead? + +SERVANT. +Alcestis, the King's wife. + +HERACLES (_overcome_). + What hast thou said? +Alcestis?... And ye feasted me withal! + +SERVANT. +He held it shame to turn thee from his hall. + +HERACLES. +Shame! And when such a wondrous wife was gone! + +SERVANT (_breaking into tears_). +Oh, all is gone, all lost, not she alone! + +HERACLES. +I knew, I felt it, when I saw his tears, +And face, and shorn hair. But he won mine ears +With talk of the strange woman and her rite +Of burial. So in mine own heart's despite +I crossed his threshold and sat drinking--he +And I old friends!--in his calamity. +Drank, and sang songs, and revelled, my head hot +With wine and flowers!... And thou to tell me not, +When all the house lay filled with sorrow, thou! +(_A pause; then suddenly_) +Where lies the tomb?--Where shall I find her now? + +SERVANT (_frightened_). +Close by the straight Larissa road. The tall +White marble showeth from the castle wall. + +HERACLES. +O heart, O hand, great doings have ye done +Of old: up now, and show them what a son +Took life that hour, when she of Tiryns' sod, +Electryon's daughter, mingled with her God! + I needs must save this woman from the shore +Of death and set her in her house once more, +Repaying Admetus' love.... This Death, this black +And wingèd Lord of corpses, I will track +Home. I shall surely find him by the grave +A-hungered, lapping the hot blood they gave +In sacrifice. An ambush: then, one spring, +One grip! These arms shall be a brazen ring, +With no escape, no rest, howe'er he whine +And curse his mauled ribs, till the Queen is mine! + Or if he escape me, if he come not there +To seek the blood of offering, I will fare +Down to the Houses without Light, and bring +To Her we name not and her nameless King +Strong prayers, until they yield to me and send +Alcestis home, to life and to my friend: +Who gave me shelter, drove me not away +In his great grief, but hid his evil day +Like a brave man, because he loved me well. +Is one in all this land more hospitable, +One in all Greece? I swear no man shall say +He hath cast his love upon a churl away! + +[_He goes forth, just as he is, in the direction of the grave. +The_ SERVANT _watches a moment and goes back into the hall._] + +[_The stage is empty; then_ ADMETUS _and the_ CHORUS +_return._] + +ADMETUS. + Alas! +Bitter the homeward way, + Bitter to seek + A widowed house; ah me, + Where should I fly or stay, + Be dumb or speak? + Would I could cease to be! + + Despair, despair! +My mother bore me under an evil star. + I envy them that are perished; my heart is there. +It dwells in the Sunless Houses, afar, afar. + +I take no joy in looking upon the light; + No joy in the feel of the earth beneath my tread. +The Slayer hath taken his hostage; the Lord of the Dead + Holdeth me sworn to taste no more delight. + +[_He throws himself on the ground in despair._] + +CHORUS. +[_Each member of the_ CHORUS _speaks his line severally, as he +passes_ ADMETUS, _who is heard sobbing at the end of each line._] + + --Advance, advance; + Till the house shall give thee cover. + --Thou hast borne heavy things + And meet for lamentation. + --Thou hast passed, hast passed, + Thro' the deepest of the River. + --Yet no help comes + To the sad and silent nation. + --And the face of thy belovèd, it shall meet thee never, never! + +ADMETUS. +Ye wrench my wounds asunder. Where + Is grief like mine, whose wife is dead? + My wife, whom would I ne'er had wed, +Nor loved, nor held my house with her.... + +Blessed are they who dare to dwell + Unloved of woman! 'Tis but one + Heart that they bleed with, and alone +Can bear their one life's burden well. + +No young shall wither at their side, + No bridal room be swept by death.... + Aye, better man should draw his breath +For ever without child or bride. + +CHORUS (_as before_). + --'Tis Fate, 'tis Fate: + She is strong and none shall break her. + --No end, no end, + Wilt thou lay to lamentations? + --Endure and be still: + Thy lamenting will not wake her. + --There be many before thee, + Who have suffered and had patience. + --Though the face of Sorrow changeth, yet her hand is on all nations. + +ADMETUS. +The garb of tears, the mourner's cry: + Then the long ache when tears are past!... + Oh, why didst hinder me to cast +This body to the dust and die +With her, the faithful and the brave? + Then not one lonely soul had fled, + But two great lovers, proudly dead, +Through the deep waters of the grave. + +LEADER. +A friend I knew, + In whose house died a son, +Worthy of bitter rue, + His only one. +His head sank, yet he bare +Stilly his weight of care, +Though grey was in his hair + And life nigh done. + +ADMETUS. +Ye shapes that front me, wall and gate, + How shall I enter in and dwell + Among ye, with all Fortune's spell +Dischanted? Aye, the change is great. + +That day I strode with bridal song + Through lifted brands of Pelian pine; + A hand belovèd lay in mine; +And loud behind a revelling throng + +Exalted me and her, the dead. + They called us young, high-hearted; told + How princes were our sires of old, +And how we loved and we must wed.... + +For those high songs, lo, men that moan, + And raiment black where once was white; + Who guide me homeward in the night, +On that waste bed to lie alone. + +SECOND ELDER. +It breaks, like strife, + Thy long peace, where no pain +Had entered; yet is life, + Sweet life, not slain. +A wife dead; a dear chair +Empty: is that so rare? +Men live without despair + Whose loves are ta'en. + +ADMETUS (_erect and facing them_). +Behold, I count my wife's fate happier, +Though all gainsay me, than mine own. To her +Comes no more pain for ever; she hath rest +And peace from all toil, and her name is blest. +But I am one who hath no right to stay +Alive on earth; one that hath lost his way +In fate, and strays in dreams of life long past.... +Friends, I have learned my lesson at the last. + I have my life. Here stands my house. But now +How dare I enter in? Or, entered, how +Go forth again? Go forth, when none is there +To give me a parting word, and I to her?... + Where shall I turn for refuge? There within, +The desert that remains where she hath been +Will drive me forth, the bed, the empty seat +She sat in; nay, the floor beneath my feet +Unswept, the children crying at my knee +For mother; and the very thralls will be +In sobs for the dear mistress that is lost. + That is my home! If I go forth, a host +Of feasts and bridal dances, gatherings gay +Of women, will be there to fright me away +To loneliness. Mine eyes will never bear +The sight. They were her friends; they played with her. + And always, always, men who hate my name +Will murmur: "This is he who lives in shame +Because he dared not die! He gave instead +The woman whom he loved, and so is fled +From death. He counts himself a man withal! +And seeing his parents died not at his call +He hates them, when himself he dared not die!" + Such mocking beside all my pain shall I +Endure.... What profit was it to live on, +Friend, with my grief kept and mine honour gone? + +CHORUS. +I have sojourned in the Muse's land, + Have wandered with the wandering star, +Seeking for strength, and in my hand + Held all philosophies that are; +Yet nothing could I hear nor see +Stronger than That Which Needs Must Be. +No Orphic rune, no Thracian scroll, + Hath magic to avert the morrow; +No healing all those medicines brave +Apollo to the Asclepiad gave; +Pale herbs of comfort in the bowl + Of man's wide sorrow. +She hath no temple, she alone, + Nor image where a man may kneel; +No blood upon her altar-stone + Crying shall make her hear nor feel. +I know thy greatness; come not great +Beyond my dreams, O Power of Fate! +Aye, Zeus himself shall not unclose + His purpose save by thy decerning. +The chain of iron, the Scythian sword, +It yields and shivers at thy word; +Thy heart is as the rock, and knows + No ruth, nor turning. + +[_They turn to_ ADMETUS.] + +Her hand hath caught thee; yea, the keeping + Of iron fingers grips thee round. +Be still. Be still. Thy noise of weeping + Shall raise no lost one from the ground. +Nay, even the Sons of God are parted +At last from joy, and pine in death.... +Oh, dear on earth when all did love her, +Oh, dearer lost beyond recover: +Of women all the bravest-hearted + Hath pressed thy lips and breathed thy breath. + +Let not the earth that lies upon her + Be deemed a grave-mound of the dead. +Let honour, as the Gods have honour, + Be hers, till men shall bow the head, +And strangers, climbing from the city + Her slanting path, shall muse and say: +"This woman died to save her lover, +And liveth blest, the stars above her: +Hail, Holy One, and grant thy pity!" + So pass the wondering words away. + +LEADER. +But see, it is Alcmena's son once more, +My lord King, cometh striding to thy door. + +[_Enter_ HERACLES; _his dress is as in the last scene, but shows +signs of a struggle. Behind come two Attendants, guiding between them a +veiled Woman, who seems like one asleep or unconscious. The Woman remains +in the background while_ HERACLES _comes forward._] + +HERACLES. +Thou art my friend, Admetus; therefore bold +And plain I tell my story, and withhold +No secret hurt.--Was I not worthy, friend, +To stand beside thee; yea, and to the end +Be proven in sorrow if I was true to thee? +And thou didst tell me not a word, while she +Lay dead within; but bid me feast, as though +Naught but the draping of some stranger's woe +Was on thee. So I garlanded my brow +And poured the gods drink-offering, and but now +Filled thy death-stricken house with wine and song. +Thou hast done me wrong, my brother; a great wrong +Thou hast done me. But I will not add more pain +In thine affliction. + Why I am here again, +Returning, thou must hear. I pray thee, take +And keep yon woman for me till I make +My homeward way from Thrace, when I have ta'en +Those four steeds and their bloody master slain. +And if--which heaven avert!--I ne'er should see +Hellas again, I leave her here, to be +An handmaid in thy house. No labour small +Was it that brought her to my hand at all. +I fell upon a contest certain Kings +Had set for all mankind, sore buffetings +And meet for strong men, where I staked my life +And won this woman. For the easier strife +Black steeds were prizes; herds of kine were cast +For heavier issues, fists and wrestling; last, +This woman.... Lest my work should all seem done +For naught, I needs must keep what I have won; +So prithee take her in. No theft, but true +Toil, won her.... Some day thou mayst thank me, too. + +ADMETUS. +'Twas in no scorn, no bitterness to thee, +I hid my wife's death and my misery. +Methought it was but added pain on pain +If thou shouldst leave me, and roam forth again +Seeking another's roof. And, for mine own +Sorrow, I was content to weep alone. + But, for this damsel, if it may be so, +I pray thee, Lord, let some man, not in woe +Like mine, take her. Thou hast in Thessaly +Abundant friends.... 'Twould wake sad thoughts in me. + How could I have this damsel in my sight +And keep mine eyes dry? Prince, why wilt thou smite +The smitten? Griefs enough are on my head. + Where in my castle could so young a maid +Be lodged--her veil and raiment show her young: +Here, in the men's hall? I should fear some wrong. +'Tis not so easy, Prince, to keep controlled +My young men. And thy charge I fain would hold +Sacred.--If not, wouldst have me keep her in +The women's chambers ... where my dead hath been? +How could I lay this woman where my bride +Once lay? It were dishonour double-dyed. +These streets would curse the man who so betrayed +The wife who saved him for some younger maid; +The dead herself ... I needs must worship her +And keep her will. + +[_During the last few lines_ ADMETUS _has been looking at the +veiled Woman and, though he does not consciously recognize her, +feels a strange emotion overmastering him. He draws back._] + + + Aye. I must walk with care.... +O woman, whosoe'er thou art, thou hast +The shape of my Alcestis; thou art cast +In mould like hers.... Oh, take her from mine eyes! +In God's name! + +[HERACLES _signs to the Attendants to take_ ALCESTIS _away again. +She stays veiled and unnoticing in the background._] + +I was fallen, and in this wise +Thou wilt make me deeper fall.... Meseems, meseems, +There in her face the loved one of my dreams +Looked forth.