Alcestis (Greek Drama) [Paperback]

Euripides (Author), Charles Rowan Beye (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Greek Drama | Publication Date: June 1974

A masterly translation of one of the greatest of Greek dramas.

Their lives are the briefest concession,
My concession, a nod of permission.
As if I dozed off and dreamed a little.
I take a dream-and Admetos calls it his life.
-Death in Alcestis

In the years before his death at age sixty-eight in 1998, Ted Hughes translated several classical works with great energy and ingenuity. His Tales from Ovid was called "one of the great works of our century" (Michael Hofmann, The Times, London), and his Phèdre was acclaimed on stage in New York as well as in London. Hughes's version of Euripides' Alcestis, the last of his translations, has the great brio of those works, and it is a powerful and moving addition to the body of work from the final phase of Hughes's career.
Euripides was, with Aeschylus and Sophocles, one of the greatest of Greek dramatists. Alcestis tells the story of the grief of King Admetos for his wife, Alcestis, who has given her young life so that he may live. As translated by Hughes, the story has a distinctly modern sensibility while retaining the spirit of antiquity. It is a profound meditation on human mortality.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This new verse translation and adaptation of Euripides' earliest surviving classic, Alcestis (438 B.C.E.), was British Poet Laureate Hughes's last translation before his death in 1998. Ironically, the character Death plays a prominent part in the drama. In order to let her husband, King Admetos, live, queen Alcestis gives up her young life in a bargain arranged by Apollo with Death. The tragic outcome is thwarted when Heracles visits the palace without knowing of Alcestis's death. After learning of Admetos's bereavement, Heracles, in gratitude, decides to rescue Alcestis from Death in a wrestling match. His success reunites the royal couple. Richard Aldington's earlier prose translation (1930), in four acts with short scenes, contains detailed stage directions; this new adaptation is easier to read. Hughes's poetic style is full of beauty and pathos. Highly recommended for both public and academic libraries.
-Ming-ming Shen Kuo, Ball State Univ. Lib., Muncie, IN
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

The drama developed out of religious ritual, and many early dramatic masterpieces feature gods and their doings, none more than Euripides' plays, among which Alcestis is a rarity, a tragedy reversed. It begins in tears. Good King Admetos loses Queen Alcestis because she agreed to die in his stead. Even Admetos' patron deity Apollo cannot thwart that force greater than gods, Death. But the demigod Heracles, whom Admetos hosts despite his grief, can and, once he learns who has died, does by wrestling Death until it surrenders Alcestis. With typical Euripidean irony, a superman triumphs where a god fails. The late British poet laureate Ted Hughes adapted the Greek original substantially, greatly expanding Heracles' drunken boasting about his labors, in particular, to point up humanity's heroic capacities and wrench the play's mood from mourning to celebration. He created a richly stageworthy new version that, as a work about a man whose wife dies by a man whose wife (U.S. poet Sylvia Plath) famously died, also provokes biocritical speculation. What is Hughes saying through Alcestis? Ray Olson --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 116 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall (June 1974)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0130434302
• ISBN-13: 978-0130434302
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,326,169 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A project uncompleted, May 17, 2000

By 

Jeffrey Barcham - See all my reviews

This review is from: Euripides' Alcestis: A New Translation (Hardcover)

Ted Hughes'translation of Alcestis continues on a path he pursued for most of his later years: to resurrect "classic" poetry in a modern form. The translation flows eloquently, with the typical Hughes clipped verse. He seems desparate to make the text "speak" to modern readers, and (I think) especially to modern poets.

Despite the obvious (and poignant) parallels of the storyline to Hughes' own life, I did not find his translation of Alcestis as arresting as his Oresteia trilogy (especially the moving "Agamemnon"). The main characters in Alcestis all come across as somewhat cold, and there is a distance between the major themes (sacrifice, renunciation, regret) and the language used. The famous (but somewhat enlarged in Hughes' version) sequence of a drunken Heracles seems discordant given the sparce tone of the rest of the translation.

A fine (and uniquely personal) version, but one to be read along with older, more full treatments.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hughes' Final Gift, October 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Euripides' Alcestis: A New Translation (Hardcover)

At the end of the last book that Ted Hughes has given us, the king's wife returns from the dead, after she has sacrificed her life for his. It is a celebratory end to a journey through grief and hell, and one can only hope that Hughes, at the end of his life, putting together "Birthday Letters", was consoled by the fact that his illness would soon reunite him with the woman whose legacy and ghost he would never shake. Profound, unsettling, thought-provoking; we should expect nothing less from one of the finest poets of the century.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Greek Drama translated into Modern English, April 5, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Euripides' Alcestis: A New Translation (Hardcover)

I really enjoyed this. This is the first play I've read that made me what to drop what I'm doing, rush out and get together a troupe of players to stage it. The translation into modern language works very well, a couple of modern words jar, but then isn't drama supposed to provoke us? Some critics of the language of this translation are more comfortable with Victorian English but that's not what the Greeks spoke either. Hughes ensures that the humour as well as the tragedy comes through. I would have appreciated an editorial introduction with a few words about Euripides, Greek Drama, and Ted Hughes; especially given the price and the brevity of the work.