--My heart is made a turbid thing, +Craving I know not what, and my tears spring +Unbidden.--Grief I knew 'twould be; but how +Fiery a grief I never knew till now. + +LEADER. +Thy fate I praise not. Yet, what gift soe'er +God giveth, man must steel himself and bear. + +HERACLES (_drawing_ ADMETUS _on_). +Would God, I had the power, 'mid all this might +Of arm, to break the dungeons of the night, +And free thy wife, and make thee glad again! + +ADMETUS. +Where is such power? I know thy heart were fain; +But so 'tis writ. The dead shall never rise. + +HERACLES. +Chafe not the curb, then: suffer and be wise. + +ADMETUS. +Easier to give such counsel than to keep. + +HERACLES. +Who will be happier, shouldst thou always weep? + +ADMETUS. +Why, none. Yet some blind longing draws me on... + +HERACLES. +'Tis natural. Thou didst love her that is gone. + +ADMETUS. +'Tis that hath wrecked, oh more than wrecked, my life. + +HERACLES. +'Tis certain: thou hast lost a faithful wife. + +ADMETUS. +Till life itself is dead and wearies me. + +HERACLES. +Thy pain is yet young. Time will soften thee, + +[_The veiled Woman begins dimly, as though in a dream, to hear the words +spoken._] + +ADMETUS. +Time? Yes, if time be death. + +HERACLES. + 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." + +Again, what are the feelings of Admetus himself? First, mere indignation +and disgust at the utterly tactless proposal: then, I think, in 1061 ff. +("I must walk with care" ... end of speech), a strange discovery about +himself which amazes and humiliates him. As he looks at the woman he finds +himself feeling how exactly like Alcestis she is, and then yearning +towards her, almost falling in love with her. A most beautiful and +poignant touch. In modern language one would say that his subconscious +nature feels Alcestis there and responds emotionally to her presence; his +conscious nature, believing the woman to be a stranger, is horrified at +his own apparent baseness and inconstancy. + +P. 57, l. 1051, Where in my castle, etc.]--The castle is divided into two +main parts: a public _megaron_ or great hall where the men live +during; the day and sleep at night, and a private region, ruled by the +queen and centring in the _thalamos_ or royal bed-chamber. If the new +woman were taken into this "harem," even if Admetus never spoke to her, +the world outside would surmise the worst and consider him dishonoured. + +P. 66, l. 1148, Be righteous to thy guest, As he would have thee be.]-- +Does this mean "Go on being hospitable, as you have been," or "Learn after +this not to take liberties with other guests"? It is hard to say. + +P. 66, l. 1152, The feasting day shall surely come; now I must needs +away.]--A fine last word for Heracles. We have seen him feasting, but that +makes a small part in his life. His main life is to perform labour upon +labour in service to his king. Euripides occasionally liked this method of +ending a play, not with a complete finish (Greek _catastrophê_), but +with the opening of a door into some further vista of endurance or +adventure. The _Trojan Women_ ends by the women going out to the +Greek ships to begin a life of slavery; the _Rhesus_ with the doomed +army of Trojans gathering bravely for an attack which we know will be +disastrous. Here we have the story finished for Admetus and Alcestis, but +no rest for Heracles. See the note at the end of my _Trojan Women_. + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Alcestis, by Euripides + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALCESTIS *** + +***** This file should be named 10523-8.txt or 10523-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/5/2/10523/ + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Charles M. Bidwell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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For +example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at: + + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234 + +or filename 24689 would be found at: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689 + +An alternative method of locating eBooks: + https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL + + diff --git a/old/10523-8.zip b/old/10523-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..740554a --- /dev/null +++ b/old/10523-8.zip diff --git a/old/10523.txt b/old/10523.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ff25fac --- /dev/null +++ b/old/10523.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3228 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Alcestis, by Euripides + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Alcestis + +Author: Euripides + +Release Date: December 23, 2003 [EBook #10523] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALCESTIS *** + + + + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Charles M. Bidwell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + +THE ALCESTIS + +OF + +EURIPIDES + + + +TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH RHYMING VERSE + +WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES BY + +GILBERT MURRAY, LL D, D LITT, FBA + +REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD + + + + +1915 + + + +INTRODUCTION + +The _Alcestis_ would hardly confirm its author's right to be +acclaimed "the most tragic of the poets." It is doubtful whether one can +call it a tragedy at all. Yet it remains one of the most characteristic +and delightful of Euripidean dramas, as well as, by modern standards, the +most easily actable. And I notice that many judges who display nothing but +a fierce satisfaction in sending other plays of that author to the block +or the treadmill, show a certain human weakness in sentencing the gentle +daughter of Pelias. + +The play has been interpreted in many different ways. There is the old +unsophisticated view, well set forth in Paley's preface of 1872. He +regards the _Alcestis_ simply as a triumph of pathos, especially of +"that peculiar sort of pathos which comes most home to us, with our views +and partialities for domestic life.... As for the characters, that of +Alcestis must be acknowledged to be pre-eminently beautiful. One could +almost imagine that Euripides had not yet conceived that bad opinion of +the sex which so many of the subsequent dramas exhibit.... But the rest +are hardly well-drawn, or, at least, pleasingly portrayed." "The poet +might perhaps, had he pleased, have exhibited Admetus in a more amiable +point of view." + +This criticism is not very trenchant, but its weakness is due, I think, +more to timidity of statement than to lack of perception. Paley does see +that a character may be "well-drawn" without necessarily being "pleasing"; +and even that he may be eminently pleasing as a part of the play while +very displeasing in himself. He sees that Euripides may have had his own +reasons for not making Admetus an ideal husband. It seems odd that such +points should need mentioning; but Greek drama has always suffered from a +school of critics who approach a play with a greater equipment of +aesthetic theory than of dramatic perception. This is the characteristic +defect of classicism. One mark of the school is to demand from dramatists +heroes and heroines which shall satisfy its own ideals; and, though there +was in the New Comedy a mask known to Pollux as "The Entirely-good Young +Man" ([Greek: panchraestos neaniskos]), such a character is fortunately +unknown to classical Greek drama. + +The influence of this "classicist" tradition has led to a timid and +unsatisfying treatment of the _Alcestis_, in which many of the most +striking and unconventional features of the whole composition were either +ignored or smoothed away. As a natural result, various lively-minded +readers proceeded to overemphasize these particular features, and were +carried into eccentricity or paradox. Alfred Schoene, for instance, fixing +his attention on just those points which the conventional critic passed +over, decides simply that the _Alcestis_ is a parody, and finds it +very funny. (_Die Alkestis von Euripides_, Kiel, 1895.) + +I will not dwell on other criticisms of this type. There are those who +have taken the play for a criticism of contemporary politics or the +current law of inheritance. Above all there is the late Dr. Verrall's +famous essay in _Euripides the Rationalist_, explaining it as a +psychological criticism of a supposed Delphic miracle, and arguing that +Alcestis in the play does not rise from the dead at all. She had never +really died; she only had a sort of nervous catalepsy induced by all the +"suggestion" of death by which she was surrounded. Now Dr. Verrall's work, +as always, stands apart. Even if wrong, it has its own excellence, its +special insight and its extraordinary awakening power. But in general the +effect of reading many criticisms on the _Alcestis_ is to make a +scholar realize that, for all the seeming simplicity of the play, +competent Grecians have been strangely bewildered by it, and that after +all there is no great reason to suppose that he himself is more sensible +than his neighbours. + +This is depressing. None the less I cannot really believe that, if we make +patient use of our available knowledge, the _Alcestis_ presents any +startling enigma. In the first place, it has long been known from the +remnants of the ancient Didascalia, or official notice of production, that +the _Alcestis_ was produced as the fourth play of a series; that is, +it took the place of a Satyr-play. It is what we may call Pro-satyric. +(See the present writer's introduction to the _Rhesus_.) And we +should note for what it is worth the observation in the ancient Greek +argument: "The play is somewhat satyr-like ([Greek: saturiphkoteron]). It +ends in rejoicing and gladness against the tragic convention." + +Now we are of late years beginning to understand much better what a +Satyr-play was. Satyrs have, of course, nothing to do with satire, either +etymologically or otherwise. Satyrs are the attendant daemons who form the +Komos, or revel rout, of Dionysus. They are represented in divers +fantastic forms, the human or divine being mixed with that of some animal, +especially the horse or wild goat. Like Dionysus himself, they are +connected in ancient religion with the Renewal of the Earth in spring and +the resurrection of the dead, a point which students of the +_Alcestis_ may well remember. But in general they represent mere +joyous creatures of nature, unthwarted by law and unchecked by +self-control. Two notes are especially struck by them: the passions and +the absurdity of half-drunken revellers, and the joy and mystery of the +wild things in the forest. + +The rule was that after three tragedies proper there came a play, still in +tragic diction, with a traditional saga plot and heroic characters, in +which the Chorus was formed by these Satyrs. There was a deliberate clash, +an effect of burlesque; but of course the clash must not be too brutal. +Certain characters of the heroic saga are, so to speak, at home with +Satyrs and others are not. To take our extant specimens of Satyr-plays, +for instance: in the _Cyclops_ we have Odysseus, the heroic +trickster; in the fragmentary _Ichneutae_ of Sophocles we have the +Nymph Cyllene, hiding the baby Hermes from the chorus by the most +barefaced and pleasant lying; later no doubt there was an entrance of the +infant thief himself. Autolycus, Sisyphus, Thersites are all Satyr-play +heroes and congenial to the Satyr atmosphere; but the most congenial of +all, the one hero who existed always in an atmosphere of Satyrs and the +Komos until Euripides made him the central figure of a tragedy, was +Heracles. +[Footnote: The character of Heracles in connexion with the Komos, already +indicated by Wilamowitz and Dieterich (_Herakles_, pp. 98, ff.; +_Pulcinella_, pp. 63, ff.), has been illuminatingly developed in an +unpublished monograph by Mr. J.A.K. Thomson, of Aberdeen.] + +The complete Satyr-play had a hero of this type and a Chorus of Satyrs. +But the complete type was refined away during the fifth century; and one +stage in the process produced a play with a normal chorus but with one +figure of the Satyric or "revelling" type. One might almost say the +"comic" type if, for the moment, we may remember that that word is +directly derived from 'Komos.' + +The _Alcestis_ is a very clear instance of this Pro-satyric class of +play. It has the regular tragic diction, marked here and there (393, +756, 780, etc.) by slight extravagances and forms of words which are +sometimes epic and sometimes over-colloquial; it has a regular saga plot, +which had already been treated by the old poet Phrynichus in his +_Alcestis_, a play which is now lost but seems to have been Satyric; +and it has one character straight from the Satyr world, the heroic +reveller, Heracles. It is all in keeping that he should arrive tired, +should feast and drink and sing; should be suddenly sobered and should go +forth to battle with Death. It is also in keeping that the contest should +have a half-grotesque and half-ghastly touch, the grapple amid the graves +and the cracking ribs. + + * * * * * + +So much for the traditional form. As for the subject, Euripides received +it from Phrynichus, and doubtless from other sources. We cannot be sure of +the exact form of the story in Phrynichus. But apparently it told how +Admetus, King of Pherae in Thessaly, received from Apollo a special +privilege which the God had obtained, in true Satyric style, by making the +Three Fates drunk and cajoling them. This was that, when his appointed +time for death came, he might escape if he could find some volunteer to +die for him. His father and mother, from whom the service might have been +expected, refused to perform it. His wife, Alcestis, though no blood +relation, handsomely undertook it and died. But it so happened that +Admetus had entertained in his house the demi-god, Heracles; and when +Heracles heard what had happened, he went out and wrestled with Death, +conquered him, and brought Alcestis home. + +Given this form and this story, the next question is: What did Euripides +make of them? The general answer is clear: he has applied his usual +method. He accepts the story as given in the tradition, and then +represents it in his own way. When the tradition in question is really +heroic, we know what his way is. He preserves, and even emphasizes, the +stateliness and formality of the Attic stage conventions; but, in the +meantime, he has subjected the story and its characters to a keener study +and a more sensitive psychological judgment than the simple things were +originally meant to bear. So that many characters which passed as heroic, +or at least presentable, in the kindly remoteness of legend, reveal some +strange weakness when brought suddenly into the light. When the tradition +is Satyric, as here, the same process produces almost an opposite effect. +It is somewhat as though the main plot of a gross and jolly farce were +pondered over and made more true to human character till it emerged as a +refined and rather pathetic comedy. The making drunk of the Three Grey +Sisters disappears; one can only just see the trace of its having once +been present. The revelling of Heracles is touched in with the lightest of +hands; it is little more than symbolic. And all the figures in the story, +instead of being left broadly comic or having their psychology neglected, +are treated delicately, sympathetically, with just that faint touch of +satire, or at least of amusement, which is almost inseparable from a close +interest in character. + +What was Admetus really like, this gallant prince who had won the +affection of such great guests as Apollo and Heracles, and yet went round +asking other people to die for him; who, in particular, accepted his +wife's monstrous sacrifice with satisfaction and gratitude? The play +portrays him well. Generous, innocent, artistic, affectionate, eloquent, +impulsive, a good deal spoilt, unconsciously insincere, and no doubt +fundamentally selfish, he hates the thought of dying and he hates losing +his wife almost as much. Why need she die? Why could it not have been some +one less important to him? He feels with emotion what a beautiful act it +would have been for his old father. "My boy, you have a long and happy +life before you, and for me the sands are well-nigh run out. Do not seek +to dissuade me. I will die for you." Admetus could compose the speech for +him. A touching scene, a noble farewell, and all the dreadful trouble +solved--so conveniently solved! And the miserable self-blinded old man +could not see it! + +Euripides seems to have taken positive pleasure in Admetus, much as +Meredith did in his famous Egoist; but Euripides all through is kinder to +his victim than Meredith is. True, Admetus is put to obvious shame, +publicly and helplessly. The Chorus make discreet comments upon him. +The Handmaid is outspoken about him. One feels that Alcestis herself, for +all her tender kindness, has seen through him. Finally, to make things +quite clear, his old father fights him openly, tells him home-truth upon +home-truth, tears away all his protective screens, and leaves him with his +self-respect in tatters. It is a fearful ordeal for Admetus, and, after +his first fury, he takes it well. He comes back from his wife's burial a +changed man. He says not much, but enough. "I have done wrong. I have only +now learnt my lesson. I imagined I could save my happy life by forfeiting +my honour; and the result is that I have lost both." I think that a +careful reading of the play will show an almost continuous process of +self-discovery and self-judgment in the mind of Admetus. He was a man who +blinded himself with words and beautiful sentiments; but he was not +thick-skinned or thick-witted. He was not a brute or a cynic. And I think +he did learn his lesson ... not completely and for ever, but as well as +most of us learn such lessons. + +The beauty of Alcestis is quite untouched by the dramatist's keener +analysis. The strong light only increases its effect. Yet she is not by +any means a mere blameless ideal heroine; and the character which +Euripides gives her makes an admirable foil to that of Admetus. Where he +is passionate and romantic, she is simple and homely. While he is still +refusing to admit the facts and beseeching her not to "desert" him, she in +a gentle but businesslike way makes him promise to take care of the +children and, above all things, not to marry again. She could not possibly +trust Admetus's choice. She is sure that the step-mother would be unkind +to the children. She might be a horror and beat them (l. 307). And when +Admetus has made a thrilling answer about eternal sorrow, and the +silencing of lyre and lute, and the statue who shall be his only bride, +Alcestis earnestly calls the attention of witnesses to the fact that he +has sworn not to marry again. She is not an artist like Admetus. There is +poetry in her, because poetry comes unconsciously out of deep feeling, but +there is no artistic eloquence. Her love, too, is quite different from +his. To him, his love for his wife and children is a beautiful thing, a +subject to speak and sing about as well as an emotion to feel. But her +love is hardly conscious. She does not talk about it at all. She is merely +wrapped up in the welfare of certain people, first her husband and then he +children. To a modern romantic reader her insistence that her husband +shall not marry again seems hardly delicate. But she does not think about +romance or delicacy. To her any neglect to ensure due protection for the +children would be as unnatural as to refuse to die for her husband. +Indeed, Professor J.L. Myres has suggested that care for the children's +future is the guiding motive of her whole conduct. There was first the +danger of their being left fatherless, a dire calamity in the heroic age. +She could meet that danger by dying herself. Then followed the danger of a +stepmother. She meets that by making Admetus swear never to marry. In the +long run, I fancy, the effect of gracious loveliness which Alcestis +certainly makes is not so much due to any words of her own as to what the +Handmaid and the Serving Man say about her. In the final scene she is +silent; necessarily and rightly silent, for all tradition knows that those +new-risen from the dead must not speak. It will need a long _rite de +passage_ before she can freely commune with this world again. It is a +strange and daring scene between the three of them; the humbled and +broken-hearted husband; the triumphant Heracles, kindly and wise, yet +still touched by the mocking and blustrous atmosphere from which he +sprang; and the silent woman who has seen the other side of the grave. +It was always her way to know things but not to speak of them. + +The other characters fall easily into their niches. We have only to +remember the old Satyric tradition and to look at them in the light of +their historical development. Heracles indeed, half-way on his road from +the roaring reveller of the Satyr-play to the suffering and erring +deliverer of tragedy, is a little foreign to our notions, but quite +intelligible and strangely attractive. The same historical method seems to +me to solve most of the difficulties which have been felt about Admetus's +hospitality. Heracles arrives at the castle just at the moment when +Alcestis is lying dead in her room; Admetus conceals the death from him +and insists on his coming in and enjoying himself. What are we to think of +this behaviour? Is it magnificent hospitality, or is it gross want of +tact? The answer, I think, is indicated above. + +In the uncritical and boisterous atmosphere of the Satyr-play it was +natural hospitality, not especially laudable or surprising. From the +analogy of similar stories I suspect that Admetus originally did not know +his guest, and received not so much the reward of exceptional virtue as +the blessing naturally due to those who entertain angels unawares. If we +insist on asking whether Euripides himself, in real life or in a play of +his own free invention, would have considered Admetus's conduct to +Heracles entirely praiseworthy, the answer will certainly be No, but it +will have little bearing on the play. In the _Alcestis_, as it stands, the +famous act of hospitality is a datum of the story. Its claims are admitted +on the strength of the tradition. It was the act for which Admetus was +specially and marvellously rewarded; therefore, obviously, it was an act +of exceptional merit and piety. Yet the admission is made with a smile, +and more than one suggestion is allowed to float across the scene that in +real life such conduct would be hardly wise. + +Heracles, who rose to tragic rank from a very homely cycle of myth, was +apt to bring other homely characters with him. He was a great killer not +only of malefactors but of "keres" or bogeys, such as "Old Age" and "Ague" +and the sort of "Death" that we find in this play. Thanatos is not a god, +not at all a King of Terrors. One may compare him with the dancing +skeleton who is called Death in mediaeval writings. When such a figure +appears on the tragic stage one asks at once what relation he bears to +Hades, the great Olympian king of the unseen. The answer is obvious. +Thanatos is the servant of Hades, a "priest" or sacrificer, who is sent to +fetch the appointed victims. + +The other characters speak for themselves. Certainly Pheres can be trusted +to do so, though we must remember that we see him at an unfortunate +moment. The aged monarch is not at his best, except perhaps in mere +fighting power. I doubt if he was really as cynical as he here professes +to be. + + * * * * * + +In the above criticisms I feel that I may have done what critics are so +apt to do. I have dwelt on questions of intellectual interest and perhaps +thereby diverted attention from that quality in the play which is the most +important as well as by far the hardest to convey; I mean the sheer beauty +and delightfulness of the writing. It is the earliest dated play of +Euripides which has come down to us. True, he was over forty when he +produced it, but it is noticeably different from the works of his old age. +The numbers are smoother, the thought less deeply scarred, the language +more charming and less passionate. If it be true that poetry is bred out +of joy and sorrow, one feels as if more enjoyment and less suffering had +gone to the making of the _Alcestis_ than to that of the later plays. + + + + +ALCESTIS + + + +CHARACTERS OF THE PLAY + + +ADMETUS, _King of Pherae in Thessaly_. +ALCESTIS, _daughter of Pelias, his wife_. +PHERES, _his father, formerly King but now in retirement_. +TWO CHILDREN, _his son and daughter_. +A MANSERVANT _in his house_. +A HANDMAID. + +The Hero HERACLES. +The God APOLLO. +THANATOS _or_ DEATH. +CHORUS, _consisting of Elders of Pherae_. + + +"_The play was first performed when Glaukinos was Archon, in the 2nd +year of the 85th Olympiad_ (438 B.C.). _Sophocles was first, +Euripides second with the Cretan Women, Alcmaeon in Psophis, Telephus and +Alcestis.... The play is somewhat Satyric in character._" + + + +ALCESTIS + + +_The scene represents the ancient Castle of_ ADMETUS _near Pherae +in Thessaly. It is the dusk before dawn_; APOLLO, _radiant in the +darkness, looks at the Castle._ + + +APOLLO. +Admetus' House! 'Twas here I bowed my head +Of old, and chafed not at the bondman's bread, +Though born in heaven. Aye, Zeus to death had hurled +My son, Asclepios, Healer of the World, +Piercing with fire his heart; and in mine ire +I slew his Cyclop churls, who forged the fire. +Whereat Zeus cast me forth to bear the yoke +Of service to a mortal. To this folk +I came, and watched a stranger's herd for pay, +And all his house I have prospered to this day. +For innocent was the Lord I chanced upon +And clean as mine own heart, King Pheres' son, +Admetus. Him I rescued from the grave, +Beguiling the Grey Sisters till they gave +A great oath that Admetus should go free, +Would he but pay to Them Below in fee +Another living soul. Long did he prove +All that were his, and all that owed him love, +But never a soul he found would yield up life +And leave the sunlight for him, save his wife: +Who, even now, down the long galleries +Is borne, death-wounded; for this day it is +She needs must pass out of the light and die. +And, seeing the stain of death must not come nigh +My radiance, I must leave this house I love. + But ha! The Headsman of the Pit, above +Earth's floor, to ravish her! Aye, long and late +He hath watched, and cometh at the fall of fate. + +_Enter from the other side_ THANATOS; _a crouching black-haired and +winged figure, carrying a drawn sword. He starts in revulsion on +seeing_ APOLLO. + + +THANATOS. +Aha! +Why here? What mak'st thou at the gate, + Thou Thing of Light? Wilt overtread +The eternal judgment, and abate + And spoil the portions of the dead? +'Tis not enough for thee to have blocked + In other days Admetus' doom +With craft of magic wine, which mocked + The three grey Sisters of the Tomb; + But now once more + I see thee stand at watch, and shake + That arrow-armed hand to make +This woman thine, who swore, who swore, + To die now for her husband's sake. + + +APOLLO. +Fear not. +I bring fair words and seek but what is just. + +THANATOS (_sneering_) +And if words help thee not, an arrow must? + +APOLLO. +'Tis ever my delight to bear this bow. + +THANATOS. +And aid this house unjustly? Aye, 'tis so. + +APOLLO. +I love this man, and grieve for his dismay. + +THANATOS. +And now wilt rob me of my second prey! + +APOLLO. +I never robbed thee, neither then nor now. + +THANATOS. +Why is Admetus here then, not below? + +APOLLO. +He gave for ransom his own wife, for whom ... + +THANATOS (_interrupting_). +I am come; and straight will bear her to the tomb. + +APOLLO. +Go, take her.--I can never move thine heart. + +THANATOS (_mocking_). +To slay the doomed?--Nay; I will do my part. + +APOLLO. +No. To keep death for them that linger late. + +THANATOS (_still mocking_). +'Twould please thee, so?... I owe thee homage great. + +APOLLO. +Ah, then she may yet ... she may yet grow old? + +THANATOS (_with a laugh_). +No!... I too have my rights, and them I hold. + +APOLLO. +'Tis but one life thou gainest either-wise. + +THANATOS. +When young souls die, the richer is my prize. + +APOLLO. +Old, with great riches they will bury her. + +THANATOS. +Fie on thee, fie! Thou rich-man's lawgiver! + +APOLLO. +How? Is there wit in Death, who seemed so blind? + +THANATOS. +The rich would buy long life for all their kind. + +APOLLO. +Thou will not grant me, then, this boon? 'Tis so? + +THANATOS. +Thou knowest me, what I am: I tell thee, no! + +APOLLO. +I know gods sicken at thee and men pine. + +THANATOS. +Begone! Too many things not meant for thine +Thy greed hath conquered; but not all, not all! + +APOLLO. +I swear, for all thy bitter pride, a fall +Awaits thee. One even now comes conquering +Towards this house, sent by a southland king +To fetch him four wild coursers, of the race +Which rend men's bodies in the winds of Thrace. +This house shall give him welcome good, and he +Shall wrest this woman from thy worms and thee. +So thou shalt give me all, and thereby win +But hatred, not the grace that might have been. + [_Exit_ APOLLO.] + +THANATOS. +Talk on, talk on! Thy threats shall win no bride +From me.--This woman, whatsoe'er betide, +Shall lie in Hades' house. Even at the word +I go to lay upon her hair my sword. +For all whose head this grey sword visiteth +To death are hallowed and the Lords of death. + + [THANATOS _goes into the house. Presently, as the day grows lighter, +the_ CHORUS _enters: it consists of Citizens of Pherae, who speak +severally._] + + +CHORUS. + +LEADER. +Quiet, quiet, above, beneath! + +SECOND ELDER. +The house of Admetus holds its breath. + +THIRD ELDER. +And never a King's friend near, +To tell us either of tears to shed +For Pelias' daughter, crowned and dead; + Or joy, that her eyes are clear. +Bravest, truest of wives is she +That I have seen or the world shall see. + +DIVERS CITIZENS, _conversing_. +(The dash -- indicates a new speaker.) + +--Hear ye no sob, or noise of hands + Beating the breast? No mourners' cries + For one they cannot save? +--Nothing: and at the door there stands + No handmaid.--Help, O Paian; rise, + O star beyond the wave! + +--Dead, and this quiet? No, it cannot be. +--Dead, dead!--Not gone to burial secretly! + +--Why? I still fear: what makes your speech so brave? +--Admetus cast that dear wife to the grave + Alone, with none to see? + +--I see no bowl of clear spring water. + It ever stands before the dread + Door where a dead man rests. +--No lock of shorn hair! Every daughter + Of woman shears it for the dead. + No sound of bruised breasts! + +--Yet 'tis this very day ...--This very day? +--The Queen should pass and lie beneath the clay. +--It hurts my life, my heart!--All honest hearts + Must sorrow for a brightness that departs, + A good life worn away. + +LEADER. +To wander o'er leagues of land, + To search over wastes of sea, +Where the Prophets of Lycia stand, + Or where Ammon's daughters three +Make runes in the rainless sand, + For magic to make her free-- + Ah, vain! for the end is here; + Sudden it comes and sheer. +What lamb on the altar-strand + Stricken shall comfort me? + +SECOND ELDER. +Only, only one, I know: + Apollo's son was he, +Who healed men long ago. + Were he but on earth to see, +She would rise from the dark below + And the gates of eternity. + For men whom the Gods had slain + He pitied and raised again; +Till God's fire laid him low, +And now, what help have we? + +OTHERS. +All's done that can be. Every vow +Full paid; and every altar's brow + Full crowned with spice of sacrifice. +No help remains nor respite now. + +_Enter from the Castle a_ HANDMAID, _almost in tears._ + +LEADER. +But see, a handmaid cometh, and the tear +Wet on her cheek! What tiding shall we hear?... + Thy grief is natural, daughter, if some ill +Hath fallen to-day. Say, is she living still +Or dead, your mistress? Speak, if speak you may. + +MAID. +Alive. No, dead.... Oh, read it either way. + +LEADER. +Nay, daughter, can the same soul live and die? + +MAID. +Her life is broken; death is in her eye. + +LEADER. +Poor King, to think what she was, and what thou! + +MAID. +He never knew her worth.... He will know it now. + +LEADER. +There is no hope, methinks, to save her still? + +MAID. +The hour is come, and breaks all human will. + +LEADER. +She hath such tendance as the dying crave? + +MAID. +For sure: and rich robes ready for her grave. + +LEADER. +'Fore God, she dies high-hearted, aye, and far +In honour raised above all wives that are! + +MAID. +Far above all! How other? What must she, +Who seeketh to surpass this woman, be? +Or how could any wife more shining make +Her lord's love, than by dying for his sake? +But thus much all the city knows. 'Tis here, +In her own rooms, the tale will touch thine ear +With strangeness. When she knew the day was come, +She rose and washed her body, white as foam, +With running water; then the cedarn press +She opened, and took forth her funeral dress +And rich adornment. So she stood arrayed +Before the Hearth-Fire of her home, and prayed: +"Mother, since I must vanish from the day, +This last, last time I kneel to thee and pray; +Be mother to my two children! Find some dear +Helpmate for him, some gentle lord for her. +And let not them, like me, before their hour +Die; let them live in happiness, in our +Old home, till life be full and age content." + To every household altar then she went +And made for each his garland of the green +Boughs of the wind-blown myrtle, and was seen +Praying, without a sob, without a tear. +She knew the dread thing coming, but her clear +Cheek never changed: till suddenly she fled +Back to her own chamber and bridal bed: +Then came the tears and she spoke all her thought. + "O bed, whereon my laughing girlhood's knot +Was severed by this man, for whom I die, +Farewell! 'Tis thou ... I speak not bitterly.... +'Tis thou hast slain me. All alone I go +Lest I be false to him or thee. And lo, +Some woman shall lie here instead of me-- +Happier perhaps; more true she cannot be." + She kissed the pillow as she knelt, and wet +With flooding tears was that fair coverlet. + At last she had had her fill of weeping; then +She tore herself away, and rose again, +Walking with downcast eyes; yet turned before +She had left the room, and cast her down once more +Kneeling beside the bed. Then to her side +The children came, and clung to her and cried, +And her arms hugged them, and a long good-bye +She gave to each, like one who goes to die. +The whole house then was weeping, every slave +In sorrow for his mistress. And she gave +Her hand to all; aye, none so base was there +She gave him not good words and he to her. + So on Admetus falls from either side +Sorrow. 'Twere bitter grief to him to have died +Himself; and being escaped, how sore a woe +He hath earned instead--Ah, some day he shall know! + +LEADER. +Surely Admetus suffers, even to-day, +For this true-hearted love he hath cast away? + +MAID. +He weeps; begs her not leave him desolate, +And holds her to his heart--too late, too late! +She is sinking now, and there, beneath his eye +Fading, the poor cold hand falls languidly, +And faint is all her breath. Yet still she fain +Would look once on the sunlight--once again +And never more. I will go in and tell +Thy presence. Few there be, will serve so well +My master and stand by him to the end. +But thou hast been from olden days our friend. + [_The_ MAID _goes in_.] + +CHORUS. + +THIRD ELDER. + O Zeus, +What escape and where + From the evil thing? +How break the snare + That is round our King? + +SECOND ELDER. + Ah list! +One cometh?... No. + Let us no more wait; + Make dark our raiment + And shear this hair. + +LEADER. + Aye, friends! +'Tis so, even so. + Yet the gods are great + And may send allayment. + To prayer, to prayer! + +ALL (_praying_). + O Paian wise! +Some healing of this home devise, devise! +Find, find.... Oh, long ago when we were blind + Thine eyes saw mercy ... find some healing breath! +Again, O Paian, break the chains that bind; + Stay the red hand of Death! + +LEADER. + Alas! +What shame, what dread, + Thou Pheres' son, +Shalt be harvested + When thy wife is gone! + +SECOND ELDER. + Ah me; +For a deed less drear + Than this thou ruest + Men have died for sorrow; + Aye, hearts have bled. + +THIRD ELDER. + 'Tis she; +Not as men say dear, + But the dearest, truest, + Shall lie ere morrow + Before thee dead! + +ALL. + But lo! Once more! +She and her husband moving to the door! +Cry, cry! And thou, O land of Pherae, hearken! + The bravest of women sinketh, perisheth, +Under the green earth, down where the shadows darken, + Down to the House of Death! + +[_During the last words_ ADMETUS _and_ ALCESTIS _have entered_. +ALCESTIS _is supported by her Handmaids and followed by her +two children._] + +LEADER. +And who hath said that Love shall bring + More joy to man than fear and strife? +I knew his perils from of old, +I know them now, when I behold + The bitter faring of my King, +Whose love is taken, and his life + Left evermore an empty thing. + +ALCESTIS. + O Sun, O light of the day that falls! +O running cloud that races along the sky! + +ADMETUS. +They look on thee and me, a stricken twain, +Who have wrought no sin that God should have thee slain. + +ALCESTIS. + Dear Earth, and House of sheltering walls, +And wedded homes of the land where my fathers lie! + +ADMETUS. +Fail not, my hapless one. Be strong, and pray +The o'er-mastering Gods to hate us not alway. + +ALCESTIS (_faintly, her mind wandering_). +A boat two-oared, upon water; I see, I see. + And the Ferryman of the Dead, +His hand that hangs on the pole, his voice that cries; +"Thou lingerest; come. Come quickly, we wait for thee." + He is angry that I am slow; he shakes his head. + +ADMETUS. +Alas, a bitter boat-faring for me, +My bride ill-starred.--Oh, this is misery! + +ALCESTIS (_as before_). +Drawing, drawing! 'Tis some one that draweth me ... + To the Palaces of the Dead. +So dark. The wings, the eyebrows and ah, the eyes!... + Go back! God's mercy! What seekest thou? Let me be!... +(_Recovering_) Where am I? Ah, and what paths are these I tread? + +ADMETUS. +Grievous for all who love thee, but for me +And my two babes most hard, most solitary. + +ALCESTIS. + Hold me not; let me lie.-- +I am too weak to stand; and Death is near, +And a slow darkness stealing on my sight. + My little ones, good-bye. +Soon, soon, and mother will be no more here.... +Good-bye, two happy children in the light. + +ADMETUS. +Oh, word of pain, oh, sharper ache + Than any death of mine had brought! + For the Gods' sake, desert me not, +For thine own desolate children's sake. +Nay, up! Be brave. For if they rend + Thee from me, I can draw no breath; + In thy hand are my life and death, +Thine, my beloved and my friend! + +ALCESTIS. +Admetus, seeing what way my fortunes lie, +I fain would speak with thee before I die. +I have set thee before all things; yea, mine own +Life beside thine was naught. For this alone +I die.... Dear Lord, I never need have died. +I might have lived to wed some prince of pride, +Dwell in a king's house.... Nay, how could I, torn +From thee, live on, I and my babes forlorn? +I have given to thee my youth--not more nor less, +But all--though I was full of happiness. +Thy father and mother both--'tis strange to tell-- +Had failed thee, though for them the deed was well, +The years were ripe, to die and save their son, +The one child of the house: for hope was none, +If thou shouldst pass away, of other heirs. +So thou and I had lived through the long years, +Both. Thou hadst not lain sobbing here alone +For a dead wife and orphan babes.... 'Tis done +Now, and some God hath wrought out all his will. + Howbeit I now will ask thee to fulfill +One great return-gift--not so great withal +As I have given, for life is more than all; +But just and due, as thine own heart will tell. +For thou hast loved our little ones as well +As I have.... Keep them to be masters here +In my old house; and bring no stepmother +Upon them. She might hate them. She might be +Some baser woman, not a queen like me, +And strike them with her hand. For mercy, spare +Our little ones that wrong. It is my prayer.... +They come into a house: they are all strife +And hate to any child of the dead wife.... + Better a serpent than a stepmother! +A boy is safe. He has his father there +To guard him. But a little girl! (_Taking the_ LITTLE GIRL + _to her_) What good +And gentle care will guide thy maidenhood? +What woman wilt thou find at father's side? +One evil word from her, just when the tide +Of youth is full, would wreck thy hope of love. +And no more mother near, to stand above +Thy marriage-bed, nor comfort thee pain-tossed +In travail, when one needs a mother most! +Seeing I must die.... 'Tis here, across my way, +Not for the morrow, not for the third day, +But now--Death, and to lie with things that were. + Farewell. God keep you happy.--Husband dear, +Remember that I failed thee not; and you, +My children, that your mother loved you true. + +LEADER. +Take comfort. Ere thy lord can speak, I swear, +If truth is in him, he will grant thy prayer. + +ADMETUS. +He will, he will! Oh, never fear for me. +Mine hast thou been, and mine shalt ever be, +Living and dead, thou only. None in wide +Hellas but thou shalt be Admetus' bride. +No race so high, no face so magic-sweet +Shall ever from this purpose turn my feet. +And children ... if God grant me joy of these, +'Tis all I ask; of thee no joy nor ease +He gave me. And thy mourning I will bear +Not one year of my life but every year, +While life shall last.... My mother I will know +No more. My father shall be held my foe. +They brought the words of love but not the deed, +While thou hast given thine all, and in my need +Saved me. What can I do but weep alone, +Alone alway, when such a wife is gone?... + An end shall be of revel, and an end +Of crowns and song and mirth of friend with friend, +Wherewith my house was glad. I ne'er again +Will touch the lute nor ease my heart from pain +With pipes of Afric. All the joys I knew, +And joys were many, thou hast broken in two. +Oh, I will find some artist wondrous wise +Shall mould for me thy shape, thine hair, thine eyes, +And lay it in thy bed; and I will lie +Close, and reach out mine arms to thee, and cry +Thy name into the night, and wait and hear +My own heart breathe: "Thy love, thy love is near." +A cold delight; yet it might ease the sum +Of sorrow.... And good dreams of thee will come +Like balm. 'Tis sweet, even in a dream, to gaze +On a dear face, the moment that it stays. + O God, if Orpheus' voice were mine, to sing +To Death's high Virgin and the Virgin's King, +Till their hearts failed them, down would I my path +Cleave, and naught stay me, not the Hound of Wrath, +Not the grey oarsman of the ghostly tide, +Till back to sunlight I had borne my bride. + But now, wife, wait for me till I shall come +Where thou art, and prepare our second home. +These ministers in that same cedar sweet +Where thou art laid will lay me, feet to feet, +And head to head, oh, not in death from thee +Divided, who alone art true to me! + +LEADER. +This life-long sorrow thou hast sworn, I too, +Thy friend, will bear with thee. It is her due. + +ALCESTIS. +Children, ye heard his promise? He will wed +No other woman nor forget the dead. + +ADMETUS. +Again I promise. So it shall be done. + +ALCESTIS (_giving the children into his arms one after the other_). +On that oath take my daughter: and my son. + +ADMETUS. +Dear hand that gives, I accept both gift and vow. + +ALCESTIS. +Thou, in my place, must be their mother now. + +ADMETUS. +Else were they motherless--I needs must try. + +ALCESTIS. +My babes, I ought to live, and lo, I die. + +ADMETUS. +And how can I, forlorn of thee, live on? + +ALCESTIS. +Time healeth; and the dead are dead and gone. + +ADMETUS. +Oh, take me with thee to the dark below, +Me also! + +ALCESTIS. + 'Tis enough that one should go. + +ADMETUS. +O Fate, to have cheated me of one so true! + +ALCESTIS (_her strength failing_). +There comes a darkness: a great burden, too. + +ADMETUS. +I am lost if thou wilt leave me.... Wife! Mine own! + +ALCESTIS. +I am not thy wife; I am nothing. All is gone. + +ADMETUS. +Thy babes! Thou wilt not leave them.--Raise thine eye. + +ALCESTIS. +I am sorry.... But good-bye, children; good-bye. + +ADMETUS. +Look at them! Wake and look at them! + + +ALCESTIS. + I must go. + +ADMETUS. +What? Dying! + +ALCESTIS. + Farewell, husband! [_She dies._] + +ADMETUS (_with a cry_). + Ah!... Woe, woe! + +LEADER. +Admetus' Queen is dead! + +[_While_ ADMETUS _is weeping silently, and the_ CHORUS _veil +their faces, the_ LITTLE BOY _runs up to his dead Mother_.] + +LITTLE BOY. +Oh, what has happened? Mummy has gone away, + And left me and will not come back any more! +Father, I shall be lonely all the day.... + Look! Look! Her eyes ... and her arms not like before, + How they lie ... + Mother! Oh, speak a word! +Answer me, answer me, Mother! It is I. + I am touching your face. It is I, your little bird. + +ADMETUS (_recovering himself and going to the Child_). +She hears us not, she sees us not. We lie +Under a heavy grief, child, thou and I. + +LITTLE BOY. +I am so little, Father, and lonely and cold + Here without Mother. It is too hard.... And you, + Poor little sister, too. + Oh, Father! +Such a little time we had her. She might have stayed + On till we all were old.... +Everything is spoiled when Mother is dead. + +[_The_ LITTLE BOY _is taken away, with his Sister, sobbing_.] + +LEADER. +My King, thou needs must gird thee to the worst. +Thou shalt not be the last, nor yet the first, +To lose a noble wife. Be brave, and know +To die is but a debt that all men owe. + +ADMETUS. +I know. It came not without doubts and fears, +This thing. The thought hath poisoned all my years. + Howbeit, I now will make the burial due +To this dead Queen. Be assembled, all of you; +And, after, raise your triumph-song to greet +This pitiless Power that yawns beneath our feet. + Meantime let all in Thessaly who dread +My sceptre join in mourning for the dead +With temples sorrow-shorn and sable weed. +Ye chariot-lords, ye spurrers of the steed, +Shear close your horses' manes! Let there be found +Through all my realm no lute, nor lyre, nor sound +Of piping, till twelve moons are at an end. +For never shall I lose a closer friend, +Nor braver in my need. And worthy is she +Of honour, who alone hath died for me. + +[_The body of_ ALCESTIS _is carried into the house by mourners;_ +ADMETUS _follows it._] + +CHORUS. +Daughter of Pelias, fare thee well, + May joy be thine in the Sunless Houses! +For thine is a deed which the Dead shall tell + Where a King black-browed in the gloom carouses; + And the cold grey hand at the helm and oar + Which guideth shadows from shore to shore, +Shall bear this day o'er the Tears that Well, + A Queen of women, a spouse of spouses. + +Minstrels many shall praise thy name + With lyre full-strung and with voices lyreless, +When Mid-Moon riseth, an orbed flame, + And from dusk to dawning the dance is tireless; + And Carnos cometh to Sparta's call, + And Athens shineth in festival; +For thy death is a song, and a fullness of fame, + Till the heart of the singer is left desireless. + +LEADER. +Would I could reach thee, oh, + Reach thee and save, my daughter, +Starward from gulfs of Hell, +Past gates, past tears that swell, +Where the weak oar climbs thro' + The night and the water! + +SECOND ELDER. +Beloved and lonely one, + Who feared not dying: +Gone in another's stead +Alone to the hungry dead: +Light be the carven stone + Above thee lying! + +THIRD ELDER. +Oh, he who should seek again + A new bride after thee, +Were loathed of thy children twain, + And loathed of me. + +LEADER. +Word to his mother sped, + Praying to her who bore him; +Word to his father, old, +Heavy with years and cold; +"Quick, ere your son be dead! + What dare ye for him?" + +SECOND ELDER. +Old, and they dared not; grey, + And they helped him never! +'Twas she, in her youth and pride, +Rose up for her lord and died. +Oh, love of two hearts that stay + One-knit for ever.... + +THIRD ELDER. +'Tis rare in the world! God send + Such bride in my house to be; +She should live life to the end, + Not fail through me. + +[_As the song ceases there enters a stranger, walking strongly, but +travel-stained, dusty, and tired. His lion-skin and club show him to +be_ HERACLES.] + +HERACLES. +Ho, countrymen! To Pherae am I come +By now? And is Admetus in his home? + +LEADER. +Our King is in his house, Lord Heracles.-- +But say, what need brings thee in days like these +To Thessaly and Pherae's walled ring? + +HERACLES. +A quest I follow for the Argive King. + +LEADER. +What prize doth call thee, and to what far place? + +HERACLES. +The horses of one Diomede, in Thrace. + +LEADER. +But how...? Thou know'st not? Is he strange to thee? + +HERACLES. +Quite strange. I ne'er set foot in Bistony. + +LEADER. +Not without battle shalt thou win those steeds. + +HERACLES. +So be it! I cannot fail my master's needs. + +LEADER. +'Tis slay or die, win or return no more. + +HERACLES. +Well, I have looked on peril's face before. + +LEADER. +What profit hast thou in such manslaying? + +HERACLES. +I shall bring back the horses to my King. + +LEADER. +'Twere none such easy work to bridle them. + +HERACLES. +Not easy? Have they nostrils breathing flame? + +LEADER. +They tear men's flesh; their jaws are swift with blood. + +HERACLES. +Men's flesh! 'Tis mountain wolves', not horses' food! + +LEADER. +Thou wilt see their mangers clogged with blood, like mire. + +HERACLES. +And he who feeds such beasts, who was his sire? + +LEADER. +Ares, the war-lord of the Golden Targe. + +HERACLES. +Enough!--This labour fitteth well my large +Fortune, still upward, still against the wind. +How often with these kings of Ares' kind +Must I do battle? First the dark wolf-man, +Lycaon; then 'twas he men called The Swan; +And now this man of steeds!... Well, none shall see +Alcmena's son turn from his enemy. + +LEADER. +Lo, as we speak, this land's high governor, +Admetus, cometh from his castle door. + +_Enter_ ADMETUS _from the Castle_. + +ADMETUS. +Zeus-born of Perseid line, all joy to thee! + +HERACLES. +Joy to Admetus, Lord of Thessaly! + +ADMETUS. +Right welcome were she!--But thy love I know. + +HERACLES. +But why this mourning hair, this garb of woe? + +ADMETUS (_in a comparatively light tone_). +There is a burial I must make to-day. + +HERACLES. +God keep all evil from thy children! + +ADMETUS. + Nay, +My children live. + +HERACLES. + Thy father, if 'tis he, +Is ripe in years. + +ADMETUS. + He liveth, friend, and she +Who bore me. + +HERACLES. + Surely not thy wife? 'Tis not +Alcestis? + +ADMETUS (_his composure a little shaken_). + Ah; two answers share my thought, +Questioned of her. + +HERACLES. + Is she alive or dead? + +ADMETUS. +She is, and is not; and my heart hath bled +Long years for her. + +HERACLES. + I understand no more. +Thy words are riddles. + +ADMETUS. + Heard'st thou not of yore +The doom that she must meet? + +HERACLES. + I know thy wife +Has sworn to die for thee. + +ADMETUS. + And is it life, +To live with such an oath hung o'er her head? + +HERACLES (_relieved_). +Ah, +Weep not too soon, friend. Wait till she be dead. + +ADMETUS. +He dies who is doomed to die; he is dead who dies. + +HERACLES. +The two are different things in most men's eyes. + +ADMETUS. +Decide thy way, lord, and let me decide +The other way. + +HERACLES. + Who is it that has died? +Thou weepest. + +ADMETUS. + 'Tis a woman. It doth take +My memory back to her of whom we spake. + +HERACLES. +A stranger, or of kin to thee? + +ADMETUS. + Not kin, +But much beloved. + +HERACLES. + How came she to be in +Thy house to die? + +ADMETUS. + Her father died, and so +She came to us, an orphan, long ago. + +HERACLES (_as though about to depart_). +'Tis sad. +I would I had found thee on a happier day. + +ADMETUS. +Thy words have some intent: what wouldst thou say? + +HERACLES. +I must find harbour with some other friend. + +ADMETUS. +My prince, it may not be! God never send +Such evil! + +HERACLES. + 'Tis great turmoil, when a guest +Comes to a mourning house. + +ADMETUS. + Come in and rest. +Let the dead die! + +HERACLES. + I cannot, for mere shame, +Feast beside men whose eyes have tears in them. + +ADMETUS. +The guest-rooms are apart where thou shalt be. + +HERACLES. +Friend, let me go. I shall go gratefully. + +ADMETUS. +Thou shalt not enter any door but mine. +(_To an Attendant_) +Lead in our guest. Unlock the furthest line +Of guest-chambers; and bid the stewards there +Make ready a full feast; then close with care +The midway doors. 'Tis unmeet, if he hears +Our turmoil or is burdened with our tears. + +[_The Attendant leads_ HERACLES _into the house_.] + +LEADER. +How, master? When within a thing so sad +Lies, thou wilt house a stranger? Art thou mad? + +ADMETUS. +And had I turned the stranger from my door, +Who sought my shelter, hadst thou praised me more? +I trow not, if my sorrow were thereby +No whit less, only the more friendless I. +And more, when bards tell tales, were it not worse +My house should lie beneath the stranger's curse? +Now he is my sure friend, if e'er I stand +Lonely in Argos, in a thirsty land. + +LEADER. +Thou callest him thy friend; how didst thou dare +Keep hid from him the burden of thy care? + +ADMETUS. +He never would have entered, had he known +My grief.--Aye, men may mock what I have done, +And call me fool. My house hath never learned +To fail its friend, nor seen the stranger spurned. + +[ADMETUS _goes into the house_] + +CHORUS. +Oh, a House that loves the stranger, + And a House for ever free! +And Apollo, the Song-changer, + Was a herdsman in thy fee; + Yea, a-piping he was found, + Where the upward valleys wound, +To the kine from out the manger + And the sheep from off the lea, + And love was upon Othrys at the sound. + +And from deep glens unbeholden + Of the forest to his song +There came lynxes streaky-golden, + There came lions in a throng, + Tawny-coated, ruddy-eyed, + To that piper in his pride; +And shy fawns he would embolden, + Dappled dancers, out along + The shadow by the pine-tree's side. + +And those magic pipes a-blowing + Have fulfilled thee in thy reign +By thy Lake with honey flowing, + By thy sheepfolds and thy grain; + Where the Sun turns his steeds + To the twilight, all the meads +Of Molossus know thy sowing + And thy ploughs upon the plain. + Yea, and eastward thou art free + To the portals of the sea, +And Pelion, the unharboured, is but minister to thee. + + He hath opened wide his dwelling + To the stranger, though his ruth + For the dead was fresh and welling, + For the loved one of his youth. + 'Tis the brave heart's cry: + "I will fail not, though I die!" + Doth it win, with no man's telling, + Some high vision of the truth? + We may marvel. Yet I trust, + When man seeketh to be just +And to pity them that wander, God will raise him from the dust. + +[_As the song ceases the doors are thrown open and_ ADMETUS _comes +before them: a great funeral procession is seen moving out._] + +ADMETUS. +Most gentle citizens, our dead is here +Made ready; and these youths to bear the bier +Uplifted to the grave-mound and the urn. +Now, seeing she goes forth never to return, +Bid her your last farewell, as mourners may. + +[_The procession moves forward, past him_.] + +LEADER. +Nay, lord; thy father, walking old and grey; +And followers bearing burial gifts and brave +Gauds, which men call the comfort of the grave. + +_Enter_ PHERES _with followers bearing robes and gifts_. + +PHERES. +I come in sorrow for thy sorrow, son. +A faithful wife indeed thou hast lost, and one +Who ruled her heart. But, howso hard they be, +We needs must bear these griefs.--Some gifts for thee +Are here.... Yes; take them. Let them go beneath +The sod. We both must honour her in death, +Seeing she hath died, my son, that thou mayst live +Nor I be childless. Aye, she would not give +My soul to a sad old age, mourning for thee. +Methinks she hath made all women's life to be +A nobler thing, by one great woman's deed. + Thou saviour of my son, thou staff in need +To our wrecked age, farewell! May some good life +Be thine still in the grave.--Oh, 'tis a wife +Like this man needs; else let him stay unwed! + +[_The old man has not noticed_ ADMETUS'S _gathering +indignation_.] + +ADMETUS. +I called not thee to burial of my dead, +Nor count thy presence here a welcome thing. +My wife shall wear no robe that thou canst bring, +Nor needs thy help in aught. There was a day +We craved thy love, when I was on my way +Deathward--thy love, which bade thee stand aside +And watch, grey-bearded, while a young man died! +And now wilt mourn for her? Thy fatherhood! +Thou wast no true begetter of my blood, +Nor she my mother who dares call me child. +Oh, she was barren ever; she beguiled +Thy folly with some bastard of a thrall. +Here is thy proof! This hour hath shown me all +Thou art; and now I am no more thy son. + 'Fore God, among all cowards can scarce be one +Like thee. So grey, so near the boundary +Of mortal life, thou wouldst not, durst not, die +To save thy son! Thou hast suffered her to do +Thine office, her, no kin to me nor you, +Yet more than kin! Henceforth she hath all the part +Of mother, yea, and father in my heart. + And what a glory had been thine that day, +Dying to save thy son--when, either way, +Thy time must needs be brief. Thy life has had +Abundance of the things that make men glad; +A crown that came to thee in youth; a son +To do thee worship and maintain thy throne-- +Not like a childless king, whose folk and lands +Lie helpless, to be torn by strangers' hands. + Wilt say I failed in duty to thine age; +For that thou hast let me die? Not so; most sage, +Most pious I was, to mother and to thee; +And thus ye have paid me! Well, I counsel ye. +Lose no more time. Get quick another son +To foster thy last years, to lay thee on +Thy bier, when dead, and wrap thee in thy pall. +_I_ will not bury thee. I am, for all +The care thou hast shown me, dead. If I have found +Another, true to save me at the bound +Of life and death, that other's child am I, +That other's fostering friend, until I die. + How falsely do these old men pray for death, +Cursing their weight of years, their weary breath! +When Death comes close, there is not one that dares +To die; age is forgot and all its cares. + +LEADER. +Oh, peace! Enough of sorrow in our path +Is strewn. Thou son, stir not thy father's wrath. + +PHERES. +My son, whom seekest thou ... some Lydian thrall, +Or Phrygian, bought with cash?... to affright withal +By cursing? I am a Thessalian, free, +My father a born chief of Thessaly; +And thou most insolent. Yet think not so +To fling thy loud lewd words at me and go. + I got thee to succeed me in my hall, +I have fed thee, clad thee. But I have no call +To die for thee. Not in our family, +Not in all Greece, doth law bid fathers die +To save their sons. Thy road of life is thine +None other's, to rejoice at or repine. +All that was owed to thee by us is paid. +My throne is thine. My broad lands shall be made +Thine, as I had them from my father.... Say, +How have I wronged thee? What have I kept away? +"Not died for thee?"... I ask not thee to die. + Thou lovest this light: shall I not love it, I?... +'Tis age on age there, in the dark; and here +My sunlit time is short, but dear; but dear. + Thou hast fought hard enough. Thou drawest breath +Even now, long past thy portioned hour of death, +By murdering her ... and blamest my faint heart, +Coward, who hast let a woman play thy part +And die to save her pretty soldier! Aye, +A good plan, surely! Thou needst never die; +Thou canst find alway somewhere some fond wife +To die for thee. But, prithee, make not strife +With other friends, who will not save thee so. +Be silent, loving thine own life, and know +All men love theirs!... Taunt others, and thou too +Shalt hear much that is bitter, and is true. + +LEADER. +Too much of wrath before, too much hath run +After. Old man, cease to revile thy son. + +ADMETUS. +Speak on. I have spoken.... If my truth of tongue +Gives pain to thee, why didst thou do me wrong? + +PHERES. +Wrong? To have died for thee were far more wrong. + +ADMETUS. +How can an old life weigh against a young? + +PHERES. +Man hath but one, not two lives, to his use. + +ADMETUS. +Oh, live on; live, and grow more old than Zeus! + +PHERES. +Because none wrongs thee, thou must curse thy sire? + +ADMETUS. +I blest him. Is not life his one desire? + +PHERES. +This dead, methinks, is lying in _thy_ place. + +ADMETUS. +A proof, old traitor, of thy cowardliness! + +PHERES. +Died she through me?... That thou wilt hardly say. + +ADMETUS (_almost breaking down_). +O God! +Mayst thou but feel the need of me some day! + +PHERES. +Go forward; woo more wives that more may die. + +ADMETUS. +As thou wouldst not! Thine is the infamy. + +PHERES. +This light of heaven is sweet, and sweet again. + +ADMETUS. +Thy heart is foul. A thing unmeet for men. + +PHERES. +Thou laugh'st not yet across the old man's tomb. + +ADMETUS. +Dishonoured thou shalt die when death shall come. + +PHERES. +Once dead, I shall not care what tales are told. + +ADMETUS. +Great Gods, so lost to honour and so old! + +PHERES. +She was not lost to honour: she was blind. + +ADMETUS. +Go! Leave me with my dead.... Out from my mind! + +PHERES. +I go. Bury the woman thou hast slain.... +Her kinsmen yet may come to thee with plain +Question. Acastus hath small place in good +Men, if he care not for his sister's blood. + +[PHERES _goes off, with his Attendants_. ADMETUS _calls after him +as he goes._] + +ADMETUS. +Begone, begone, thou and thy bitter mate! +Be old and childless--ye have earned your fate-- +While your son lives! For never shall ye be +From henceforth under the same roof with me.... +Must I send heralds and a trumpet's call +To abjure thy blood? Fear not, I will send them all.... + +[PHERES _is now out of sight;_ ADMETUS _drops his defiance and +seems like a broken man._] + +But we--our sorrow is upon us; come +With me, and let us bear her to the tomb. + +CHORUS. + Ah me! +Farewell, unfalteringly brave! + Farewell, thou generous heart and true! + May Pluto give thee welcome due, +And Hermes love thee in the grave. +Whate'er of blessed life there be + For high souls to the darkness flown, + Be thine for ever, and a throne +Beside the crowned Persephone. + +[_The funeral procession has formed and moves slowly out, followed +by_ ADMETUS _and the_ CHORUS. _The stage is left empty, till a +side door of the Castle opens and there comes out a_ SERVANT, _angry +and almost in tears._] + +SERVANT. +Full many a stranger and from many a land +Hath lodged in this old castle, and my hand +Served them; but never has there passed this way +A scurvier ruffian than our guest to-day. +He saw my master's grief, but all the more +In he must come, and shoulders through the door. +And after, think you he would mannerly +Take what was set before him? No, not he! +If, on this day of trouble, we left out +Some small thing, he must have it with a shout. +Up, in both hands, our vat of ivy-wood +He raised, and drank the dark grape's burning blood, +Strong and untempered, till the fire was red +Within him; then put myrtle round his head +And roared some noisy song. So had we there +Discordant music. He, without a care +For all the affliction of Admetus' halls, +Sang on; and, listening, one could hear the thralls +In the long gallery weeping for the dead. + We let him see no tears. Our master made +That order, that the stranger must not know. + So here I wait in her own house, and do +Service to some black thief, some man of prey; +And she has gone, has gone for ever away. +I never followed her, nor lifted high +My hand to bless her; never said good-bye.... +I loved her like my mother. So did all +The slaves. She never let his anger fall +Too hard. She saved us alway.... And this wild beast +Comes in our sorrow when we need him least! + +[_During the last few lines_ HERACLES _has entered, unperceived by +the_ SERVANT. _He has evidently bathed and changed his garments and +drunk his fill, and is now revelling, a garland of flowers on his head. He +frightens the_ SERVANT _a little from time to time during the +following speech._] + +HERACLES. +Friend, why so solemn and so cranky-eyed? +'Tis not a henchman's office, to show pride +To his betters. He should smile and make good cheer. + There comes a guest, thy lord's old comrade, here; +And thou art all knitted eyebrows, scowls and head +Bent, because somebody, forsooth, is dead! + Come close! I mean to make thee wiser. + +[_The_ SERVANT _reluctantly comes close._] + + So. +Dost comprehend things mortal, how they grow?... +(_To himself_) I suppose not. How could he?... + Look this way! +Death is a debt all mortal men must pay; +Aye, there is no man living who can say +If life will last him yet a single day. +On, to the dark, drives Fortune; and no force +Can wrest her secret nor put back her course.... + I have told thee now. I have taught thee. After this +Eat, drink, make thyself merry. Count the bliss +Of the one passing hour thine own; the rest +Is Fortune's. And give honour chiefliest +To our lady Cypris, giver of all joys +To man. 'Tis a sweet goddess. Otherwise, +Let all these questions sleep and just obey +My counsel.... Thou believest all I say? +I hope so.... Let this stupid grieving be; +Rise up above thy troubles, and with me +Drink in a cloud of blossoms. By my soul, +I vow the sweet plash-music of the bowl +Will break thy glumness, loose thee from the frown +Within. Let mortal man keep to his own +Mortality, and not expect too much. + To all your solemn dogs and other such +Scowlers--I tell thee truth, no more nor less-- +Life is not life, but just unhappiness. + +[_He offers the wine-bowl to the_ SERVANT, _who avoids it_.] + +SERVANT. +We know all this. But now our fortunes be +Not such as ask for mirth or revelry. + +HERACLES. +A woman dead, of no one's kin; why grieve +So much? Thy master and thy mistress live. + +SERVANT. +Live? Man, hast thou heard nothing of our woe? + +HERACLES. +Yes, thy lord told me all I need to know. + +SERVANT. +He is too kind to his guests, more kind than wise. + +HERACLES. +Must I go starved because some stranger dies? + +SERVANT. +Some stranger?--Yes, a stranger verily! + +HERACLES (_his manner beginning to change_). +Is this some real grief he hath hid from me? + +SERVANT. +Go, drink, man! Leave to us our master's woes. + +HERACLES. +It sounds not like a stranger. Yet, God knows... + +SERVANT. +How should thy revelling hurt, if that were all? + +HERACLES. +Hath mine own friend so wronged me in his hall? + +SERVANT. +Thou camest at an hour when none was free +To accept thee. We were mourning. Thou canst see +Our hair, black robes... + +HERACLES (_suddenly, in a voice of thunder_). + Who is it that is dead? + +SERVANT. +Alcestis, the King's wife. + +HERACLES (_overcome_). + What hast thou said? +Alcestis?... And ye feasted me withal! + +SERVANT. +He held it shame to turn thee from his hall. + +HERACLES. +Shame! And when such a wondrous wife was gone! + +SERVANT (_breaking into tears_). +Oh, all is gone, all lost, not she alone! + +HERACLES. +I knew, I felt it, when I saw his tears, +And face, and shorn hair. But he won mine ears +With talk of the strange woman and her rite +Of burial. So in mine own heart's despite +I crossed his threshold and sat drinking--he +And I old friends!--in his calamity. +Drank, and sang songs, and revelled, my head hot +With wine and flowers!... And thou to tell me not, +When all the house lay filled with sorrow, thou! +(_A pause; then suddenly_) +Where lies the tomb?--Where shall I find her now? + +SERVANT (_frightened_). +Close by the straight Larissa road. The tall +White marble showeth from the castle wall. + +HERACLES. +O heart, O hand, great doings have ye done +Of old: up now, and show them what a son +Took life that hour, when she of Tiryns' sod, +Electryon's daughter, mingled with her God! + I needs must save this woman from the shore +Of death and set her in her house once more, +Repaying Admetus' love.... This Death, this black +And winged Lord of corpses, I will track +Home. I shall surely find him by the grave +A-hungered, lapping the hot blood they gave +In sacrifice. An ambush: then, one spring, +One grip! These arms shall be a brazen ring, +With no escape, no rest, howe'er he whine +And curse his mauled ribs, till the Queen is mine! + Or if he escape me, if he come not there +To seek the blood of offering, I will fare +Down to the Houses without Light, and bring +To Her we name not and her nameless King +Strong prayers, until they yield to me and send +Alcestis home, to life and to my friend: +Who gave me shelter, drove me not away +In his great grief, but hid his evil day +Like a brave man, because he loved me well. +Is one in all this land more hospitable, +One in all Greece? I swear no man shall say +He hath cast his love upon a churl away! + +[_He goes forth, just as he is, in the direction of the grave. +The_ SERVANT _watches a moment and goes back into the hall._] + +[_The stage is empty; then_ ADMETUS _and the_ CHORUS +_return._] + +ADMETUS. + Alas! +Bitter the homeward way, + Bitter to seek + A widowed house; ah me, + Where should I fly or stay, + Be dumb or speak? + Would I could cease to be! + + Despair, despair! +My mother bore me under an evil star. + I envy them that are perished; my heart is there. +It dwells in the Sunless Houses, afar, afar. + +I take no joy in looking upon the light; + No joy in the feel of the earth beneath my tread. +The Slayer hath taken his hostage; the Lord of the Dead + Holdeth me sworn to taste no more delight. + +[_He throws himself on the ground in despair._] + +CHORUS. +[_Each member of the_ CHORUS _speaks his line severally, as he +passes_ ADMETUS, _who is heard sobbing at the end of each line._] + + --Advance, advance; + Till the house shall give thee cover. + --Thou hast borne heavy things + And meet for lamentation. + --Thou hast passed, hast passed, + Thro' the deepest of the River. + --Yet no help comes + To the sad and silent nation. + --And the face of thy beloved, it shall meet thee never, never! + +ADMETUS. +Ye wrench my wounds asunder. Where + Is grief like mine, whose wife is dead? + My wife, whom would I ne'er had wed, +Nor loved, nor held my house with her.... + +Blessed are they who dare to dwell + Unloved of woman! 'Tis but one + Heart that they bleed with, and alone +Can bear their one life's burden well. + +No young shall wither at their side, + No bridal room be swept by death.... + Aye, better man should draw his breath +For ever without child or bride. + +CHORUS (_as before_). + --'Tis Fate, 'tis Fate: + She is strong and none shall break her. + --No end, no end, + Wilt thou lay to lamentations? + --Endure and be still: + Thy lamenting will not wake her. + --There be many before thee, + Who have suffered and had patience. + --Though the face of Sorrow changeth, yet her hand is on all nations. + +ADMETUS. +The garb of tears, the mourner's cry: + Then the long ache when tears are past!... + Oh, why didst hinder me to cast +This body to the dust and die +With her, the faithful and the brave? + Then not one lonely soul had fled, + But two great lovers, proudly dead, +Through the deep waters of the grave. + +LEADER. +A friend I knew, + In whose house died a son, +Worthy of bitter rue, + His only one. +His head sank, yet he bare +Stilly his weight of care, +Though grey was in his hair + And life nigh done. + +ADMETUS. +Ye shapes that front me, wall and gate, + How shall I enter in and dwell + Among ye, with all Fortune's spell +Dischanted? Aye, the change is great. + +That day I strode with bridal song + Through lifted brands of Pelian pine; + A hand beloved lay in mine; +And loud behind a revelling throng + +Exalted me and her, the dead. + They called us young, high-hearted; told + How princes were our sires of old, +And how we loved and we must wed.... + +For those high songs, lo, men that moan, + And raiment black where once was white; + Who guide me homeward in the night, +On that waste bed to lie alone. + +SECOND ELDER. +It breaks, like strife, + Thy long peace, where no pain +Had entered; yet is life, + Sweet life, not slain. +A wife dead; a dear chair +Empty: is that so rare? +Men live without despair + Whose loves are ta'en. + +ADMETUS (_erect and facing them_). +Behold, I count my wife's fate happier, +Though all gainsay me, than mine own. To her +Comes no more pain for ever; she hath rest +And peace from all toil, and her name is blest. +But I am one who hath no right to stay +Alive on earth; one that hath lost his way +In fate, and strays in dreams of life long past.... +Friends, I have learned my lesson at the last. + I have my life. Here stands my house. But now +How dare I enter in? Or, entered, how +Go forth again? Go forth, when none is there +To give me a parting word, and I to her?... + Where shall I turn for refuge? There within, +The desert that remains where she hath been +Will drive me forth, the bed, the empty seat +She sat in; nay, the floor beneath my feet +Unswept, the children crying at my knee +For mother; and the very thralls will be +In sobs for the dear mistress that is lost. + That is my home! If I go forth, a host +Of feasts and bridal dances, gatherings gay +Of women, will be there to fright me away +To loneliness. Mine eyes will never bear +The sight. They were her friends; they played with her. + And always, always, men who hate my name +Will murmur: "This is he who lives in shame +Because he dared not die! He gave instead +The woman whom he loved, and so is fled +From death. He counts himself a man withal! +And seeing his parents died not at his call +He hates them, when himself he dared not die!" + Such mocking beside all my pain shall I +Endure.... What profit was it to live on, +Friend, with my grief kept and mine honour gone? + +CHORUS. +I have sojourned in the Muse's land, + Have wandered with the wandering star, +Seeking for strength, and in my hand + Held all philosophies that are; +Yet nothing could I hear nor see +Stronger than That Which Needs Must Be. +No Orphic rune, no Thracian scroll, + Hath magic to avert the morrow; +No healing all those medicines brave +Apollo to the Asclepiad gave; +Pale herbs of comfort in the bowl + Of man's wide sorrow. +She hath no temple, she alone, + Nor image where a man may kneel; +No blood upon her altar-stone + Crying shall make her hear nor feel. +I know thy greatness; come not great +Beyond my dreams, O Power of Fate! +Aye, Zeus himself shall not unclose + His purpose save by thy decerning. +The chain of iron, the Scythian sword, +It yields and shivers at thy word; +Thy heart is as the rock, and knows + No ruth, nor turning. + +[_They turn to_ ADMETUS.] + +Her hand hath caught thee; yea, the keeping + Of iron fingers grips thee round. +Be still. Be still. Thy noise of weeping + Shall raise no lost one from the ground. +Nay, even the Sons of God are parted +At last from joy, and pine in death.... +Oh, dear on earth when all did love her, +Oh, dearer lost beyond recover: +Of women all the bravest-hearted + Hath pressed thy lips and breathed thy breath. + +Let not the earth that lies upon her + Be deemed a grave-mound of the dead. +Let honour, as the Gods have honour, + Be hers, till men shall bow the head, +And strangers, climbing from the city + Her slanting path, shall muse and say: +"This woman died to save her lover, +And liveth blest, the stars above her: +Hail, Holy One, and grant thy pity!" + So pass the wondering words away. + +LEADER. +But see, it is Alcmena's son once more, +My lord King, cometh striding to thy door. + +[_Enter_ HERACLES; _his dress is as in the last scene, but shows +signs of a struggle. Behind come two Attendants, guiding between them a +veiled Woman, who seems like one asleep or unconscious. The Woman remains +in the background while_ HERACLES _comes forward._] + +HERACLES. +Thou art my friend, Admetus; therefore bold +And plain I tell my story, and withhold +No secret hurt.--Was I not worthy, friend, +To stand beside thee; yea, and to the end +Be proven in sorrow if I was true to thee? +And thou didst tell me not a word, while she +Lay dead within; but bid me feast, as though +Naught but the draping of some stranger's woe +Was on thee. So I garlanded my brow +And poured the gods drink-offering, and but now +Filled thy death-stricken house with wine and song. +Thou hast done me wrong, my brother; a great wrong +Thou hast done me. But I will not add more pain +In thine affliction. + Why I am here again, +Returning, thou must hear. I pray thee, take +And keep yon woman for me till I make +My homeward way from Thrace, when I have ta'en +Those four steeds and their bloody master slain. +And if--which heaven avert!--I ne'er should see +Hellas again, I leave her here, to be +An handmaid in thy house. No labour small +Was it that brought her to my hand at all. +I fell upon a contest certain Kings +Had set for all mankind, sore buffetings +And meet for strong men, where I staked my life +And won this woman. For the easier strife +Black steeds were prizes; herds of kine were cast +For heavier issues, fists and wrestling; last, +This woman.... Lest my work should all seem done +For naught, I needs must keep what I have won; +So prithee take her in. No theft, but true +Toil, won her.... Some day thou mayst thank me, too. + +ADMETUS. +'Twas in no scorn, no bitterness to thee, +I hid my wife's death and my misery. +Methought it was but added pain on pain +If thou shouldst leave me, and roam forth again +Seeking another's roof. And, for mine own +Sorrow, I was content to weep alone. + But, for this damsel, if it may be so, +I pray thee, Lord, let some man, not in woe +Like mine, take her. Thou hast in Thessaly +Abundant friends.... 'Twould wake sad thoughts in me. + How could I have this damsel in my sight +And keep mine eyes dry? Prince, why wilt thou smite +The smitten? Griefs enough are on my head. + Where in my castle could so young a maid +Be lodged--her veil and raiment show her young: +Here, in the men's hall? I should fear some wrong. +'Tis not so easy, Prince, to keep controlled +My young men. And thy charge I fain would hold +Sacred.--If not, wouldst have me keep her in +The women's chambers ... where my dead hath been? +How could I lay this woman where my bride +Once lay? It were dishonour double-dyed. +These streets would curse the man who so betrayed +The wife who saved him for some younger maid; +The dead herself ... I needs must worship her +And keep her will. + +[_During the last few lines_ ADMETUS _has been looking at the +veiled Woman and, though he does not consciously recognize her, +feels a strange emotion overmastering him. He draws back._] + + + Aye. I must walk with care.... +O woman, whosoe'er thou art, thou hast +The shape of my Alcestis; thou art cast +In mould like hers.... Oh, take her from mine eyes! +In God's name! + +[HERACLES _signs to the Attendants to take_ ALCESTIS _away again. +She stays veiled and unnoticing in the background._] + +I was fallen, and in this wise +Thou wilt make me deeper fall.... Meseems, meseems, +There in her face the loved one of my dreams +Looked forth.--My heart is made a turbid thing, +Craving I know not what, and my tears spring +Unbidden.--Grief I knew 'twould be; but how +Fiery a grief I never knew till now. + +LEADER. +Thy fate I praise not. Yet, what gift soe'er +God giveth, man must steel himself and bear. + +HERACLES (_drawing_ ADMETUS _on_). +Would God, I had the power, 'mid all this might +Of arm, to break the dungeons of the night, +And free thy wife, and make thee glad again! + +ADMETUS. +Where is such power? I know thy heart were fain; +But so 'tis writ. The dead shall never rise. + +HERACLES. +Chafe not the curb, then: suffer and be wise. + +ADMETUS. +Easier to give such counsel than to keep. + +HERACLES. +Who will be happier, shouldst thou always weep? + +ADMETUS. +Why, none. Yet some blind longing draws me on... + +HERACLES. +'Tis natural. Thou didst love her that is gone. + +ADMETUS. +'Tis that hath wrecked, oh more than wrecked, my life. + +HERACLES. +'Tis certain: thou hast lost a faithful wife. + +ADMETUS. +Till life itself is dead and wearies me. + +HERACLES. +Thy pain is yet young. Time will soften thee, + +[_The veiled Woman begins dimly, as though in a dream, to hear the words +spoken._] + +ADMETUS. +Time? Yes, if time be death. + +HERACLES. + 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 blessed! 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. Asclepios (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 Thanatos (Death) +himself seems not to be so. It is rather Thanatos 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 +Persephone, spell-bound by his music, granted his prayer that Eurydice +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 _Ache_ 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. +Diomedes was a son of Ares, the War-god or Slayer, as were the other wild +tyrants mentioned just below, Lycaon, 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 Boibeis 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 Pheres.]--Pheres 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, +Alcmene, the Tirynthian _Kore_ 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." + +Again, what are the feelings of Admetus himself? First, mere indignation +and disgust at the utterly tactless proposal: then, I think, in 1061 ff. +("I must walk with care" ... end of speech), a strange discovery about +himself which amazes and humiliates him. As he looks at the woman he finds +himself feeling how exactly like Alcestis she is, and then yearning +towards her, almost falling in love with her. A most beautiful and +poignant touch. In modern language one would say that his subconscious +nature feels Alcestis there and responds emotionally to her presence; his +conscious nature, believing the woman to be a stranger, is horrified at +his own apparent baseness and inconstancy. + +P. 57, l. 1051, Where in my castle, etc.]--The castle is divided into two +main parts: a public _megaron_ or great hall where the men live +during; the day and sleep at night, and a private region, ruled by the +queen and centring in the _thalamos_ or royal bed-chamber. If the new +woman were taken into this "harem," even if Admetus never spoke to her, +the world outside would surmise the worst and consider him dishonoured. + +P. 66, l. 1148, Be righteous to thy guest, As he would have thee be.]-- +Does this mean "Go on being hospitable, as you have been," or "Learn after +this not to take liberties with other guests"? It is hard to say. + +P. 66, l. 1152, The feasting day shall surely come; now I must needs +away.]--A fine last word for Heracles. We have seen him feasting, but that +makes a small part in his life. His main life is to perform labour upon +labour in service to his king. Euripides occasionally liked this method of +ending a play, not with a complete finish (Greek _catastrophe_), but +with the opening of a door into some further vista of endurance or +adventure. The _Trojan Women_ ends by the women going out to the +Greek ships to begin a life of slavery; the _Rhesus_ with the doomed +army of Trojans gathering bravely for an attack which we know will be +disastrous. Here we have the story finished for Admetus and Alcestis, but +no rest for Heracles. See the note at the end of my _Trojan Women_. + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Alcestis, by Euripides + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALCESTIS *** + +***** This file should be named 10523.txt or 10523.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/5/2/10523/ + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Charles M. Bidwell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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